Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parsha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well.
[00:00:08] For this week we're continuing with Parshas Kisavo. Last week was Kiseze. This week is Kisavo.
[00:00:17] And before we begin, as always, the usual spiel. If you have any questions, comments, would just like to say hello, introduce yourself. My email address is Rabbi Shlomokon kohnil.com I'd love to hear from you. This week's Parsha is Parshas ki Savo. And just to give a quick overview of the weekly Parsha. The Parsha begins with the Mitzvah of Bikurim, the Mitzvah of the first fruits. That when a farmer, after sowing, after planting, working hard on his field, the first fruit that would blossom would be, he would take a red string and tie it around that fruit. And all the first fruits that he would have, he would bring to Jerusalem in a grand procession.
[00:01:06] And the, uh, Torah delineates for us the special Mitzvah of Bikurim. And in fact, the Talmud brings down what a joyous occasion that it was and the many significances behind that. And maybe today we're going to get into it a little bit. In past years, we've discussed it on the podcast.
[00:01:25] The Mitzvah of Bikurim, the mitzvah of the first fruits. The Parsha continues with the mitzvah of the confession of the tithes, that every three years there was a cycle of different tithes that had to be given. And at the conclusion of those three years, a person would have to make sure that everything was done properly. And he would make a special declaration that stated that he had done everything properly and according to the Torah. We discussed in this week's Parasha that Hashem and the Jewish people are inseparable, that the Jewish nation are the chosen people, and nothing can change that, no matter what.
[00:02:03] Additionally, the Parsha also talks about this recommitment that the Jewish people have to. That they're having right now and that they will have again when they enter into the land of Israel. And that this commitment that Moshe Rabbeinu, that Moshe is talking about with the Jewish nation is regarding the blessing and the curses, that when the Jewish nation enters into the land of Israel, Moshe Rabbeinu is telling them now about what will happen in the future, that they will have half the nation by Hargrezim, half the nation by Har Evel and the Kohanim, and The Leviim will be in the middle.
[00:02:44] And what's going to happen is that they're going to have to call out the blessings and the curses, that if the Jewish people do what Hashem wants, they'll be blessed and all the blessings that will come out, and they'll have to say Amen. They'll have to declare the truth of that statement. And additionally, the Jewish nation will have to say Amen. They have to declare the truth and I guess, bind themselves to this commitment that if they don't do what Hashem wants and they don't follow the word of the Torah, then all these curses which are delineated in this week's Parsha, can come upon them.
[00:03:26] And that's this process of the blessing and the curses.
[00:03:30] The Parasha finishes with Moshe Rabbeinu's final charge to the Jewish people that they're about to enter into the land of Israel, which is a new existence than what they had known previously.
[00:03:43] Until now. The Jewish nation sustained themselves miraculously. But now, going into the land of Israel and to Eret Israel, they're going to have to work the land, and they're not going to have the miraculous mana food from heaven. Their clothes in the desert didn't wear out. Now that's going to wear out. They're going to have to live according to the laws of nature. And Moshe gives them a charge to not fall prey to the temptations, but stay true to the covenant.
[00:04:17] So they should be successful in everything that they do.
[00:04:21] Now, the first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the mitzvah, uh, of Bikurim. In the past, I've gotten this podcast out on Thursday nights, and thank God for the last little while, been doing it on Wednesday night to hopefully give you more time to listen to this podcast before Shabbos.
[00:04:40] Even though the Parsha and Torah on the Parsha never goes bad, but it's always nice to have something to say going into Shabbos.
[00:04:49] So I push myself to do it on Wednesday night. And sometimes I think to myself, like, wouldn't it be nice if I could just do it earlier in the week, like Sunday? But the problem with that is that when it comes to the weekly parsha, we live the weekly parsha. That's what I feel. I feel like, you know, what happens in the Parsha is a reflection of what has happened in the past week, at least for me. And I think there are great sages that bring down such a similar idea.
