by R. Gidon Rothstein
Parshat Ki Tavo
The end of the parsha, chapter twenty-nine of Sefer Devarim, sounds like Moshe is berating the people for not yet having caught on to Hashem’s power, not yet fully bought in to God’s service. In the third verse, he seems to pause to absolve them of some of their culpability.
The Heart We Need Help to Get
He says Hashem has not yet given you a lev la-da’at, a heart to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear, until this day. He will call on them to pay better attention, but Ibn Ezra’s comments here arrest me. He says the lev la-da’at means to note the ten times the Jews tested God in the desert, not remembering the signs (and wonders) they had seen.
Hashem’s Providence comes in a mixed bag, he is pointing out. The Jews of the desert complained and tested Hashem when life did not go as smoothly as they wanted, at least in those moments losing sight of all the good Hashem had done them.
That would fit a complaint by Moshe about the Jews’ failure to achieve a lev la-da’at, but Moshe phrases it as Hashem having not given. Ibn Ezra says the alilah rishonah comes from Hashem. I found the root alilah to mean underlying reasons also in I Shemuel 2;3 and Devarim 22;14. When he says the alilah rishonah comes from Hashem, I think he is saying Moshe Rabbenu is defending the Jewish people, their failure to notice God’s Providence was because Hashem had not yet given them the necessary first step, the lev la-da’at. Until that day.
Meaning, for Ibn Ezra, Moshe was saying in our “natural” states we are often incapable of spotting Providence, until Hashem gives us the first step. [I do often pray, for myself and others, to see the world more as Hashem sees it.] In addition, he thinks Moshe is excusing everything that happened before, but now, now it’s up to them. Hashem has given them the first step, they (and we) need to take on full awareness of all the good Hashem has done, to play their/our proper role in the covenantal relationship.
Worshipping Custom
Verse 28;14 seems pretty straightforward, making Sforno’s view stand out. The verse calls for us not to stray from what Moshe is commanding, right or left, to follow other gods and serve them. Perhaps Sforno was bothered by the disjunct between the first and second half: straying from the Torah doesn’t immediately jump to other gods.
He speaks about issues I assume were relevant to his times, because of how little they jump out of the verse itself. He says if people abandon mitzvot to follow customs, received behaviors of the past (he uses a phrase from Yeshayahu, mitzvat anashim melumadah, a rote practice learned from ancestors; Professor Twersky, a”h, used to point out Rambam’s use of this same phrase, to call out those who observe religion without thought or attention).
For Sforno, people do this because their ancestors taught them to, not because they think it is a way to serve God (imagine if a group of people had a custom, and someone who knows—a Torah scholar or prophet, say—told them this was not what God wanted, and they didn’t care, because this is their custom; that’s what Sforno seems to be describing). He adds “there is no ‘to follow other gods’ greater than this,” a statement shocking in its truth.
To prioritize what some people have told us over what God has is to place those people, and their customs above God, God forbid, the very definition of idolatry. Of course, people who do this would deny it, would say its obviously what God wants, because that’s what we received from our ancestors.
Sforno disagrees.
The Chosen Arurs
Chapter twenty-seven details the ceremony first presented back in Re’eh, to have half the people stand on Mount Gerizim, half on Mount Eval, the Levi’im in the middle, turning to one mountain and announcing blessings, to the other announcing the opposite, for certain observances of the Torah.
How the Torah (Hashem) chose what to include in the list is a bit of a mystery, since there are many other equally valid choices. Or HaChayim points out, for one example, that the Torah chose some prohibited forms of sexuality, but left out significant ones, such as adultery. He suggests our list consists of sins committed in secret, as in the very first of the curses, 27;15, one who makes an idol and hides it in secret.
It fits the idea of insulting someone, slyly, in a way a court cannot address. Ditto for boundary stealing, tripping up a blind person when no one sees. The arayot, sexual sins, involve people who regularly live together, so the public might never notice [I’m not sure that’s a full answer, since it is true of other arayot as well].
With hitting another Jew, the verse says “in secret,” and a bribe can push a judge towards a defensible position, making it unclear whether he perverted justice.
The point of the ceremony, Or HaChayim is arguing, is to address what happens in secret. Public wrongs we are obligated to police because of arevut, responsibility for each other. [In my world, people invoke arevut only in the sense of caring about and for fellow Jews; Or HaChayim extends it to removing wrong, too.]
Har Gerizim and Har Eval, for Or HaChayim, are where the Jewish people called for Hashem to curse those who hide their evil, do it where they themselves cannot address it. We hope Hashem will, because what we curse, we surely do not accept.
Aramean Hatred
R. Ya’akov Kaminetzky is sure the Aramean of 26;5 includes Lavan, along the lines of what we say in the Haggadah. [I think those who read the text literally think it refers to Ya’akov, who wandered and then went to Egypt.] He is so sure, he wonders why the verse speaks of “Arami, an Aramean,” instead of naming Lavan.
Lavan wasn’t the only one, says R. Kaminetzky. When he gathered his fellow citizens for the wedding, they all knew he was going to switch Leah for Rachel (a Midrash says), and said nothing to Ya’akov. Who had approached them at the well in a spirit of friendship, calling them achai, my brothers. Ya’akov wanted to be friends, they sided with Lavan in tricking him.
Arami oved avi, for Emet Le-Ya’akov, means the generic Aramean, any random Aramean, was happy to put my forefather Ya’akov in a difficult position. [There was a time when this tendency to spot Jew-hatred might have been thought of as belonging in a bygone era; sadly, we are living with it again.]
Heart and hatred, in our parsha. Heart to notice God’s many kindnesses, keep them in mind when life gets hard, and hatred for worshipping anything other than God, including family custom, crimes hidden in secret, all the Arameans happily going along with Lavan in foisting on Ya’akov a wife he never sought.