Knowing Your Past for a Better Future – Ki Tavo 5784

One of the stories – probably not apocryphal – that has been passed down in my family involves my dad, Rabbi Stephen Lerner, z”l, who spent a year studying in Jerusalem during rabbinical school in the mid-60s. 

One of his professors, Ze’ev Falk, z”l, had befriended him and invited him to his family’s Passover seder.

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(Ze’ev and his family also took me under their wing when I lived in Jerusalem in the 90s.)

Born in Breslau, Germany, in 1923, he was able to escape the horrors of the Nazis by emigrating to British Mandate Palestine just before the horrors of the Holocaust in 1939, where he became a law professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 

He was a Yekke, the term for a Jew of German origin who was often formal and meticulous in manner. In Ze’ev’s case, that extended to his Jewish observances. Ze’ev knew the tradition backward and forward.

That Seder lasted for hours as everyone discussed the text of the Haggadah.

Suddenly, at 3:30 AM, the timer in his apartment shut off the lights. Since Ze’ev was an observant Jew who did not use electricity on holidays, everyone just sat in the dark. 

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No one knew what to do; everyone sat for a moment. 

And then Ze’ev simply put down his Haggadah and led the rest of the Seder from memory in the dark.

* * *

While I do not recommend this Seder strategy, I am aware of how ingrained the Seder’s texts, songs, and rituals are, as it is the most commonly observed Jewish event of the year among American Jews.

The central text of the Haggadah is the opening verses of this morning’s parashah. In this section, there is a mini-history of the Jewish people’s story from our origins until we arrived in the land of Israel some 3,200 years ago.

אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד אָבִ֔י וַיֵּ֣רֶד מִצְרַ֔יְמָה וַיָּ֥גׇר שָׁ֖ם בִּמְתֵ֣י מְעָ֑ט וַֽיְהִי־שָׁ֕ם לְג֥וֹי גָּד֖וֹל עָצ֥וּם וָרָֽב׃

“My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation.

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“The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us.

“We cried to the ETERNAL, the God of our ancestors, and the ETERNAL heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression.

“GOD freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents, bringing us to this place and giving us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Dt 26: 5-9)

These verses were part of a ceremony. The Torah says that when the Israelites are finally settled in the Land of Israel, they are to take the first fruits from their farms and place them in a basket, bring them to the Temple in Jerusalem, present them to the Kohein—the religious officiants—and then recite this text.

It is a ceremony with a prescribed religious liturgy. This is the only place in the Torah that we find it, and it’s quite unusual.

There are a few questions that come to mind about this ceremony.

First, when is this moment? As we are preparing or should be preparing for the high holy days, I know it’s not Rosh Hashanah!

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First fruits like wheat ripen in the Spring in the land of Israel, and there is already a holiday called Hag Habikkurim—the festival which we also know as Shavuot—the feast, the celebration of Weeks. 

It occurs seven weeks after Pesah, which means this text, this concise history of the Israelite past was not meant for Pesah or the Seder but for Shavuot seven weeks later.

So, our second question is, why did it get moved?

The rabbis loved this text, which contains our origin story—the journey that took our ancient ancestors down from Israel to Egypt, our enslavement, our suffering, and then our redemption, returning us to the land of Israel.

This ritual ceased after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. However, the rabbis did not want to lose this recitation of a significant biblical text entirely, especially after this calamity.

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And they found the perfect place to put it. 

The Torah says that we are always supposed to tell the story of Exodus. And on Passover, the Torah states: remember this event on the anniversary when we left Egypt. (Ex. 13:3-4)

So, they made it the central text of the Seder. 

And it worked – we are still reciting it two thousand years later.

But that brings me to the next question: why did every Israelite recite the same formula? 

This was a powerful statement about the Israelites’ values. Everyone was equal. Rich or poor, everyone gave the same speech.

The rabbis teach that the words, the exact words, were so crucial that there was a prompter—a person whose job was to feed the words to anyone who needed a little help. 

This brings us to the final and maybe most important question about this text: Think about a farmer who has been blessed with a successful crop, or think of us when considering all the blessings in our lives.

What is the feeling that we might have?

What do we feel when we pause at a moment of plenty?

Gratitude.

Thanksgiving. 

But that’s not what the liturgy of the Torah mandates that we express. 

It says: recite our history!

Why?

This central occasion is not only about feeling blessed and grateful, which is implicit in bringing such a valued gift, but it is also about remembering our story.

We are commanded over and over again to remember our past.

We are a people of memory.

Zakhor is a leitvort – a word that repeats throughout our tradition. 

Remember to keep Shabbat. 

Remember being a slave in Egypt. 

Remember the Exodus.

Remember what the Amalkites did to us. 

Remember the destruction of the Temple. 

Remember the Holocaust.

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Yosef Yershalmi, in his seminal book entitled Zakhor, writes “The mandate to remember is unconditional, regardless of the problematic character of memory, and points to the role of memory in the survival of a people in global diaspora. (p.xxxiv)

Memory in Judaism is not a metaphor, but an actual “social experience sustained and transmitted by conscious collective efforts.”

That’s Pesah. 

That’s what this original ritual was.

And memory, knowing our history, roots us in time, explaining how we got here and helps us chart a course into the future.

Our origin narrative describes a lowly people, slaves, so we learn how we should treat those who are lowly: the stranger and the poor. 

It informs how we are to treat immigrants.

So, we still all recite these exact words—maybe on Pesah and not Shavuot—but we know telling this story teaches us how to act today.