"Take from the "reishit" (first or head) fruits of the Land …and come to the [Temple], the place in which the Lrd your Gd chose to dwell" (Devarim 26:1). B'nei Yisrael are also called "reishit," the head or purpose, because they make themselves a vehicle for the will of Hashem Who is the head, the one and only source of Creation. By contrast, Amalek is called "reishit kol amim," head of all the nations, because their focus is to make themselves the head, to glory in their own power, and as a result they will be lost.
The Torah is called "reishit darcho," the beginning of His path, because it leads us back to the Creator and through it we can come to cleave to Hashem. When we bring the first fruits of the field we are dedicating the source of our powers and abilities to Hashem. We are separating ourselves for holiness at our first moment of awareness that Hashem is bestowing goodness in our lives. Through this we can begin to lift up the rest because everything that Hashem created is a vessel to reveal His glory in the world.
Therefore the Midrash tells us, when Moshe saw that the Temple would be destroyed and the mitzvah of bringing the first fruits would be suspended, he instituted the three daily prayer times. Because at every change of day - morning, afternoon and evening - there is a renewal of Creation and a person can focus himself anew on bringing everything to the Creator Who made times and seasons. And the natural reflection of how Hashem changes the times is the cycle of vegetation: sprouting in the spring, giving fruits and seeds and then passing away. So that from one year to the next it gives testimony to the Creator to Whom belongs beginning and end (Sefat Emet 118).
Ki Tavo
Reb Shlomo Minyan HarNof
(R. Raphael, email: [email protected])
Bicurim From The Meor V'shemesh
Our greatest challenge is to keep our focus on doing things at the right time, waiting for ripeness. Because even while we can hear a small voice from deep inside telling us when is the true time and when is not, there is a chaotic rumble of grasping desire that says "Now!" We can see this internal conflict all the way back to the first couple, Adam and Chava. The rabbis tell us that had they waited until Shabbat to have relations that their intimacy would not have been in the way of appetite and no evil would have attached to their pleasure. But because they were enticed by the seductions of the snake's poisonous vision, the flood gates of self and desire were opened.
When we go through all the steps of bringing the first fruits, to the Temple we are reenacting the primal scene in the garden in order to make a rectification. We focus our attention on the fruits of the land as they are just beginning to emerge from the tree, when there is only a hint of the fullness they will reach. Instead of giving our appetites free reign, we separate them. We designate them for holiness. We do an action of mitzvah to remind us, from the beginning, to see the powers of soul as ways of serving the oneness of Hashem. With a string, we bind the fruits in the field to the holy Temple where we will eat them without allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by desire. And we guard ourselves in between, as it says in the Gemara, those who brought the fruits up to Jerusalem would sleep out in the open air of the public streets rather than private rooms in order to help them win the battle with their desire.
Now when Adam indulged his appetite and ate from the fruit, the potential of holiness that was there became lost to him. If Adam had held back his desire he would have enjoyed the pleasure of eating the fruit of the Garden together with the holiness of Shabbat and in this way he would have raised up all the sparks of this world. But by giving way to desire he caused the sparks of holiness to be mixed up with the power of desire that enveloped him. Because of this, the sparks of holiness ended up in Mitzrayim, which means constriction, "metzar," being imprisoned in a lesser vessel. Because by indulging his desire at that time, man exchanged his focus on the One and Only Creator for an experience of fulfilling his own will, and this locked the infinite spiritual potential of that moment within the confining smallness of self.
To undo this captivity a reverse process had to take place. B'nei Yisrael went down to Mitzrayim - the seventy souls of Yaakov's house went into exile in order to bring up from there the sparks imprisoned in the physicality and lustful appetite that characterized Mitzrayim. Through the slavery and toil they endured the desires of the body were slowly broken down while their souls still cleaved in their natural affinity for the holiness that was locked up there. When B'nei Yisrael left Mitzrayim they went out with this great spiritual wealth and they journeyed in the Midbar for forty years eating manna, the most spiritually purified of all foods.
This is the work of each of us in our own lives: to purify ourselves from the seductions of desire. In this way we can separate the holiness that is waiting to be unlocked in the experiences of our lives. And this is the mitzvah of first fruits. That before a person is overwhelmed by his desires he should separate the fruits, to set them safely aside and keep them from the poisonous desire of the snake in order to rectify the sin of Adam.
