Edited and adapted from Ari’s Grill and Torah on September 8, 2017.
This week’s parsha is Ki Tavo La’Aretz—the nation of Israel coming into the Land of Israel.
When you move into a new house, the first thing you worry about is usually the house itself: the locks, the utilities, the things you need in order to live there. Food is not generally the first thing on your mind.
And yet, when the Torah speaks about entering the Land of Israel, one of the first commandments it gives us is Bikkurim—the bringing of the first fruits to Yerushalayim (Jerusalem).
Why fruit?
There are many commandments in the Torah whose reasons we do not fully understand. But here, I think the question is especially important, because Bikkurim is not simply about bringing fruit. We bring the basket before the Kohen, and then we recite an entire history: our forefathers, the descent into Egypt, the suffering there, the Exodus, and finally our arrival in the Land.
Who is that history lesson for?
The Kohen already knows the story. God certainly knows the story. So clearly, we are not telling it to them.
We are telling it to ourselves.
There is a famous saying: “If you don’t know your past, you have no future.” But this is more than remembering historical facts. We are reminding ourselves how we got here.
The Jewish people have always been a very small nation, while the nations that tried to destroy us were usually very large. We look back at everything we endured and recognize that, somehow, we are still here. And when we bring the fruit of the Land, we say thank You to God. We recognize that what we have is not simply the result of our own strength.
That recognition becomes especially important once we are home.
When you rent a house, you are very careful. You tell the children not to scratch the walls, not to damage the sockets, not to ruin anything, because you know that at the end of the day there is a ba’al habayit—the owner of the house—and you are responsible for how you treat his property.
There is also a certain modesty that comes with renting. If someone asks, “Are you a homeowner?” you say, “No, we’re just renting.” You never quite feel that you are the owner of the home.
The danger of ego begins when you move into your own house.
Suddenly it becomes, “It’s my home. If something gets scratched, we’ll fix it. It’s ours.” You begin to feel like you are the boss.
And that is exactly the danger when we come into the Land of Israel.
Yes, this is our home. We are indigenous to this land.
How do I know that we are indigenous? Our whole culture is bound up with the Land of Israel. You come into the land and one of the first things you do is bring fruit of the land. You cannot bring fruit from overseas. You cannot bring fruit from somewhere else and fulfill Bikkurim with it. The mitzvah is tied specifically to the fruit of the Land of Israel.
That tells us something.
The idea of indigenous does not simply mean that you were born in a place. If you were born in the United States, for example, that does not make you indigenous to America. Indigenous means that your culture, your identity, your laws, your entire way of life are bound to that land.
The Jewish people have commandments that can only be fulfilled in the Land of Israel. Agricultural mitzvot, tithes, leaving the fields alone at certain times, Bikkurim—these are tied to this land.
Our culture, our Torah, our history, our national identity are all bound to the Land of Israel.
That makes us indigenous to this land.
But being indigenous does not mean that everything is a free-for-all. It does not mean, “It’s mine, so I can do whatever I want with it. I can divide it up. I can give it away. I am the ba’al habayit.”
No.
We are the rightful occupants of this land. We are the indigenous people of this land. But we are not the ultimate ba’al habayit.
The Ba’al HaBayit is God.
That is why the Torah makes us stop, bring the first fruits, and recount our history. It is a reminder to ourselves: Do not let living in your own home make you forget Who ultimately owns it.
That whole history lesson that we go through when we bring the fruits is not for anybody else. We are not telling the Kohen, “First there was Avraham, then Yitzhak, then Yaakov, then we went down to Egypt, and God saved us.”
We are talking to ourselves.
Be careful.
There is a full history of how God took care of us. We are the rightful occupants, but that is not the end of the story.
We have responsibility.
That is one of the great messages of Ki Tavo.
When did Israel actually become a nation? It did not happen in Egypt, and it did not even happen in the desert. As we are coming into the Land of Israel, we enter another covenant. The people stand at Har Gerizim and Har Eival, overlooking Shechem, and they hear the blessings and the curses.
The message is clear: You have come home, but your presence here carries conditions.
If you listen to God’s laws and live according to the Torah, there are blessings. If you abandon those responsibilities, there are consequences.
Yes, we are indigenous.
But that does not mean we are guaranteed.
