Fear or Love?

Fear or Love?

Sep 4, 2004 By JTS Alumni | Commentary | Ki Tavo

By Rabbi Howard Stecker (RS’ 92)

Given the complex nature of religious life, how can we most effectively communicate religious instruction? This question occupies rabbis, educators and parents alike. While the Torah contains no explicit discussion of educational methodology, the attempt to transmit religious teachings goes back to our earliest history and is the central theme of the series of parshiyot before the High Holidays.

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Torah and Livelihood

Torah and Livelihood

Sep 20, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

Among the cascade of curses that pour forth in Parashat Ki Tavo, one in particular grabs my attention this year, not because of the vividness of its brutality (others surpass it), but because of its later application in a talmudic dispute. Our reading of a text is often a function of what we have on our mind. I refer to a fairly generic articulation of the fate of national subjugation: “Because you would not serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything, you shall have to serve – in hunger and thirst, naked and lacking everything – the enemies whom the Lord will let loose against you… (Deuteronomy 28:47–48). The phrase “ve–avadeta et oyvekha – you shall have to serve your enemies” is the link to a discussion in the Talmud about the issue of just how much of our lives are we expected to devote to the study of Torah.

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“Into the Woods” and into Elul

“Into the Woods” and into Elul

Aug 24, 2002 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Ki Tavo

“Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom, lived a young maiden, a sad young lad, and a childless bakery” thus opens the story that develops into Stephen Sondheim’s current revival on Broadway, Into the Woods. Cleverly weaving our classic fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, Sondheim composes a fable with classic, yet new significance. He begins with the foundation of the moral lessons of the children’s fairy tales like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk, and builds upon them by watching as their characters interact with one another.

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The Language of the Jewish People

The Language of the Jewish People

Sep 24, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

The owner of the mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse we rented for August has a well-tended orchard of diverse fruit trees.

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An Uneasy Relationship with the God of History

An Uneasy Relationship with the God of History

Sep 16, 2000 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

The Hebrew adjective for being ungrateful is kefui tovah. The idiom stresses the willfulness of the sentiment. The situation calls for an expression of gratitude and we squelch the impulse. The word kefui is related to the word kefiah as in the phrase current in contemporary Israeli politics, kefiah datit – religious coercion, both forms deriving from the root kafah, to suppress. The language makes it clear that saying thanks does not come naturally. We are reluctant to acknowledge a favor that might reveal our need or shortcoming. And so the Torah institutionalizes a thanksgiving ritual, though an unusual one.

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Hebrew’s Answer to Life’s Deepest Riddle

Hebrew’s Answer to Life’s Deepest Riddle

Sep 13, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

The Bible’s most famous riddle was the brainchild of Samson. “Out of the eater came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet” (Judges 14:14). Samson posed it on the occasion of his seven-day wedding feast to thirty young Philistine men who came to celebrate his marriage to one of their own. On the last day, the young men responded gleefully: “What is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?” Dismayed, Samson accused them of coercing his bride: “Had you not plowed with my heifer, you would not have guessed my riddle.” And indeed, threatened by them with savage revenge, she had wheedled the answer out of Samson, only to betray him, exactly as Delilah would do later in his life.

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Your Zeyde the Pilgrim

Your Zeyde the Pilgrim

Sep 29, 2009 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Commentary | Ki Tavo

Try to imagine your zeyde, born and bred in Lithuania, dressed as a Pilgrim. I did. Like any other American schoolchild, I learned how the Pilgrims came to these shores on the Mayflower, how they celebrated their first harvest together with the Wampanoag Indians, and how this celebration became the basis for our holiday of Thanksgiving. For reasons that were not clear to me at the time, I tried to picture my Litvak grandfather as a Pilgrim, but the moment I did I started laughing.

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The Religious Value of Critical Study

The Religious Value of Critical Study

Aug 28, 2010 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Commentary | Ki Tavo

Parashat Ki Tavo begins with a description of the ceremony for bringing the first fruits to the Temple. As part of this ritual, the following is to be recited by the pilgrim bringing the produce:

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he descended to Egypt. There he became a great and mighty nation. The Egyptians did us harm and caused us suffering; they placed upon us the burden of hard labor. We called out to the Lord the God of our ancestors; God heard our voices, and He saw our suffering, our hard labor and our oppression. The Lord brought us forth from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with signs and with wonders. And he brought us to this place, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now behold I have brought the first fruits of the land that You have given to me. (Deut. 26:5–10)

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