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The BOR is comprised of a diverse group of rabbis who live and/or work in the greater Philadelphia region. Our members serve in a wide range of professional contexts and represent a wide range of rabbinic perspectives. The ultimate goal of the BOR is to contribute to a strong, vibrant and diverse Jewish community.
D’var Torah This Week
Parshat Ki Tavo
Rabbi Beth Janus
The first time I went to Israel, as a teenager, I decided I was going to make aliyah. Going deeper into Jewish history and seeing the land my people had lived on for thousands of years grounded me and connected me to the culture, place, and community. I felt closer to Israel than I did to the city of my birth, where I had lived my entire life. Israel was different from the South, where my grandparents, parents and I all lived, but something pulled me there. In Israel I felt surrounded by family. It was a homecoming. While my priorities and plans changed and I do still live in the US, I have returned many times to Israel, including for two different years of study. Israel always draws me back.
This week’s Torah portion begins, “When you enter the land that God is giving you as a heritage…” Moses is about to die and implores us to be righteous, as we return as a newly formed nation to the promised land. Moses is desperate for his people to follow Torah, so that we can be worthy of living in the land after having left 400 years before. Moses knows that God is giving us the land, but that we have responsibilities to fulfill if we are to keep the land. This is what he wants to convey.
The first action we must take when we arrive from the desert is ritualistic. We carry our first fruits and bring them to an altar before God. We recite a formula that reminds us that we were mistreated in Egypt, “The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us.” This reminder heightens our awareness of the suffering we endured and sensitizes us to the suffering of others. We then tithe our crops and give to the vulnerable: the people who lived amongst us who are not Jewish (gerim), the orphans, and the widows. We bowed before God in gratitude for the gift of the land and its fruits.
If we listen to the Torah, then many blessings will come. But if we do not listen, then curses will follow. There are examples of what we can do to be blessed and many more examples of what we can do that would lead us to be cursed. Here is one example: “Cursed be the one who subverts the rights of the gerim, the orphan, and the widow.” Moses must have known that we were more likely to disregard our ethical and ritual teachings than to follow them, which is why he spends more of his short time scaring us with the threat of the curses. It is difficult to follow the rules of the Torah. It is challenging to be moral, ethical people - especially when we have autonomy in our own land. That is why Moses, under God’s guidance, cajoles and threatens us endlessly in these last days of his life. He understands that it is likely that we will fail, and yet he intensely wants us to prosper.
Often we speak about the promised land as if God gave it to us as a one-time gift. But we know from Torah that this gift has always been conditional. Two weeks ago, we read the line, “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” which is an inspiring line found on many synagogue buildings. But we pay less attention to the rest of the verse, “so that you may thrive and inherit the land that God is giving you.” It is a covenant. We pursue justice, and only then do we earn the right to be in the land. And God is judging us on our righteousness.
So 77 years after Jews regained sovereignty in the promised land, how well are we fulfilling our obligations to Torah and God? Are we supporting the vulnerable in Israel? Are we living up to sharing the bounty of the land with everyone who lives there, as this week’s verses command us? How do we think about the rights of the Palestinians living in the West Bank who are living alongside us in this sacred land? How do we view the ongoing war in Gaza in light of these teachings? Are we “walking in God’s ways?”
In this season of deep reflection, I invite us all to see how we are measuring up in our homeland and how we imagine God is judging us. May we fully and collectively merit continuing to live in our holy land.
Rabbi Beth Janus is the immediate past president of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia. She works at Lafayette Redeemer and educates and conducts life cycle ceremonies in the Philadelphia community.