Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back. For this week's episode of the Practical Parasha Podcast, this is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well.
[00:00:09] So we're past 100.
[00:00:11] This week is episode 101.
[00:00:15] And for this week's Parsha, it's Parshas Ki Savo.
[00:00:20] And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, or just would like to reach out, say hello, introduce yourself. My email address, as always, is Rabbi shlomokon.k o h nmail.com this week's Parsha is Parshas Kisavo. Now, just to give a quick overview of the Parsha. The Parsha starts off with the Mitzvah of Bikurim, with the Mitzvah of the first fruits.
[00:00:51] A farmer, when he sees the first fruit of his tree blossoming, takes a red string, ties it around that fruit, and when it becomes fully ripe, he takes those first fruits of all his crop and he brings it to Yushalayim, to Jerusalem.
[00:01:13] And the Parsha goes into great detail. The Mitzvah Bikurim has many aspects to it. Obviously it was brought to Yerushalayim, but to be pomp and grandeur, um. And there's many lessons that the Torah teaches us with the Mitzvah of Bikurim. The Parsha also teaches us the Mitzvah of the confession of the tithes, that every three years the cycle of the tithes would complete, meaning that there was a three year cycle with different tithes in each year. And on the third year a person would have to say this special proclamation that everything he did it in the proper way, and he didn't make any mistake, and he did what he was supposed to do. The Parasha continues with the Torah declaring that the Jewish people and G D are inseparable.
[00:02:08] Nothing can get in between them. The Parsha then turns to the new commitment that when the Jewish people will enter the land of Israel, they will have to go through this process of the blessings and the curses which will take place on the mountain of Hargreizim and Har Avel, that these two mountains, six of the tribes would be on one mountain, six on the tribes that would be on the other mountain, and, and the Kohanim, the Leviim and the elders would be in the middle, and they would list off the blessings and the curses that if we do what we're supposed to be doing, we'll receive all the blessings. And if, God forbid, we don't, the Torah enumerates for us the curses that can come upon us. God forbid. And this week's Parsha, Moshe Rabbeinu sort of preempts that he talks about this commitment that they're going to have to recommit again when they come into the land of Israel and. And this process they're gonna go through. And he says, the blessings and the curses that we will receive, hopefully when we do what we're supposed to do, and God forbid, if we don't do what we're supposed to do, the curses that can come upon the Jewish people, God forbid. The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the Mitzvah of Bikurim.
[00:03:28] So, as I mentioned before, this first fruit would be taken to Shalayim and. And there'd be a grand celebration. The kohanim, the Leviim, all the elders of Yerushalayim would come out to greet these, um, people that were bringing the bikurim. And the people who were bringing the bikurim would bring them in beautiful baskets and they would play music, and they would adorn the animals that are carrying the wagons of these first fruits. It was a great celebration.
[00:03:56] Now, part of the Mitzvah of Bikurim is saying the special declaration that the Torah commands us to do, as well as placing it before the altar, and then it would be given to the kohen as a gift. Now, it's interesting if you look into this special, uh, declaration, and actually the Talmud relates to us, this is part of. This is a. An essential component, the saying, the declaration and the placing it. It's a very interesting statement. It says as follows.
[00:04:42] Uh, vayevayinu elamokamaze vaitin lanu EZ aratz eretz vata hinema ashe ashem. Uh, vihi nakto lufna visa maktabakalatov asha nosan Lahore.
[00:05:10] Then you shall call out and say before Hashem your God, an aramean, which is referring to love. On Laban tried to destroy my forefather. He descended into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number. And there he became a nation great, strong and numerous. The Egyptians mistreated us and afflicted us and placed hard work upon us. Then we cried out to Hashem, the God of our forefathers. And, uh, Hashem heard our voice and saw our affliction, our travail and our oppression. Hashem took us out of Egypt with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, and with great awesomeness and with signs and with wonders, he brought us to this place. He gave us this land, a land flowing with Milk and honey. And now behold, I have brought the first fruit of the ground that you have given me, O Hashem. And you shall lay it before Hashem, your God, and you shall prostrate yourself before Hashem, your God. You shall be glad with all the goodness Hashem, your g D has given you and your household, you and Levite and the proselyte who is in your midst.