If we do not listen to the Torah, if we do not listen to God’s commandments, if we do not follow the moral code that God defined, then the Torah describes terrible consequences.
So yes, we are indigenous, but we also have responsibility.
We are not guaranteed.
This raises a deeper question. If God chose the Jewish people, why does our acceptance matter? Why doesn’t God simply declare, “You are My nation,” and that is the end of the story?
Because a relationship requires two sides.
Think about marriage. A person can love someone completely, but if that love is not returned, there is no real relationship. If one side loves 100 percent and the other side gives 20 percent, then the relationship is only as strong as that weakest side.
A relationship needs both parties.
The Torah describes Har Sinai in the language of a wedding. We stood with God, as it were, under the chuppah. We become an am, a nation in covenant with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, when we accept that relationship and the responsibilities that come with it.
Being the chosen nation does not mean we are better than everybody else.
It means we have more responsibility.
A husband becomes a husband and a wife becomes a wife not simply because they feel affection for one another, but because they enter into a relationship with obligations to each other. If one side continually betrays those obligations, the relationship becomes empty.
The same principle applies to our relationship with God.
We belong here. This is our land. Every Jew belongs in the Land of Israel. I am not saying that Jews who are not here are bad; I am saying that every Jew belongs here.
But belonging here is not the end of the story.
We are not the nation simply because God picked us. We are the nation because we are meant to fulfill a destiny.
That is why the declaration accompanying Bikkurim is so important. We stand with the fruit in our hands and recount our story to ourselves:
We went through Egypt. We went through the Assyrians. We went through the Romans. We went through the Nazis. We went through endless enemies who wanted to destroy us.
And we are still here.
I do not know the answer to where God was in the Holocaust. I do know that we are here, and those who wanted to destroy us are no longer here.
Why particular tragedies happen, I do not know. And I would be very careful of anyone who claims to know.
Only a prophet can say why a specific tragedy happened.
What I do know is that we have to try to improve ourselves. Everyone has to try to become better people. We have to become nicer to each other and do what we are supposed to be doing.
I am not going to define the reason why something happens, because I do not know.
The point is that we have responsibility.
And the truth is, the blessings described in the Torah are abundant. The Torah speaks of security, prosperity and abundance. But those blessings are tied to the relationship. They depend upon whether we fulfill our responsibilities to God, just as any real relationship depends upon people fulfilling their responsibilities to one another.
There is another beautiful connection here.
Last week’s parsha was Ki Tetze—we go out to war.
This week is Ki Tavo—we come home.
But coming home does not mean that now we simply enjoy the spoils of war.
That is not the way it goes.
We did not fight for spoils. We fought for morality, and we fought to come home.
Once you are home, you have to respect your home.
You have to understand that although I live here, I am not the ba’al habayit. I am not the boss.
The Boss is upstairs.
And if we do not fulfill the conditions of this relationship, the consequences are frightening.
We win the wars in Israel miraculously. We have faced crazy numbers against us. The numbers are insane.
So when we win a war, of course it is a miracle.
Not seeing that it is a miracle is a problem in itself. It means you think that human beings alone are controlling the world.
Of course the soldiers of the IDF are amazing and courageous. We could not do it without them. King David also fought in wars. Believing in God never meant that a person does nothing.
We have a responsibility to make our efforts and to do what we have to do.
But when we win the war, especially when we look at the odds Israel has faced, we also have to look upstairs and say, “Thank You.”
We cannot make believe that we are simply superhuman and that our victories against overwhelming numbers are entirely our own doing.
So Ki Tavo gives us three messages when we come into the Land.
First, we bring the fruit of the Land. This is our fruit, from our land. It expresses the deep and indigenous connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.
Second, we recount our history. We remind ourselves of everything we have survived, and we recognize that God is in charge.
And third, we accept responsibility for our relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu.
Our connection to the Land is not only about rights. It is about responsibility.
If we understand those three things, then perhaps we will not only survive in the Land of Israel, but truly blossom here.
I want to give a blessing to ourselves. I hope that we, as the Jewish people living in the Land of Israel, will be able to really fulfill what we are supposed to be fulfilling as the Jewish people of Israel.
And may we see the rebuilding of the whole Land of Israel, including the Temple in Jerusalem, swiftly in our days.
Shabbat shalom from the beautiful, stunning rolling hills of Judea, Israel. God bless, everyone.