Parashat Ki Yavo - Our Season of Consolidation, Week 6 – Rebuilding

רפואה מן התורה

Healing from the Torah

Parashat Ki Teitzei

Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8
By Rabbi Adam Ruditsky

     

     The saying goes, “He that gives should never remember, he that receives should never forget.”  Rabbi Eliyahu Dressler wrote, “the quality of giving is inherent only in the person who is happy … with their lot.”  Every morning in Jewish prayer we say, “How good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, how beautiful our heritage,” asking us to consider the middah of Hakarat Hatov, or recognition of the good, hence gratitude.  There is a story in the Midrash about Reuven who experienced the pains of Egypt but also the delights of deliverance yet he had no gratitude.  Here, Reuven speaks about Egypt where they had dry clay for mortar to make bricks and now have to walk through the clay on the seabed in order to escape from Pharaoh and his armies who sought their lives; but we know how that ended.  In response God says to him “all of these miracles you now equate with evil.”  This Midrash from Exodus Rabbah 24:1 goes on to call them “Foolish people,” because for Reuven the power of Egypt took away his ability to show gratitude for his deliverance.

     As Moses continues to recount Israel’s past with an eye on the future he writes, “My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.  But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us.  Then we cried out to the Lord God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labor and our oppression.  So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders.  He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, “a land flowing with milk and honey”; and now, behold, I have brought the first fruits of the land which you, O Lord, have given me” (Dt. 26:5-10).  We must remember that Moses had a firsthand account of the pain of Egypt yet this short narrative focuses not on the memories of Egypt but the gratitude of their freedom and the land of promise that would be Israel’s home.
     So Moses writes, וְהָיָה, כִּי-תָבוֹא אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, “And it shall be, when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you.”  Upon their arrival the wilderness generation was to show their appreciation by taking “some of the first of all the produce of the ground, which you shall bring from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and put it in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide.”  The idea of giving sacrifices to God was not new to their culture, but what they learned in the wilderness was that it was not about appeasement but Hakarat Hatov, and that was to be their attitude in the new land as well.  Here is the problem, their ancestors ate fruit in Egypt just like they made mortar out of clay, so do we appeal to that same Midrash because somehow fruit can be turned into a bad omen instead of recognizing it’s as a gift from the ground?  That might silly, but let’s explore that for just a moment.

     Here it is not just about fruit from the ground but the fruit of the human spirit.  Rashi says that the fruit here is specific to the land making a distinction from the past, albeit from Egypt or the wilderness (see Rashi on Dt. 26:2), the earlier Targum Jonathan saying that these fruits were “the earliest first fruits which are ripe at the beginning.” The fruit was new, not recalling the past but with expectation of the future.  What else do we know about this fruit?  It says in Deuteronomy 26:4, בָּרוּךְ פְּרִי-בִטְנְךָ וּפְרִי אַדְמָתְךָ, “Blessed shall be the fruit of your body (belly), the produce of your ground,” further defining this fruit. It says in a later Midrash that the fruit of your womb means “let no evil come out of you that is not cursed by his deeds,” and the fruit of your ground means to not plant “idle seed.”  Although Ibn Ezra sees the plain meaning of the text as simply “the fruit of your belly i.e., your offspring,” since it will "come out of you,” I think the tradition of the Christian Bible about the “fruit of the spirit” is helpful.  The idea of the “fruit of the spirit” seems to reflect the words of the Prophet Isaiah who refers to “the spirit be poured upon us from on high,” with the New Testament attributing that to what Mussar came to call the human middot, they being “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  Notice that in the language of the New Testament it is not “fruits of the spirit” but “fruit of the spirit” suggesting that all these characteristics are of equal importance.
     The “fruit of the spirit” includes goodness that results in Hakarat Hatov, or gratitude. But we also read in this parsha from Deuteronomy 28:18, אָרוּר פְּרִי-בִטְנְךָ וּפְרִי אַדְמָתֶךָ, “Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land.”  Was it the quality of the fruit, what changed?  The Kabbalists teach in the Zohar that the path of Torah purifies a person so they “would not stray to these,” these being the curses (Zohar, Pekudei 34:310).  The blessing was the fruit, the curse came when the fruit was either rotten or even worse withheld.  If the “fruit of the spirit” was not love but hate, not gentleness but division, or instead of goodness (Hakarat Hatov) selfishness,  the chaos that ensued in the end only brought bad upon the community.
     Israel was asked to give their first fruits, the best of themselves as they entered the land after 40 years of journeying through the wilderness.  But was the power of the past going to dictate their future that would then speak to the quality of their fruit given, not only from the ground but also of their own being?  This is not so farfetched as the Torah speaks both of physical circumcision and the circumcision of the heart (see Lev. 12:3 and Dt. 10:16).  Rabbi Eliyahu Dressler says that this type of fruit is related to our needs tied into the mitzvah of chesed, loving kindness.  This week is about “Rebuilding,” rebuilding in the new year with the hope of self-betterment, seeing an end to hate and injustice, the eradication of racial inequality, reuniting families and communities once again, loving and caring more than before,  not having to decide if the murder of a Trump supporter or of unidentified protesters on the street should have the same moral equivalency; fact is that one life is not more important than the other in this case.  Our Hakarat Hatov is medicine to the spirit and like with Israel of this parsha, who at least in theory were told not to let the power of the past control their future, we deserve to rebuild ourselves without yesterday holding us back for tomorrow.  Our fruit must always give thanks for what we have instead of dwelling on what we don’t. The clay of Egypt is not the same as the clay of goodness even if they look the same.

Shabbat Shalom