Hello everyone and welcome once again to the
Temple Institute Parsha class.
My name is Gedalia Meyer, podcasting from
Maale Adumim in Israel.
Nobody likes to hear bad news.
We all, for obvious reasons, have an almost
irrational longing that things should go well
and right for us.
It is a desire that has probably been with
human beings forever.
It has found a home in the minds of people
in all religions, in all cultures, and in
virtually all nations.
In songs and movies, poems and books, we find
this hope everywhere.
It should be no surprise that we find this
exact sentiment in the Bible.
From the famous line in the Psalms, ‘Only
good and kindness shall pursue me all the
days of my life’, to the dramatic, ‘They
shall beat their swords into plowshares and
their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall
not lift sword unto nation neither shall they
learn war anymore’, this is the essence
of the Biblical dream.
It may not be all that realistic, but it sure
makes life more livable.
Sometimes it seems like this is the only way
to make it through the day.
We just don’t want to hear the bad stuff.
This week’s Parsha is called Ki Tavo.
That little phrase means ‘When you come’
- a direct contrast to last week’s Parsha
which was called Ki Tetze, which means ‘When
you go’.
This Parsha is the transition in Deuteronomy
from the middle section with its ong lists
of commandments to the final phase of the
book - prophetic observations about the spiritual
condition and destiny of the Israelites.
The rest of the book is both optimistic and
disturbing.
It cycles back and forth between the good
and the bad, blessing and curse.
Nowhere is this back-and-forth more noticeable
than in the long section that occupies the
bulk of this Parsha.
This is known in Jewish circles as the ‘Long
Tochacha’, or ‘Long Rebuke’, in contrast
to the relatively shorter ‘Rebuke’ found
towards the end of the book of Leviticus.
Both rebukes have the same structure - a shorter
section that promises blessings if the Torah
is followed, and a massive section of the
reverse.
These sections are read in many synagogues
in a low tone and fairly rapidly, in an attempt
to possibly mitigate their impact.
Whether this is a wise or necessary custom
has long been a debate in rabbinic circles.
The custom remains because of the innate longing
to not hear bad news.
Even when the Bible spells it out in bold
words, people don’t really want to hear
it.
The rebuke in our Parsha begins with classic
Biblical promises of good if they follow the
ways of God.
You will be blessed in the city and the field.
Your children, your fruit, your animals, and
your comings and goings will be blessed.
You shall not fear from enemies and all nations
will realize that God’s name is associated
with you.
God will open up the heavens with rain in
the proper time and bless everything you do.
What more could we ask for?
But then the tone abruptly switches.
For the next 54 verses it is nothing but bad
news.
One verse after another relates the terrible
things that will happen if they veer from
the ways of God.
It starts off just the reverse of the structure
of the blessings.
You will be cursed in the city and the field,
in your children and your fruit, when you
come and when you go.
But after this somewhat general introduction,
it gets into the gory details.
There are all manner of strange diseases,
including fever, paralysis, consumption, Egyptians
boils, tumors, and insanity.
As if this wasn’t enough, the rain will
turn to dust, the crops will wither, the animals
will vanish, and locusts will devour all that
is left in the fields.
Enemies shall come upon you from all sides
with swords and destruction, exile and captivity.
You will be scattered among the nations, from
one end of the earth to the other.
You will be confronted with every imaginable
psychological problem, from panic to depression
to confusion to hopelessness.
You will be reduced in number drastically,
and left in such a decrepit state that you
will be powerless to do anything to rectify
your situation.
You will be so desperate that you will eat
your own children.
The list goes on and on in a seemingly sadistic
series of predictions.
It is so long that it strikes those who really
try to listen to it and understand the message
as a form of spiritual torture.
Just when we think that it is finally coming
to an end, we are confronted with another
round of apparently worse punishments.
What could possibly be worse than a mother
eating her own children?
But right after hearing that unimaginable
fate, another series begins with more plagues,
exiles, and subjugation.
How could things get any worse?
It happens that the final few verses of this
rebuke, which serve as a kind of encore to
the whole series, are a little bit underwhelming.
‘Your life will hang in suspense.
Day and night, you will be so terrified that
you will not believe you are alive.
In the morning you will say, “If only it
were evening”, and in the evening you will
say, “If only it were morning”, from the
fear in your heart that you will experience
and the sights that your eyes will see.’
The very final verse states, ‘God will bring
you back to Egypt in ships in the way that
I said you would never again see, and you
will sell yourselves there to your enemies
as slaves and maids, but no one will buy.’