[00:06:07] So it's interesting. This statement is sort of like a brief overview of Jewish history. Starts with Lavan, goes to mitsrayim with Hashem, taking us out of mitzrayim, till finally we're now bringing the first fruits to yerushalayim, to Jerusalem, to give thanks to Hashem for everything he's given us. Now, in previous years, I've discussed about the importance of the mitzvah of bikurim, what it signifies to us, this idea of gratitude, the centrality of gratitude in Judaism. But I wanted to focus on two points today in this mitzvah, which I think can, um, give us a little insight regarding being influenced. The posse reads right when he's making this statement, he's going through history saying that we went down to Egypt and what happened? The Egyptians mistreated us and afflicted us.
[00:07:02] Now, it's interesting. It's if you look at the actual breakdown of the word, it says the Egyptians mistreated us. M. But if you translate the word literally, vayeirau, it doesn't mean that they mistreated us. It means they made us bad.
[00:07:27] Right? If we're trying to say they mistreated us, it should say vayeyranu, uh, ay sanu, they did bad to us. Doesn't say that. It says they made us bad.
[00:07:42] And another way of understanding this as well is the word that's used to say they mistreated us.
[00:07:50] This vayera can also be rooted in the word rea vayera. Ah.
[00:07:58] The shoresh of that word also is tied to the words reya, which is a friend, which could be read as they befriended us. So you have two interesting understandings of the word. We know how it seems to be translated loosely in the Chumash is that they mistreated us and we cried out. But if you look at the actual word itself, according to the grammar, it makes more sense to be read they made us bad or they befriended us.
[00:08:30] So what am I trying to get at over here? What's the lesson that we can learn that from? We know every word in the Torah is exact. There is nothing extra. The tenses are Exact everything is there for a lesson for us to learn from.
[00:08:46] So what is the purpose? Why is the Torah teaching us? You know, what's the commandment to say this whole parsha of the bikurim and to use the usage of the word vayeira when it would seem to make more sense to say that they made us bad, they mistreated us. What does it mean, they made us bad?
[00:09:09] And also similarly, it seems like it's tied to this word of friendship, right? They befriended us.
[00:09:18] So I think there's two ideas we can take out of this which are very, um, practical for ourselves.
[00:09:27] I saw that Rabbi Twersky brings down on his commentary on Chumash that this usage of the word vayeirau with the two understandings, the two translations that you literally can translate it to, that they made us bad and they befriended us, can sort of tie in together to show us a very important lesson.
[00:09:48] The Alt Sheikh brings down that the Jewish people, because of their experience in Egypt at the hands of the Egyptians, caused them to become insensitive to one another.
[00:10:02] Meaning, because the Egyptians themselves were very coarse people, they were not good people.
[00:10:07] It affected the Jews.
[00:10:11] It sort of went into them as well. They got influenced by the Mitzrim.
[00:10:17] And the word here, vayira, is connoting to us that the Egyptians, through their cruelty, that the way they treated the Jewish people, right, caused the Jewish people to become cruel as well, in a sense. And also the vayyrau, the friendship, by associating with the Egyptians, with the Mitzrim, it made us lower, um, people. We became more degenerate because of the association with the mitzrim, with the Egyptians.
[00:10:53] So when the person is coming to make this declaration for the bikurim, and he's going through Jewish history till he got to this point, thanking God for everything he has and, you know, remembering everything he went through as a nation, as a right, uh, how what we've gone through as a nation to get to this point.
[00:11:14] He was also remembering the fact that the Egyptians, right, they had an influence on us and we came out of that. But I think the lesson that we take out of this from the parsha, the wording, is that you need to choose your friends wisely and that surroundings influence us. You can't say that, you know, I'm going to go into the sewer and I'll come out and I won't smell like a sewer afterwards. Even if you say it all day long, it doesn't make a difference. It's going to have an effect on you. This is the reality.
