Until today

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. 29:1-5 “Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that Adonai did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt…the wondrous feats that you saw with your own eyes, those prodigious signs and marvels. Yet until today Adonai has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. I led you through the wilderness forty years; the clothes on your back did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet….”

             An entire generation has witnessed God’s blessings and miracles, but fails to appreciate the source. The implication: God will protect us, just as he protected our ungrateful ancestors, despite their inability to learn from the past.

            These days, it seems that not learning from the past is not the real problem: we seem unable to learn from what happened yesterday, or earlier today! The text tells us that our ancestors were not able to appreciate God’s support because “until this day” God had not endowed them with the kind of self-awareness needed to appreciate His gifts or to learn from the past. But we have inherited this awareness. Our own sin is our failure to utilize it.

            As we approach the Yamim Noraim, perhaps we should add this to our confessional: for the sin we have committed by failing to learn from our errors.