While by no means does this sound great, it
pales in comparison to eating your own children.
Why would the Torah close off this dramatic
rebuke, filled with the most unimaginable
curses, with this relatively mild outcome.
What is so terrible about trying to sell yourselves
as slaves and not finding any buyers?
Granted, having one’s life hanging in suspense
is not a promising state of being, it is nowhere
near as bad as knowing that everything is
in ruins.
Even that business about wishing it were evening
in the morning and morning in the evening
really doesn’t seem all that bad.
Is it really any worse than the way a lot
of us feel at down times in our lives?
This odd conclusion really needs to be explained.
Could this mean that at the very end things
might get a little better than they were in
the middle when they reached a kind of crescendo?
While this is possible, it doesn’t seem
like it tells the whole story.
Somehow, these final curses have to be a fitting
capstone to all that came before.
Somehow, they have to represent the ultimate
sense of where things have to go when the
going gets bad..
Perhaps what is intended here is a kind of
psychological barrage which in its own way
parallels all that preceded.
What could follow starvation, exile, captivity,
disease, insanity?
What could compare to a mother being so hungry
and desperate that she would eat her own children?
Well, there may be something that meets that
standard, even though it requires a stretch
of the mind
to fathom it.
Perhaps the ultimate curse is not in any way
physical.
As bad as those physical curses were, they
can be dealt with.
These too shall pass.
But a psychological curse, one that strikes
within the very core of the source of hope
in the mind, is simply too much.
To know what is coming, as bad as it may be,
is, in some way, not really worse than not
knowing what is coming.
To realize that one is doomed to hopelessness
is, in a certain sense, a fate worse than
death.
What could compare to being driven to eat
one’s offspring in desperate hunger?
As difficult as it may sound, it could be
to wish that the present circumstances, whatever
they are, be perpetually replaced by something
else.
To wish for morning when it is evening, to
wish for tomorrow because anything is better
than today, is to live in a state of dread
of reality.
If a person has been so driven by circumstances
and experiences to want to be anywhere but
where they are, is about as bad as it gets.
This is hopelessness on steroids - no light
at the end of the tunnel.
There is a very famous painting that perhaps
expresses this sense of dread.
It is called ‘The Scream’, painted by
the Norwegien artist, Edvard Munch in 1893.
The painting is simple.
It shows a person walking on a bridge over
a river with a couple of other people in the
background.
But the person in the foreground is screaming
with round eyes and mouth, and hands enveloping
the face.
The artist described the feeling which inspired
him as ‘I sensed a scream passing through
nature’.
The haunting image evokes powerful emotions
in those who view it.
It is hard to look at this painting and not
feel a sense of dread.
’The Scream’ awakens in a person who has
no hope.
But the Torah does not end on this haunting
note.
There is that final verse about being taken
to Egypt and not being able to be sold as
slaves.
What is this all about?
Perhaps this is genuinely anti-climatic.
Despite all the horror and hopelessness of
the past, we still go on.
We survive.
We may not find our circumstance all that
great, but we are still alive.
We may find ourselves going down roads we
never thought we would travel again, but there
we are.
We may not be wanted, even if we sell ourselves
as slaves, but we persevere.
This is the final message of this long rebuke.
After all is said and done, after the exiles,
the disease, the wars, and the holocausts,
life goes on.
This may sound impossible, but it is true.
Life doesn’t turn into a paradise overnight.
This is not the image the Torah wishes to
present.
That would be a fairy tale, which the Torah
most certainly is not.
Things will get better, but only marginally
at first.
There will still be problems in life and situations
to work through.
But there may be some silver linings on the
clouds if we are willing to look for them.
When things look so down that they couldn’t
get any worse, by a subtle form of miracle,
they start looking up.
Trying unsuccessfully to sell oneself as a
slave is a sign that things may be on the
mend.
The light at the end of the tunnel may come
in unusual forms.
It is no accident that this Parsha is read
close to Rosh Hashana.
It is meant to scare us, and it should.
But it is also meant to let us know that no
matter how bad things get, they do get better.
If this message has to be told in the ironic
manner of that final verse of the rebuke,
then so be it.
When hopelessness rides rampant in the mind,
perhaps the only remedy is not that things
will become wonderful, but that some glimmer
of hope lies in the distance.
To be able to see hope when none is apparent,
is the epitome of a blessing in disguise.
May we all share in some way in this hidden
blessing.
Shabbat Shalom