[00:05:16] So for me, I feel like I can't Talk about the parsha, unless some of the week has passed by.
[00:05:24] Because many times what I have to say are the things that I myself experience during the week. And that's what God gives me, the, uh, siyata deshmayeah, the heavenly help to say what I'm going to say, because it's starts with a feeling of where your heart pulls you, you know, and that's from Hashem, where your heart's pulled to and what comes into your mind. Right? And that's based upon the things that happen to you during the week. So this week, you know, I've had different conversations with different people, but one conversation which I had was talking about the news and people's propensity just to, uh, you know, to listen to bad news and to follow the bad news and how the news is always bad. And while we're talking, we discussed how bad news gets the ratings, bad news gets clicks.
[00:06:28] So therefore, all the networks and the news stations, that's what they put on because they want to get the downloads and the clicks and the. And the likes and the subscriptions and so on and so forth.
[00:06:41] But really, it got me thinking a little bit like, why is that? Why is it like that? Is it because us, as humans, we go to the negative? And then I came across this idea from this week's Parsha from Rabbi Gifter, really. And it's based in the Mitzvah of Bikurim, in the commandment of bringing the first fruits.
[00:07:03] So the mitzvah of Bikurim is when a farmer takes his first fruit. I mean, before, once it even just sprouts, he has to put a special ribbon on it. And then once it ripens, he takes it and brings it to Jerusalem with a grand procession. And like I, the sages of Jerusalem, the kohanim, the priests, would come out from Jerusalem to greetings the farmers, when they would bring up this whole procession of bikur, they would play music.
[00:07:36] The animals that they would use, uh, to carry all these fruits would be adorned. It was a great procession. It was a sight to see with a lot of joy and excitement.
[00:07:49] And if you look at the psukim, when it talks about this mitzvah, it says, and you should be glad with all the goodness that Hashem your g D has given you and your household, you and the Levi and the Ger, the convert who is in your midst. Now, a simple understanding of the Mitzvah of Bikurim is this we see throughout the Torah there's such a focus on gratitude.
[00:08:21] Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude that we're so thankful to Hashem, never forgetting that fact. Because it's very easy for us as human beings, especially when we put an effort into things, to think of our successes as our own.
[00:08:38] We very easily forget how Hashem, how G D has granted us the success we achieve.
[00:08:46] And that's why, when it comes to the mitzvah of bikurim, where someone took his heart and soul and he put into this field, and he got up early and stayed up late and did whatever he had to do to get these beautiful fruits from the tree.
[00:09:02] And now he has to take that fruit and dedicate it to Hashem. Uh, he has to bring it to Jerusalem, and he has to, you know, he brings it there, and he gives it as a gift to the kohen. He doesn't even get to eat it himself. He gives it as a gift to the kohen, who is God's representative.
[00:09:19] So it's a pretty powerful moment. After you work so hard on something, you're giving it away.
[00:09:25] You're giving away that first fruit.
[00:09:27] And it's not just that it says.
[00:09:34] It says you have to be glad. You have to have happiness when you do this.
[00:09:39] So the obvious question is that why is there, aside from this commandment of bringing up the bikurim to the Beis Hamigdash, to giving it to the Kohen, why is this? Why is there a commandment to be happy with what you have?
[00:09:56] Isn't that obvious?
[00:09:58] Isn't that something which is, uh, a given?
[00:10:01] Why does the Torah have to give us this commandment to be happy and to appreciate all the good that God has given us?
[00:10:12] And I think the answer to this is also it gives us insight into the human psyche.
[00:10:20] Naturally, we tend to forget all the goodness that Hashem gives us.
[00:10:26] The successes we have, whether it be, you know, material, whatever it is, all the different successes we have, we take it as ourselves. We think of it as our strength gave us the success that we have, right? We planted, we harvested, we did that. Uh, we had a career. We were successful. We did that. We have children. They go in the right way. We did that.
