Rabbi Howard Morrison

Parshat Ki Tavo is meaningful to me. When I was a rabbinical student, my mother was honored by the religious Zionist organization, Mizrachi. On the weekend of this week's Parsha, I helped her write a dvar torah.

In my last year of rabbinical school, each senior student had to give a dvar torah on a particular shabbat, designated by the school. My dvar torah coincided with Parshat Ki Tavo. 

This year, we read Ki Tavo on the eve of ushering in the Selichot season. This year, we read Ki Tavo as we near the second anniversary of that fateful day on October 7, 2023.

While very few people outside of Judaism would care about what our Torah says, we Jews need to be reinforced. Our Parsha begins with the words, "When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it." Here is one of many promises made by God to our people in the Torah about God granting the land of Israel to the Jewish people.  Over the millennia, we entered, were kicked out, and entered again. We hope and pray that since 1948 for the whole of Israel and since 1967 for the whole of Jerusalem, we are here to stay forever. Ironically, evangelical Christians understand the absolute of God's promise more than many other religious groups, including certain segments of secular Judaism. 

In the Parsha, we are told that the first Mitzvah upon entering the land would be the celebration of the first fruits, during which time perhaps the very first communal prayer was recited. It is a summary of Jewish history from the dawn of our people's existence to the hardships caused by Pharaoh to a celebration of gratitude to God and the giving of gifts to the needy upon settling in the land.  The prayer begins with the words "Arami Oved Avi," and the paragraph has been recited to this day as part of the Passover Haggadah for the last two thousand years.

What do those opening words mean, "Arami Oved Avi?" From the Biblical Hebrew, it is unclear if the statement refers to one person or two. Thus, one reading is that an Aramean tried to destroy my father. In the Haggadah, this is indeed the interpretation and refers to Laban trying to destroy Jacob - a familiar scenario of an outside element seeking to destroy the Jewish people. The Haggadah posits from this that in every generation, there arise those whose purpose is to eradicate the Jewish people. We are sadly living in such a time again.

However, another reading of the same statement posits that it refers to the one and same person, namely, "My father was a wandering Aramean," referring either to Jacob or Abraham struggling from within what it means to be the progenitur of Judaism and the Jewish people. How many Jews today, regardless of threats coming from the outside, struggle with their Jewishness? Struggle with their commitment to God, Torah, and Israel?

It is noteworthy that we read Ki Tavo on the eve of Selichot and as a precursor to the High Holy Days. The Selichot season demands of us to examine ourselves from within, as a single wandering Jew - what does Judaism mean to me as a person?

It is noteworthy that we read Ki Tavo on this 708^th day harkening back to the onslaught of innocent Jews and the taking of hostages, harkening back to the interpretation of the verse as being about the external enemy, "An Aramean tried to destroy my father."

As we soon transition from one year to the next, I encourage us all to meditate on both meanings of "Arami Oved Avi," and consider what kind of Jew we want to be in the new year, and how will we as a people cope with the adversarial forces around us????

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Howard Morrison