Questions & Commentary on Parashat Ki Tavo'

1. Deuteronomy 26:16 reads, "This very day, the LORD your God commands you to perform these statutes and laws, and you will keep them and perform them with all your heart and soul." Commenting on this verse, Midrash Tanchuma asks, "What does this mean? Did the blessed Holy One, not command Israel until now? Did this (i.e. the events recorded in Deuteronomy) not take place in the fortieth year (after the Exodus)?" So what is the meaning of "This very day"?

Rabbi Jonathan Kaplan

According to Deuteronomy 1:3, the first address of Moses in Deuteronomy was given to Israel on the first day of the eleventh month (Shevat) of the fortieth year after their departure from Egypt. Throughout the narrative of Deuteronomy, the phrase "this day" (hayyom hazzeh) is used repeatedly (4:8; 15:5; 19:9). The covenant is being renewed and a new generation is taking upon themselves the responsibility of Torah, the responsibility of covenant fidelity, "this day."  We see this theme clearly expressed at the beginning of next week's parasha:

You stand today, all of you, before the LORD your God - your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer - to enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, which the LORD your God is concluding with you today . . .

            Deuteronomy 29:9-11

This passage, like all of Moses' speeches in Deuteronomy, expresses the immediacy of the covenant for this new second generation after the Exodus.

We see this sense of immediacy not only in Deuteronomy but also in the first commands given to the Israelites in Exodus 12 where they are given the commands concerning Passover. There they are told to eat the Passover sacrifice.

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feat, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly; it is a passover offering to the LORD.

Exodus 12:11

The command of God is to be preformed with a sense of diligent urgency. Like the generation before and the generations to come, this second generation after the Exodus is to stand in a state of readiness, always prepared to perform faithfully the commandments of the LORD our God.

But why such immediacy, and why eat in such a state of readiness? The answer is found in the second half of our verse which instructs us to "perform them with all of your heart and soul." This phrase leads us back to earlier in the book where we are instructed to "love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, and soul" (Deuteronomy 6:5). Being ever vigilant in performing God's commandments expresses our love for the one who brought us out from Egypt.

Early rabbinic tradition reminds us of the extent to which Jewish people have sought to express their love of God through the keeping of the commandments, even to the point of death. Mekhilta deRabbi Yishma'el, Masekhet Shirta records the following statements of Rabbi Akiva, a martyr of the early second century C.E., on this topic:

Rabbi Akiva says, "I shall speak of the prophecies and the praises of the one by whose word the world came into being, before all the nations of the world. For all the nations of the world ask Israel, saying, ‘What is your beloved more than another beloved that you so adjure us" (Song of Songs 5:9), that you are so ready to die for him, and so ready to let yourselves be killed for him?' For it is said, ‘Therefore do maidens love you - al ken alamot ahevukha' (Song of Songs 1:3), meaning they [i.e. Israel] love you unto death (ahevukha ad mavet)

Rabbi Akiva understood that love of God was to govern all of our other actions, particularly the Jewish people's keeping of the mitzvot.

Messiah Yeshua understood this dynamic well when he told the scribe that love of God is the greatest commandment, the commandment which should govern how we perform all other commandments (Matthew 22:38). Yeshua himself embodied this commitment to performing the commandments in a state of readiness and immediacy as an expression of his love and devotion to God. When faced with the same temptations Israel faced in the wilderness, he responded "one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4; quoting Deuteronomy 8:3). Yeshua truly lived by every word that comes from God as an expression of his own love and devotion to God, even unto death. 

Joshua Brumbach

This week's Torah portion, Parashat Ki Tavo', begins with the words, "When you have come to the land the LORD your God is giving you . . ." But what follows is an entire parasha emphasizing the observance of the mitzvot (God's commandments). Why would God emphasize the observance of the Torah first before bringing Israel into the Promised Land. Would it not make more sense to first bring them into the Land, and then give them the Torah?

We are currently in the month of Elul - a time of preparation leading up to Rosh Hashana and the following High Holidays.  The reason we have the month of Elul is because God is concerned about order and protocol. The entire Torah is about the proper order and protocol of living out our lives in God's presence. As such, we cannot just come marching into the High Holidays and expect to just shout out, "Here I am!" We have an opportunity for a mo'ed, a divine set apart time when God chooses to meet with us. Such an opportunity requires preparation on our part. 

One of the several themes of Rosh Hashana is the coronation of God as King. If we were to be summoned before an earthly king or queen, wouldn't we want to prepare ourselves and make sure we were at our best? Then how much more so should we be in preparation to meet with the King of the Universe! We have been given an opportunity to meet with God. The month of Elul is our preparation period to ensure that when we stand before God on Rosh Hashana, that we are coming at our best, and have prepared ourselves to be in the presence of God. We must get ourselves right, so we can stand upright before God.

This is the purpose in Parashat Ki Tavo'. The Jewish people were given the Torah before coming into the Promised Land, because coming into the Land meant coming before God. The land of Israel is interconnected with God in the deepest way.  So coming into the land symbolizes coming into God's presence. In this week's portion it states: 

You are to take the first-fruits of all the crops the ground yields, which you will harvest from your land that the LORD your God is giving you; put them in a basket and go to the place where the LORD your God will choose to have his name dwell.

Deuteronomy 26:2