Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah begins by instructing a ritual of gratitude to be performed when the Children of Israel cultivate the land: the celebrant should put the first-ripened fruits (bikkurim) of their orchard into a basket and bring it to the place where Hashem “chooses” to “make the Holy Name rest.” The celebrant then offers these first fruits, making a declaration of having come out of slavery in Egypt and into the “land flowing with milk and honey.” The celebrant then “rejoices” with one’s family as well as with the “stranger.”
The parshah continues with the laws of tithes given to the Levites and the poor, along with detailed instructions on how to proclaim the blessings and curses on Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival, as discussed at the beginning of Parshat Re’eh. The latter part of Ki Tavo consists of a long, harsh account of the curses—illness, famine, poverty and exile—that shall befall them if they abandon the Torah. It concludes with Moses’ words that “only today,” forty years after their birth as a people, have they attained “a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear.”
Torah of Awakening – Jewish Meditation Teaching
וְהָיָה֙ כִּֽי־תָב֣וֹא אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר֙ יי אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָ֑ה וִֽירִשְׁתָּ֖הּ וְיָשַׁ֥בְתָּ בָּֽהּ׃ וְלָקַחְתָּ֞ מֵרֵאשִׁ֣ית כׇּל־פְּרִ֣י הָאֲדָמָ֗ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר תָּבִ֧יא מֵֽאַרְצְךָ֛ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יי אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָ֖ךְ וְשַׂמְתָּ֣ בַטֶּ֑נֶא וְהָֽלַכְתָּ֙ אֶל־הַמָּק֔וֹם אֲשֶׁ֤ר יִבְחַר֙ יי אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ לְשַׁכֵּ֥ן שְׁמ֖וֹ שָֽׁם׃ When you enter the land that Hashem your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that Hashem your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where Hashem your God will choose to establish the Divine Name... - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 26:1-2 Parshat Ki Tavo
Once, when Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov was deeply absorbed in the mystical ecstasy of his prayers, he heard a knock at the window. A drunken peasant stood outside and asked to be let in and given a bed for the night. For a moment, the rebbe’s heart raged with anger and he thought to himself, “How can this drunk have the hutzbah to ask to be let into this house!”
But then he said silently in his heart, “And what business does he have to exist at all, when Existence is nothing but the Divine? But if Hashem gets along with this guy and allows him to exist in this world, who am I to reject him?” He opened the door at once and prepared a bed. It is impossible to perceive another person without them casting their image upon our consciousness; every being we meet, every situation and every experience appears to us as forms within our own awareness. To love another being, then, is simultaneously an embracing of one’s own inner depths. On the other hand, negativity toward others is a rejection of the form that our own awareness has taken; we resist not just the other, but the image of the other within, thereby creating an inner split, an experience of “exile,” of being not at home. The more resistance toward others that we accumulate throughout our lifetime, the more inner pain of fragmentation and alienation. It seems this is inevitable, for life tends to give us plenty of material to resist! What to do? Fortunately, the remedy is simple, and we can begin (again) right now. Welcome this moment as the form in which it appears. Whether it be a person, or a situation, or a feeling – it doesn’t matter – the hospitality we express toward the fullness of present experience allows us to be at home with ourselves, now. וְהָיָה֙ כִּֽי־תָבֹ֣וא אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ – It will be when you come into the land... While the natural impulse is to resist what we don’t like, creating the sense of “not being at home,” like Israelites wandering the desert, we counteract this כִּֽי־תָבֹ֣וא ki tavo – “when we come in” – that is, when we fully inhabit this moment. The key is כִּי ki: kaf-yud! כִּֽי־תָבֹ֣וא – It will be when you come in… Resistance is born of fear, the instinctual impulse to protect oneself. This is good and necessary, but the side effect is inner exile. To “come home,” we need to transcend the fear – know that you are not the fear. Fully accept it as part of the texture of the moment, without being caught by it; this is כ kaf: “courage.” כִּֽי־תָבֹ֣וא אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ – It will be when you come into the land…Then, in order to sustain the sense of Wholeness arising from letting go of resistance, we must rest awareness in the אָרֶץ aretz, in the senses and the physical world, rather than becoming lost in world thought; this is י yud: “simplicity.” וְהָיָה כִּֽי־תָבֹוא – It will be when you come in… Through this “coming in” to the moment and the senses, our inner split is healed, and there can arise the joy of הָיָה hayah, the joy of simply being. יי אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָ֑ה – Hashem your God is giving it to you as a heritage… This moment now is literally our נַחֲלָה nakhalah, our inheritance; it comes to us from the boundless past, as an unearned gift. From the infinite possibilities of what could have been, here we are. This realization is both the spiritual goal and the path: אַחַ֤ת שָׁאַ֣לְתִּי מֵֽאֵת־יי – One Thing I ask of Hashem… We can read this not merely as asking for one thing, but as asking for Oneness itself. From whom do we ask? From Y-H-V-H, which is composed of the same letters as v’hayah וְהָיָה – it will be. Meaning, our “question” that arises from feeling not at home is answered when we turn toward the moment, intentionally of “coming into” our “heritage.” This is teshuvah, “return,” aided by the spirit of ב bet: “welcoming this moment.”
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