D’var Torah – Pareshat Ki Tavo - September 3, 2001 – 15 Elul 5761

By Evan B. Moffic

This week’s parasha, Ki Tavo, contains the following declaration that each Jew recited upon bringing the first fruits of the Spring harvest to the Temple in Jerusalem.

"My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us… We cried to Adonai, our God, and Adonai heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The Eternal freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. God brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey."

This passage presents many interesting questions. Who is this wandering Aramean? Why does the subject of the declaration switch from the first person "I" (as in My Father) to the first person "We" (We cried to Adonai our God)? These are important questions, but I want to focus on God. What traits does Israel give God in this declaration? What is God’s role in history? To me, these words portray God as an all-powerful, considerate Sally to the oppressed. God listened to Israel’s plea, its cry for freedom, and brought us to aretz zevat chalav udevash, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Reality, however, undermines this view. If God has the power to free the enslaved, why do good people suffer? Why does persecution of the innocent abound? How can we acknowledge the power of a God who sits quietly through the horrors and troubles we see all around us?

I think a possible response can be found in the first three words of the last line of the declaration. "Veata heenay hehvehti": And now, behold, I have brought the fruits of my labor to You." When the figure of action in the declaration switches from God to human, the time period switches from the past to the present. God performed all these miracles for our ancestors in the past, but in our lives, we deal with the here and now. We must react to what we see before us. "Veata heenay hehvethti: And now, behold, I am bringing the fruits of my labor to You."

(slow) We acknowledge what God has done for us in the past, and express our indebtedness to the past through our responsibility to the present. These words provide a linchpin for our duty to pray as if everything depended on God, and live as if everything depended on us.

How do I reach this interpretation? Let’s look more closely at each word of our key phrase: Veatah, Heenay, Hehvehti.

Veatah, and now. According to Sifrei Devarim, an ancient collection of Midrashim on the Book of Deuteronomy, for veatah, we can substitute meeyad, immediately. I immediately bring my first fruits to the Temple. This reading makes sense to me. The declaration describes God’s actions in the past tense. Adonai heard our plea, saw our plight, freed us from Egypt, brought us to this land. Then verse 10 brings us from the past to the present, and from God’s role to our’s. Now, behold, I bring the first fruits of my labor. I acknowledge what you have done in the past, but I also acknowledge my responsibility to the present. Veata provides a transition from history to now.

The Hasidim tell a story about the Sadagora Rebbe and a student. The two were waiting for a train. The rebbe was in the midst of telling the student that everything can teach us something, when they nearly missed the train and jumped on at the last second. The student turned to the rebbe and asked what we could learn from the train. "From the train," replied the rebbe, "we can learn that because of one second, we can miss everything."

So we are responsible to the here and now. But it’s easy to look around and conclude that the magnitude of the problems we face are too great, whatever we do won’t make a dent in the world around us. The next word in our phrase, Heenay, tells us how we should approach our tremendous responsibility.

Heenayis usually translated as behold, or look here. Yet Sifrei Devarim says Heenayalso connotes simcha, happiness. How could the rabbis have linked these two words? Think about Heenay ma tov ooo mah nayim. Psalm 133. Since heenayis linked to happiness and joy in this biblical context, the rabbis associated the word with happiness and joy when it appeared in other contexts. The word heenay illustrates the attitude with which we should give the fruits of our labor. We should not give begrudgingly, but with simcha, with joy. As the Talmud notes, "He who gives a small coin to a poor man obtains six blessings, and he who addresses to him words of comfort obtains eleven blessings." (Bava Batra 9B)

How can we happily give, you may ask, when we constantly struggle to provide a good life for ourselves? Many of you may also have had the pleasure of being hit up for money days after your graduation from college. Before even beginning to pay off loans and finding a place to live, we have to deal with fundraisers with the chutzpah to suggest giving more money to school. Yet God, like our alma maters, desires the very first fruits of our labor. Our last word, hehvehti, means "I have brought [my first fruits to you]." I have met your request.

In interpreting this verse, however, the rabbis asked a very pertinent question: How do we determine which fruits are the first fruits? How do we know when it is time to give?

The answer, according to the Tractate in the Mishna dealing with first fruits, is that we give as soon as the first fruits on our trees ripen. In other words, we wait until we have sufficient resources, when circumstances permit us the luxury to give.

A prominent medieval commentator, however, offers a different answer. We give when we are conscious of our obligation to give. We give always because we are always conscious that what we have and what we create belong to God.

We have used Sifrei Devarim to interpret veatah and heenay. For vehata, or now, we can substitute meeday, or immediately. Heenay, or behold, we can understand as implying simcha, or joy. What does Sifrei Devarim have to say about our last word, hehvehti? For hehvehti Sifrei devarim offers two readings. In its standard version, it says that hehvehti refers to meesheli, what is mine. I bring my first fruits as an offering to God. In two ancient manuscript versions, however, we read that hehvehti refers to meeshelo, what is God’s. The fruits I bring to God do not belong solely to me. As Psalm 24 says, "The earth is the Lord’s and fullness thereof." Our responsibility in life is to serve as benevolent trustees for what we have been given.

Living with a feeling of obligation to God and the world around us can be very difficult. I can think of many situations against which I’d like to turn my back and wish away. It is possible, for example, to look at the matzav in which we are living and conclude bitterly that hatred is pervasive and unstoppable. We might even agree with Mayor Ehud Ohlmert’s claim that violence will plague us for at least another 15 years. That does not mean, however, that we should step away from politics, or sit back and let the conflict take its natural downward course.

We can look at starvation, AIDS in Africa, the denial of basic freedoms and justify passivity and resignation by insisting that only God has the power to make things better. Or we can say that poverty, disease and inequality are pervasive and complicated problems we must incessantly condemn and combat.

God’s work did not stop two thousand years ago. God does not sit quietly through the horrors and troubles we see around us. But atah, now, in this moment, God relies on us. God relies on the fruits of our labor to finish the work of creation. That is the message of this week’s parasha. We are not merely God’s creatures but God’s contemporaries, partners in the fulfillment of a holy purpose. God has no hands but ours.