[00:11:48] And people by nature are chameleons. That's how we are. We try to blend in to the society around us, to the people we're with.
[00:12:00] And naturally, the people we're around have an effect on us.
[00:12:06] It's so much so that the Rambam Maimonides rules that if a person finds himself, uh, in a bad company, in a bad surrounding, in the area where the people are not good, he should get up and move to another place. And if there's no place where there are people, that everywhere people are going to have a bad influence on him, he should get up and move, live in a desert, live by himself. It's better to live in the wilderness than to be influenced by the surroundings, the negative surroundings that are all around us. And I think, obviously, uh, we live in a culture today, in a world today where we're getting bombarded with negativity. We're getting bombarded with things that are immoral. We're getting. It's all over the place. It's very hard to escape it. And I think it's something, number one is we have to be aware of what's going on. I think sometimes people in society don't even realize that these things affect us. The things we watch make us insensitive. They make us change us as people.
[00:13:13] They desensitize us from keeping our emotions in the right places. The things we hear, the things we listen, the things we see.
[00:13:22] So I think it's remembering this fact that we should be careful in this area to not to consciously focus on trying to prevent the surroundings from influencing us. And what that means is being selective of what we listen, to what we watch, what we see. And on a step higher than that is in our own house, we have the power to set the tone. And, uh, what do we allow in our own house?
[00:13:47] Right. So maybe outside of the world, it's a crazy world, but we don't have to allow it into the four walls of our house. You know, we could choose what we allow in or not. And I think this is a very powerful idea from this week's Parasha. Uh, obviously, friends are important and who you influence yourselves with, but I think sometimes you don't always have the choice of who we're around. But if we know this idea that we will get influence and we keep it in our mind, it helps us prevent that. And I think keeping our own mind clean and our own, um, you know, our own house. And aside from the four walls of our physical house. But the house that our Neshama dwells in in our body, to keeping out the things that don't belong there. And God willing, that will help us go from strength to strength.
[00:14:32] Now, another point which I want to bring out from this Parsha of Bikurim is that after this person met, makes this declaration, uh, he places it down before the altar, and the Torah says, uh, you shall be glad with all the goodness that Hashem, your g D has given you and your household, you and the Levite and the proselyte who is in your midst. This is a commandment from the Torah to to be happy with this mitzvah. You just did this mitzvah, you have to rejoice with it. So the question really is, is that if someone just brought his first fruits to Jerusalem, which was with this whole ceremony and music, and, you know, it's after a whole crop, a successful crop, you bring, you know, you bring these, uh, fruits to Jerusalem, and it's. You're naturally happy.
[00:15:28] Why is there a commandment in the Torah to be happy at this moment, right? To rejoice with what you have?
[00:15:35] And the answer to this is that human beings naturally don't look at the things we have to be happy.
[00:15:46] We think that in order to achieve happiness, to get to that state of tranquility, we have to get something that we don't have, that only if we get what we don't have currently, so then we'll be happy.
[00:16:02] Torah is telling us here that in order to have happiness, you look at the things that you have. That's why the Torah gives us a commandment here to be happy at this moment, because it's the nature of a person to focus on what he's missing as opposed to what he has. But the key to happiness is focusing on the things we have already. And that's why there's the commandment here to be happy with all you have, all the things we have already. And we know in um Perkei, it tells us, ezu asher, who is someone who is a rich person, who is someone who is wealthy. It's Hasameach bechelco, someone who is satisfied with his lot, who's happy with his lot. That's someone who is wealthy because he's not focusing on what he's missing. He's focusing on what he has. And when he focuses on what he has, he realizes all the blessings that Hashem has given him in his life or her in his life, and therefore feels an overwhelming sense of gratitude to Hashem for all the kindness that he has provided to him. And I think this is something just to, uh. It's good to remember this point sometimes when we're. Maybe we're not feeling it, ah, we're thinking that we're trying to get somewhere else to focus on the good. That you have to consciously think about all the blessings in our lives because we have so many. You know, sure, we have challenges, but the blessings outweigh all the challenges we have. So just take a moment to think about the good, and it will help put some more positivity into your day.