[00:10:50] We think that all the accomplishments, all the things that we accomplish is us, right?
[00:10:57] And it's very easy to forget who it comes from. But it's not just that.
[00:11:01] Us as human beings, we tend to focus on the things we don't have, not the things we do have. And that's why it's brought down.
[00:11:11] If a man has 100, he wants 200.
[00:11:14] Because you need to actively focus on what you have in order to be happy.
[00:11:21] If we look for the things we need for our happiness, the things that we're missing. So we're never going to be happy. And that's where it takes the effort. It's easy for us to look at what we're missing in order to think that we're going to be happy. That's where.
[00:11:36] That's where the natural tendency is to focus on what we don't have, what we still need. But we're never going to be happy if we do that. The only way we're going to be happy is if we have gratitude. We focus on what we have already, what God has granted us in this life, all the goodness and blessing he's given us.
[00:11:57] But it's not just that focusing on what you have.
[00:12:01] We see here in the pasuk that when it talks about being happy, it says, and you shall be glad with all the goodness that Hashem your G D has given you to you and your household, you and the Levi and the Ger, the convert who is in your midst. We see there's a connection here for having a certain sense of satisfaction and being fulfilled and, you know, being happy with what you have and, and sharing your happiness with others, not just holding it to yourself, rather being happy for your household, making sure they're happy. Right? Sharing in happiness with the Levi, um, and the convert who are with you.
[00:12:46] And I think there's a very important lesson here which I saw brought down from a Rabbi Gifter, which I think goes back to our original question, which we said before we ask, why is there this pull to the negativity?
[00:12:58] Why do we see, you know, like the news, it's always negative. But I think the question is, why do we have this? Why do we always going to these negative things? And I think the answer is in this verse that we see that true happiness and satisfaction also comes when we share in the successes of others, when we truly have happiness for another person's success and achievement.
[00:13:25] Now, this is not something which is easy to be done, especially if a person is a, uh, contemporary. They're similar to us and maybe they're, you know, getting ahead of us. We see them passing us. It's even more harder to be happy for them truly.
[00:13:45] But I think there's this idea that when we are.
[00:13:48] That when we share in other success, being happy for others, truly being happy, not just, you know, having lip service, but really sharing in the successes of other people, that also really gives us a higher level of satisfaction in our own lives and our own happiness. And I think that's what the posse is saying here, is that it's not just enough to be happy with what all the goodness that Hashem, uh, has given you, but we see here is that when you share that happiness with other people or for other people, that lends to that sense of fulfillment, to our own sense of fulfillment to be happy. And again, it's something which is not natural for us. It's something that takes work, it's something that takes effort. Because naturally we're jealous of other people. We're not necessarily. We focus on what we don't have, right? Why don't we have that? Why don't we have that success?
[00:14:45] But the Torah is telling us here, when you focus on what you have and you are truly happy for another's achievement, so then you yourself will get that certain sense satisfaction and joy and be fully satisfied with a lot that you have.
[00:15:04] Second idea I want to share with you today takes us to the Tochachah, the admonition that Moshe Rabbeinu, uh, tells to the Jewish people that when they're going to come into the land, there's going to be this covenant where the Jewish people are going to have to answer amen. They're going to affirm their belief to all the blessings that will happen when you follow the Torah. And also they'll have to answer amen, uh, they'll have to affirm the truth that if they don't listen, if they don't follow the words of the Torah, then all these hair raising curses can, God forbid, come upon the Jewish people. And actually, in fact, in our history we see that all these, the description of all the different curses in the Torah have happened to the Jewish nation. It's happened. Now when the Ba Koreh, the Torah reader reads this portion, there's different customs that we have.
