This Shabbat we study the Parsha Ki Tavo, meaning “when you come” (Deuteronomy 26:1). Moses instructs the people of Israel: When you enter the land that G-d is giving to you as your eternal heritage, and you settle it and cultivate it, bring the first-ripened fruits (bikkurim) of your orchard to the Holy Temple, and declare your gratitude for all that Gd has done for you. 

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Our Parsha also includes the laws of the tithes gives to the Levites and to the poor. The latter part of Ki Tavo consists of the Tochachah (“Rebuke”). After listing the blessings with which Gd will reward the people when they follow the laws of the Torah, Moses gives a long, harsh account of the bad things—illness, famine, poverty and exile—that shall befall them if they abandon Gd’s commandments. Moses concludes by telling the people that only today, forty years after their birth as a people, have they attained “a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear.”

Chabad.org

Ki Tavo includes a frightening description of the horrors of suffering and exile. It is a statement of the tragic outcome if, as a people, we disobey G-d. This is always read in the autumn, shortly before Rosh Hashanah. There is a similar section in the Torah read shortly before the Shavuot festival, in the early summer. The Talmud explains that the aim is to get rid of everything negative before the festival. Hence, we make sure that the apparently gloomy sections of the Torah are behind us.

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Chassidic teachings add a further level of meaning to this: in each case these serious and disturbing sections cleanse us, scouring out everything negative, preparing us for the beautiful experience which is going to come through the festival. Can one measure the intensity of this positive experience? In a sense, one can. Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah. It is an event in which Gd was revealed to us from above, but our level of participation was relatively meager. Indeed, this is why we were able to fall into the colossal error of making the Golden Calf so soon afterwards.

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By contrast, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur express our own strong attempt to come close to Gd. Every weekday in the month of Elul the shofar is blown, reminding us to wake up spiritually; we engage in spiritual accounting; we make decisions to improve our lives. It is a service from below upwards, and therefore leads to a greater level of spiritual reward. For this reason, says the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the harsh section we read as we approach Rosh Hashanah is much longer than that before Shavuot.

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In the same way, our exile, since the destruction of the Temple 1900 years ago, has been longer and in many ways more intense than any previous period of exile of our people. Our exile is longer because we are in a course of preparation for a far greater level of revelation of the divine than ever happened before, on a global level. We endure a long list of tragic events, like that in our Torah reading, but this will be followed by the coming of Moshiach, bringing lasting peace and goodness to all humanity.

From an article by Dr. Tali Loewenthal

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Rabbi Yehudah ben Natan was walking behind Rabbi Hamenuna. He sighed. Rabbi Hamenuna said, “Someone here wants to bring suffering upon himself.” For when you fear a thing, you open a door for it to enter.

—Talmud Brachot 60a.

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The Baal Shem Tov taught, “Where a person’s thoughts are, that’s where he is, all of him.” So if you want to be healthy, put yourself in a healthy space. Think healthy thoughts. Say healthy things. Don’t even say you are sick. Say you are recovering, becoming healthy. Getting stronger and stronger each day. As the Rebbe wrote to someone who complained about his ailments, “I have told you many times: You are a healthy man. Think that way.”​​

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

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Our sages teach that the words “this day” imply that the Divine commands must always be to you as something new, as if you had been commanded them now, this very day. This applies also to our actions and endeavors to hasten the redemption. They must be innovative. One is not to be content with the mere addition of more deeds from one day to the next. Our activities

must be in a mode of “something truly new.” Thus will be fulfilled the prophecy of “the new heavens and the new earth” (Isaiah 66:22), that will be with the coming of Moshiach.

Rabbi J. Immanuel Schochet

This week we read about Bikkurim, the first fruit offerings Jewish farmers in the Holy Land were commanded to bring in thanksgiving to Gd for the land and its produce. On a basic level, Bikkurim remind us never to become ungrateful for the things we are blessed with in life.

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Interestingly, the law only took effect fourteen years after the Jewish people entered the Promised Land. It took seven years to conquer and another seven to apportion the land amongst the twelve tribes of Israel. Only when that process was completed did the law of the first fruits become applicable. But why? Surely there were quite a few tribes who were settled earlier. No doubt, some of the farmers who had received their allotted land had planted and seen the first fruits of their labors. Why then were they not required to show their appreciation immediately by bringing the Bikkurim offering?

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The Rebbe explains that in commanding this mitzvah the Torah uses the phrase, “And you shall rejoice with all the good that the L-rd your G-d has given you.” In order to be able to fully experience the joy of his own blessings in life, a Jew must know that his brothers and sisters have been blessed as well. As long as one Jew knew that there were others who had not yet been settled in their land, he could not be fully content. Since simchah, genuine joy, was a necessary component in the mitzvah of Bikkurim, it could only be fulfilled when everyone had been satisfied. Only then can one experience true simchah, a sincere and genuine joy.

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Knowing that our friends and cousins are still fighting to conquer the land — or even not yet enjoying their own share of land— somehow takes away the appetite for celebration, even if we personally may have reason to rejoice. One Jew’s satisfaction is not complete when he knows that his brother has not yet been taken care of.

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I remember reading a story from the diary of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, describing his arrest and imprisonment by the Communists in Russia back in 1927. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was the heroic spiritual leader of Russian Jewry at the time, and the Soviets sentenced him to death for his religious activities on behalf of his people (miraculously, that sentence was subsequently commuted and the Rebbe was released after three weeks in prison and after serving only nine days of a three-year sentence of exile). Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was an expressive writer and he described his incarceration and the tortures he suffered at the hands of the sadistic warders in that notorious Soviet prison. One of the prison guards was unbelievably cruel. He himself told the Rebbe that when he would beat and torture a prisoner, he would derive so much pleasure watching the man suffer that he would drink his tea without requiring its usual dose of sugar. Just watching the torture sweetened his tea…

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Such was a vicious anti-Semite. But a Jew must experience the reverse sensation. He cannot enjoy his tea or his first fruits knowing that his fellow Jew is still unsettled. The sweetest fruits go bitter in our mouths feeling the need of our brethren. So, if you have a job, think of someone who doesn’t. If you are happily married, think of those still searching for their bashert and try making a suitable introduction. And as the holiday season is almost upon us, if you will be privileged enough to be able to buy new outfits for your family, spare a thought for those who cannot contemplate such a luxury. And when you plan your festive holiday meals with your family and friends, remember to invite the lonely, the widow and the single parent, too. In this merit, please Gd, we will all be blessed with a joyous and sweet new year.

Rabbi Yossy Goldman

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