The Morning Scroll
The Morning Scroll
Parashat Ki Tavo, September 15th
“If much of Deuteronomy is a prophetic vision or dream, the tochachah is the nightmare.”
-Metallica
"Exit light! Enter night! Take my hand — we're off to Never Never Land."
-Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
[note: check to see if quote attribution is correct before publishing]
Please email rabbideena@mishkanchicago.org with any corrections to this week's episode description.
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Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Ki Tavo, when you come, aka into the land of Israel. We’ll start with a brief recap:
The Israelites are commanded to bring the first fruits of their harvest to the Temple in Jerusalem, and hand them over to the priest in a special ceremony. They also had to separate their produce into different tithes, to be given to the priests, the poor and to be eaten themselves. Moshe then once again reminds the people to follow God’s laws because they are a treasured nation to God. Once the Israelites cross the Jordan river, they are instructed to collect large stones and write the whole Torah on them. Then, half the people climb Mount Ebal and recite blessings, and half climb Mount Grizim and pronounce blessings. The Levites stand in the middle with the Ark, and after this, the ISraelites are told that they will be showered with blessings if they follow God’s commands. The blessings are listed, then the curses, which are gruesome and gory and horrible. Moshe ends by lifting their spirits back up, reminding them of all the miracles they have experienced since leaving Egypt.
The section of curses that we read in this week’s parsha are known as the tochecha, and they appear twice in the Torah. In the words of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “If much of Deuteronomy is a prophetic vision or dream, the tochachah is the nightmare.” So why include it? Why bring down this utopic vision for the future with a ghastly description of what happens if it all goes wrong? In trying to answer this question, Rabbi Sacks quotes a story in the Talmud, which says that God answered every single question Moshe asked except for one: Why do bad things happen to good people? This, the Talmud says, cannot be answered, at least not in a way humans can understand. In bringing this story, Rabbi Sacks is making a profound point. The tochecha is a disproportionate punishment, a grizzly, gory, violent retribution for the very human tendency to stray from the right path. This stuff happens, Rabbi Sacks is saying, not because we are so vile and flawed to deserve it, but because, well, we don’t know. Jewish tradition is filled with people of faith who ask the same questions of theodicy, why bad things happen to good people, or why horrible things happen to average people, and they all come up short.
But this, itself, should be consolation. When the worst happens, we can leave aside questions of why, knowing that those answers are beyond our comprehension, and instead focus on consoling each other, and surviving the things that have befallen us. Our human drive is to want to understand, but our human strength is to love and to survive. So I want to offer a blessing to the Israelites who heard these curses and put their arms around their loved ones, as if to shield or comfort them from the possibilities the curses raised. This instinct is so beautiful, so praiseworthy, and it is something I know so many of us have done as well. So consider this blessing for you as well, that your instinct to comfort and be comforted is precisely what makes you precious.