[00:15:59] For example, no one has called up for the aliyah for that portion of the Torah that reads the curses. No one is called up. The balkoreh, the person who's a Torah reader, he gets that aliyah, he gets that he makes the blessing on the Torah. He reads through it quickly in a little bit of a lower voice to get through the section of the admonition quicker than usual. Now the Chavatz Chayim brings down, and I've talked about this in previous years, that people would go out of the synagogue for the curses. They, you know, sort of like thinking to themselves, if I don't hear it, it won't affect me. Or he brings down that in some congregations, some communities, they would skip it totally. And he says that's the wrong thing to do because just like a, uh, person is going to go on a journey, and he needs to know the challenges and pitfalls that may occur to avoid them, to protect himself from that.
[00:17:04] And I think there's a, uh, lesson that I want to bring out from this, is that we need to listen, to listen to the warnings. And I think we could all think to ourselves of different people where we try to help them, we try to give them advice, you know, to try to guide them, but they don't listen.
[00:17:28] They don't want to listen for whatever reason.
[00:17:31] But truth be told, we're that person also, each and every one of us, even though we could point it out in another individual, in another person, we're that person also. M and we see in Jewish history, unfortunately, that we ourselves have not heeded the warning of our prophets. The prophets told us clearly that if we wouldn't fix up our act, wouldn't follow the Torah, wouldn't get our act together, we wouldn't do what we're supposed to be doing, the Beis Hamikdash, the temple would be destroyed. We would be kicked out of the land of Israel. We would have to go through all this tragedy which is set out in the Torah and in the prophets, and. And it's very descriptive, exactly what will happen?
[00:18:19] And we didn't listen. We didn't listen. We didn't heed the warnings.
[00:18:24] So it comes out from this that really the blessings are not, you know, even though it has a certain scariness to it, when you're just even reading the text of it, it has a certain scariness, a certain fright to it. And we do read it a little quicker. But truth be told, if you really think about it, the curses can be a blessing.
[00:18:46] Because if we use the curses, the admonition of what happens when we don't do what we're supposed to do. And it's not that, it's God the terrorizer, it's a deal that we've made with God.
[00:19:03] We have a covenant. We have to keep our end of the deal. And I think, just like anyone understands, if a person makes an agreement, a formal agreement, whether it be a business or even a person gets married, it has ramifications to it.
[00:19:19] It's a binding agreement. People, they go into a business agreement, they have to follow through. And if they don't follow through, there's consequences.
[00:19:27] If a person gets married and the spouses don't follow through, with the commitment or with their obligations, there's consequences. The point is, we understand in life that commitments and especially covenants, um, have ramifications.
[00:19:47] And the ramifications have a lot of good to it as well. That if we do, we're supposed to do, there's a lot of blessing because of that commitment, because of that covenant.
[00:19:55] But it's not one sided and therefore it's built into the, to the world. It's built into our agreement, us as a Jewish people, that we accepted the Torah. It comes along, the whole package comes together. There's this tremendous reward and fulfilling life on one end. But at the same time there's this responsibility that we have. It's a very heavy responsibility that if we don't do, we're supposed to do this is what's going to happen. It's a reality. It's not that it's God the terrorizer, that this is how it works. And I think we have that realization to know that it's not God the terrorizer, uh, but rather we use it as a springboard for ourselves to recognize what we need to do to not be that person that we think about who doesn't want to listen, you know, that we're that person sometimes to heed the messages of the Torah, to follow, to do, to incorporate into our lives.
[00:20:48] So then it comes out that the admonition is a blessing because it's going to keep us on the right path, it's going to keep us going in the right way. We're going to use it as a springboard to help ourselves get the highest level possible. I think that's a very powerful lesson we see from this week's Parsha. And in fact, it maybe takes a different look at the admonition, the tochachah that's in this week's Torah portion, because unfortunately it has a bad rap.
[00:21:18] But we have to realize that it's there to help us. It's there to help us be the best we can be. Because if we use it in this positive way, we use it as the springboard. We use it to keep us going in the right direction. So then it comes out. It is a blessing. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomo Kon K O h o h nmail.com have a great day.
