Ki Tavo
Deut. 26:1-29:8
Précis: The parasha contains numerous religious mandates regarding the formation of a civil and moral community (including tithes of first fruits and tithes to support the Levites). The People are promised that if they follow God’s instructions, they will be transformed into a “holy people.” They are further instructed that they have a choice in their own destiny: there are blessings and curses (the “Admonition”), and they must to choose between the two, and take the consequences. The parasha ends with Moses reminding the People about all that God had done for them in bringing them from Egypt, providing sustenance, defeating their foes, and giving them the Land.
Deut. 26:16-18 “The Lord your God commands you this day to observe these laws and rules; observe them faithfully and with all your heart and soul. You have affirmed on this day the Lord is your God, that you will walk in His ways, that you will observe His laws and commandments and rules, and that you will obey them. And the Lord has affirmed this day that you are, as He promised you, His treasured people who shall observe all of His commandments, and that He will set you, in fame and renown and glory, high above all the nations that He made; and that you shall be, as He promised, a holy people to the Lord your God.”
We have in these verses a proof-text for the special relationship between God and the Jewish People, based on an exchange of mutual vows (the Covenant), the result of which is that the Jews are to be a “treasured people…set…in fame and renown and glory high above all the nations.” In short, we are God’s "Chosen People."
In these days of multi-culturalism on the one hand and radical religious extremism on the other, what can we glean from these verses and the concepts which they present to us?
Read literally, we are taught that Jews are to be place high above other nations if we observe the commandments which our ancestors have sworn to do. In so doing, we become “holy” as well as “treasured.” Reality tells us that, to the contrary, we have been nearly universally despised and treated with ill will ranging from contempt to outright mass murder.
History teaches us that The Jewish People have rarely obeyed the commandments, yet we have held fast to the idea that “if only” we actually followed the commandments, we would be the beneficiaries of God’s blessings. Despite the repeated violations recorded by our prophets and our texts, God never drops his side of the contract.
My evidence is that we, the Jewish People, are indeed unique in surviving as a people for millennia without a land, riven by religious differences, strained by baseless hatred of our fellow Jews, ignoring the commandments and laws our ancestors pledged (but failed) to obey, and being the objects of scorn by other peoples. Something is at play which transcends our mere survival. I think it is the continuing striving and wrestling within ourselves to observe what these verses declare, knowing that it is within our power to become a true nation of priests, a holy people. This is indeed something to be thinking about as we come towards the Yamim Noraim.
