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Parashat Ki Tavo/ פָּרָשַׁת כִּי־תָבוֹא

09/19/2024 02:42:40 PM

Sep19

LL Giordano

✷ to be read on September 21st⎮18 Elul ✷

 
Ki Tavo (“When You Come”) opens with a description of the ceremony of the first fruit offering (bikkurim) and the declaration made upon the completion of tithing. The parsha ends with a detailed description of the blessings that will be enjoyed by the Jewish people when they live fully by God's laws and the gruesome curses ("tochachah") that are the consequence of their violation.

Arguably, the tochachah is a disproportionate and horrible retribution for the very human tendency to stray from the right path: to err. In this way, one might interpret this parsha as evidence of a vengeful, merciless God
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Is this what Ki Tavo teaches? In trying to answer the question, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks invokes a story told in the Talmud. According to the Talmud, God answered all of Moses question but one: why do bad things happen to good people? In other words, bad things happen to people not because we are so horrible as to deserve it, but because....well, we don't know. This is what's known as the problem of theodicy and the Talmud teaches that it has no resolution.

For many, the unintelligibility of human suffering is a source of insurmountable despair: proof of the world's ultimate meaninglessness. Judaism, however, shows how a different path open in this admission of non-knowledge. The lesson of the Talmud is that setting aside the drive for intelligibility frees us to a more essential task: the offering of love - of consolation and care. No, we cannot know, in any ultimate sense, why someone else suffers, but that does not matter. What is at stake in the suffering of another is not epistemological - does not concern the limits and extent of human knowledge. Rather it is ethical. To understand the meaning of someone's pain is - to do what we can to relieve it. 

Visit My Jewish Learning to learn more about this and other parashiyot. 
 
*Originally published in 2023 "LJCC Weekly Announcements August 27⎮10 Elul"
Fri, November 22 2024 21 Cheshvan 5785