Parshat Ki Tavo פָּרָשַׁת כִּי־תֵצֵא

his week’s parsha reading truly belongs in the month of Elul, just a few days before we begin these Days of Awe.  

Parsha Ki Tavo is a wake-up call, a way to tell us that we must always remember how far we have come. We chose to abandon the rituals and practices of our neighbors, of those around us and those who came before us. We were slaves destined to be free, and we claimed not only that freedom but also a new idea, an idea different and radical.  What was that idea? It was monotheism, the idea that there is one God and that God loves us and wants us to WALK IN HIS WAYS.  Judaism is about the courage to make a claim for an idea as new and different as monotheism. Judaism tells us that what has always been is not how things must be, or should be. Judaism tells us that HABITS do not dictate our future. And that is true of the world and it is also true of us as individuals.  We can always be better.

The message of Ki Tavo is that we are not static. Two sentences illustrate this point.  One is a curse and the other is not.  They appear in the parsha separated by about 43 verses.  Here’s the earlier verse, the curse:  YOU SHALL GROPE AT NOON AS A BLIND MAN GROPES IN THE DARK.  Now I know that’s not as graphic as eating your own children, which is also in this parsha, but this curse is terrifying in its own way.  First, it reminds us all of another moment in our history—of when we were in Egypt and Pharaoh refused to LET US GO.  And so, God inflicted plagues on the Egyptians. We know about that last plague: the deaths of all the first-borns.  What was the one before that? It was the plague of darkness. Our sages tell us that the plagues occurred from the least bad to the worst; if that’s true, then the ninth plague was the second-worst plague, and the only one worse was the deaths of children. So, we have to know that darkness is terrifying.

Think about the first human beings, and how they must have felt when the sun went down. Think about how WE feel when we lose power during a storm.  We feel frightened and ALONE. 

But, of course, the darkness here can also be metaphorical. The darkness here is the darkness of SIN, the darkness of willful ignorance, the darkness of a loss of community. In fact, the last part of that very verse ends with “you shall be abused and robbed, with none to give help.”  Without that help, we face a kind of vulnerability and each of us becomes the enemy of the other. We have no neighbor.  That is, without question, a powerful curse.

The second line is almost at the very end of the parsha.  And it’s pretty typical that Parshiyot end on a positive, or at least a somewhat positive, note. This line occurs AFTER all the blessings and the curses, so we have to assume that it’s neither a blessing NOR a curse. Here’s the line: “Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.”  There’s a negative there that makes this line a little hard to understand, so I’m going to rephrase it, to try to make it a little clearer.

What this line is saying is: “ON THIS DAY THE LORD HAS GIVEN YOU A MIND TO UNDERSTAND AND EYES TO SEE AND EARS TO HEAR.” HAYOM HAZEH. This day.  A mind and eyes and ears. That’s all we need.  On this day—and we can think of this as THAT day in time, the day that the Torah is referring to. But we can also think about this in terms of TODAY, of every day. Every day that we reaffirm our commitment to Judaism, that we reaffirm our commitment to living a righteous life. That is truly the antidote to the curse of blindness.
 
We now have not only EYES to see but also ears to hear and a mind to understand.  
At the end of Ki Tavo, God is telling the Israelites, God is telling US:  you are ready. You are ready to be a people, ready to grow up, break bad habits, and find your own way. God no doubt has hopes for us, hopes for HOW we will find that way; but there is no question that we are now on our own. 

And that’s the message of Elul. As individuals and as a community, we are not only permitted to re-create ourselves, we are expected to do so. Now, most likely, at this point in our lives, we are probably not going to change the habits that we’ve had for so long.  If you are suddenly angry, that tendency is not going to disappear.  If you are inclined to be fearful, don’t expect that some prayers and some fasting will eliminate that inclination. But what these days CAN DO for us is to bring light to the darkness. What these days can do for us is to wake us up, to call us to account for ourselves.

• Is this who I want to be?
• How might I be different?
• Whom have I wronged?  

Reflecting on our lives over the past year, we know that in some ways we will continue to be the same people, even if we move to a different place or your children move away or you retire from your job or experience other changes.

Regardless of THOSE changes, we will probably continue to do many of the same things next year that we have done in the year now ending. But, in other ways, we need to be ready to shed aspects of ourselves that have hurt us and others, and be willing to take on new identities that will lift us and lift them. We have to feel ready and able to transform ourselves as dramatically as a group of slaves who made themselves over into Israelites.

Our history as Jews is one of choosing to be different, of embracing what appears to be so strange to other people—if you’ve ever tried to explain kashrut to anyone, you know exactly what I mean. We should all use these holidays to rethink who we are, and be ready to change in order to bring more hope, more life, more sanctity into this world, both for Jews and for non-Jews.

As Ki Tavo tells us, our capacity for personal transformation is our sacred inheritance and our sacred obligation.   Let us resolve to think about the ways that we can honor that inheritance, and fulfill that obligation. AND LET US SAY AMEN.