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 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. 26:1-11 “And it shall be, when you come into the land which Adonai has given you, and dwell there, that you will take the first fruit of the ground…and place it in a basket...and go to a place that Adonai will choose…And you will come to the priest…and say to him, ‘my father was a wandering Aramean, and he went to Egypt, and there became a great nation…And the Egyptians dealt harshly with us…and we cried to Adonai…and He heard our voices…and brought us forth with a strong hand…and brought us to this place, flowing with milk and honey…and now I have brought the first of the fruit of this land which You, Adonai, have given me…’ And you will rejoice in all that Adonai has given you…”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has written about how this particular text is transformative, making the Jewish storytellers. There is importance in narrative to a moral life. We are essentially story-telling animals, and through these foundational stories of our ancestors, we learn how we are to act and behave. The great questions of life – “Who are we?” “Why are we here?” “What is our task?” – are best answered by narrative. The Torah is not a theological treatise, but a series of linked stories from Abraham and Sarah’s journey from Ur to Moses leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt. As Sacks suggests, “Judaism is less about truth as system than about truth as story. And we are part of that story. That is what it is to be a Jew.”
While much of D’varim is Moses’ recitation of the narrative, it goes even further in this parasha with these verses. Merely bringing fruits to the Temple would be insufficient. Each person was to recite a specific statement beginning with the following words (also found in the Haggadah): “My father was a wandering Aramean."
This becomes an obligation of each member of the People to recite the origin story. While D’varim repeatedly demands that we are to “remember,” here we go a step beyond, and narrate the story we are remembering.
By reciting the prayer, we acknowledge that God is part of our history, and we are part of a Covenant. In effect, the Jews become the first historians centuries before the Greeks.
If we think about the United States’ founders, they also created a national story, based on the idea of a covenant between the People and its government. As Sacks suggests, a “covenantal narrative is always inclusive, the property of all its citizens, newcomers as well as the home-born. It says to everyone, regardless of class or creed: this is who we are. It creates a sense of common identity that transcends other identities.”
Moses made us a nation of storytellers, bound by collective responsibility. This covenant is shared among all Jews, regardless of their denomination or affiliation. Americans, too, should be a nation of storytellers who begin their narrative with “We the People.”