This is what is meant by the Torah text that is recited when we bring the first fruits, that "the Arami caused my father to be lost and descend to Mitzrayim." Arami hints at the snake who was a "ramai" - a deceiver. He seduced Adam who is the father of mankind to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, making it necessary for our ancestors to descend to Mitzrayim to begin the rectification of appetite, to persevere in sanctifying our lives even when it brings us to narrow places where holiness is imprisoned and to work there on bringing out the wealth of spirituality to return it to the Holy Land.
Torah From The Ashes
The Aish Kodesh, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, was confronted with the nightmarish suffering of his congregation. He compared the cruelty of their cursed enemy to the viciousness of a biting snake:
According to Gemara Sanhedrin 59b, when the snake in the Garden of Eden was cursed, man lost his greatest servant. Because in the time before man ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil he had two serpents that served him: one would go north and the other to go to the south to bring back spices and precious stones. When man sinned after being enticed, the snake was cursed and the blessing bestowed by the snake became biting. But why did Hashem bring curse through the snake, the very animal that had been the source of so much good? Why couldn't the curse come through one of the other animals?
The Aish Kodesh explains: When most animals attack with their mouths, they do so for hunting, killing their prey in order to feed themselves. But the snake is different. He will bite someone without receiving this kind of benefit. Thus, if an animal devours a man, Gd forbid, then we could say that the Heavenly judgment had been clothed in a natural occurrence. But if a person is a victim of an attacking snake, there is something unnatural about this. The snake hasn't bitten in order to fulfill its hunger. His viciousness expresses something else. Thus, a person who is attacked by a snake will have a more direct awareness that he is being judged because the vehicle of punishment is not enclothed in natural causes. The snake represents something frightening - "unnatural evil." But reverse the curse and you will remain outside the bounds of nature for good - the snake can once again return to bringing us the most profound gifts.
This is like the situation in Mitzrayim when the Jews were being afflicted by king's edicts against the Jews that caused his own wealth to be depleted. Paroh forbade the Jews to gather straw for brickmaking even though it slowed them down and weakened the bricks. But why would Paroh go so directly against his own interests?
Moshe Rabbeinu turned to Hashem, "'Lrd why have You done such evil to this people? Why have You sent me?' And Hashem said to Moshe, 'Now you will see what I will do to Paroh. Because with a strong hand he will send them away and with a strong hand he will drive them out of the land'" (Shemot 5:22-6:1). The whole leadership of Moshe was outside of the natural order, as we see in the Midbar where there was "water (the well) from below, bread (manna) from above." Moshe recognized that what was happening to the Jewish people had no natural reason and he knew that if the afflictions were not being enclothed in nature, so also the salvation that would come would be beyond natural bounds. But Moshe turned to Hashem and asked, "Does Yisrael have the strength to suffer their afflictions?" And Hashem responded that from that time onwards Mitzrayim (those that hate Yisrael) would be judged with the most powerful din beyond nature and that Yisrael would be redeemed with Divine mercy and kindness that would be openly revealed.
This means that Yisrael does have the ability to strengthen itself even in the face of horrendous suffering, even when their afflictions are beyond the bounds of nature. Just as the judgment is beyond nature so too their strengthening. Because according to natural law it's an impossible situation. But this is precisely when their prayers have the power to reverse judgment and reveal the highest mercy because the redemption that is about to be come is a revelation above the enclothment in nature.
And sometimes when a person thinks that he just can't continue to go on, nevertheless he fulfills the commandments. As it says about the food set aside for tithes, "I have not eaten of them in my mourning…I have listened to the voice of the Lrd my Gd and have done according to the commandments" (Devarim 26:14). And Rashi on this, "I have myself rejoiced and made others rejoice by it." And there is a deep way of understanding what Rashi says here. What is the real joy of the person who follows the commands even in his mourning? And we know that according to nature it's impossible to be able to strengthen oneself under these circumstances and even more so, to be happy.
But when one sees around him the great suffering of others and that they've overcome it and we consider how much greater is our own suffering, we rejoice in overcoming and strengthening ourselves in spite of our worse situation. And we are joyous because our own overcoming will be a source of joy to others. Because when we find strength, this is the source of reversing the judgment and turning the evil into good to be a blessing for Your nation Yisrael. Bless Your nation Yisrael. (This Torah was given during the N. occupation of the Warsaw Ghetto.)
Mitzvot
According to Sefer HaChinuch there are six commandments in parashat Ki Tavo.
At A Glance