[00:17:34] The last idea I want to share with you today takes us to the blessings and the curses. So Moshe Rabbeinu is telling the new Jewish nation, when they go into the land of Israel, they're going to recommit to the Torah and go through this procession, this ceremony of the blessings and the curses. And he outlines now the blessings, the curses, and this whole ritual that's going to happen.
[00:17:59] And first Moshe Rabbeinu says the blessings. He says that if you're going to do what Hashem tells you to do, you're going to follow the mitzvahs, you're going to learn the Torah, um, things are going to be good for you. And the Torah elaborates the different good things that will happen to the Jewish nation if they do what they're supposed to do. And there's a very interesting verse that it starts off with the blessings.
[00:18:21] It says, elyon al kagaya aretz.
[00:18:35] It says, it shall be that if you hearken to the voice of Hashem, your g D to observe, to perform all of his commandments that I commanded you this day, then Hashem, your g D will make you supreme over all the nations of the earth.
[00:18:50] The psukim. Continue.
[00:18:52] Uh uh.
[00:19:00] All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you hearken to the voice of Hashem, your God. And then the Parasha continues with the specific blessings that will come upon the Jewish nation if they follow the will of Hashem.
[00:19:15] Now the question that's asked is the wording that's used in this verse.
[00:19:22] It says, all the blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you hearken to the voice of Hashem, your g D.
[00:19:31] The word overtake signifies that someone's fleeing, right? That seems like we're running away from the brachos. We're running away from the blessings. And because we're doing what Hashem wants, they're going to overtake us anyways and we're still going to be blessed.
[00:19:49] What's the meaning in this. It doesn't seem to be fitting into the discussion to what the Torah is trying to tell us.
[00:19:57] Why would someone be fleeing away from blessings that it has to overtake us?
[00:20:02] And that's the question that's asked on this verse. You know, there's different understandings of the Hasigucha, and it will overtake you. So one of them that I want to just zoom in on for this year's episode is this idea that sometimes blessings don't seem like blessings.
[00:20:26] Sometimes things in life, things seem like they're falling apart, but really things aren't falling apart at all. They're really coming together.
[00:20:37] And what I'm trying to get at, uh, here is that sometimes moments or situations or outcomes that seem to be bad for us really are good for us.
[00:20:52] And in essence, many times we run away from these things because we think they're bad for us.
[00:20:59] But in reality, these situations that we're fleeing from are really some things that are good for us. You know, there's so many examples, and I'm sure we could think of it in our own life, but historically and just with our little eyes of how far we could see, we can't even see so far of bad things that turned out to be amazing. Think about it. In your own life, were there things in your life which seemed to be not good, but ended up to be the biggest blessing in disguise?
[00:21:31] You know, it's always easier if we're able to see it, but we know that everything Hashem does is for our benefit. But the point is, the posse is telling us here that if we do Hashem's will, that even the things that we don't think are necessarily the blessings that. That we don't think are good for us, they're gonna come to us anyways.
[00:21:48] We're gonna be blessed by it. And I think the lesson that we can take out of this for ourselves is that when things happen to us that seem to be negative don't just, you know, come to a conclusion. This is horrible. This is bad. You know, sure, sometimes we have to try to get ourselves out of a negative situation.
[00:22:07] But, uh, many times, if we're patient and we were able to see things through, we come to a realization that the negative things we experienced were really good for us.
[00:22:22] You know, and it's hard in the moment to internalize this idea when we're going through a challenge.
[00:22:29] But more times than not, the experiences that we go through that were hard for us, that were challenging, they make us into who we are.
[00:22:40] And if we think of the situations in life that started off, quote, unquote, negative and sort of turned into positive, we realized afterwards that it was really good for us. It helps give us, it gives us strength in those moments where things seem to be falling apart, things to be going in the wrong direction, to know that not always do we see blessing outright. So sometimes the blessing has to overtake us, even when we're running away from that.
[00:23:12] So that's 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 kohnmail.com Everyone, have a great day.
