One’s Curse is Another’s Blessing: Parshat Ki Tavo

BLESSINGS AND OPTIMISM

My association with this week’s parshat ki tavo has to do with the wandering Aramean (arami oved avi) about which I have written in many places. We are told how to behave when we finally come to the promised land (ve-hayah ki tavo el-ha-aretz) at the end of our wanderings. God has “brought us to this place and given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deut 26: 5-10). If we act morally the land is ours. An idyllic start! However, if we misbehave, there is a list of blessings and curses towards the end of the parsha. Last year I made a supreme effort to focus on the blessings that we have (even if the curses far outnumber them in this parasha) and tried to focus on positivity in the face of adversity. My role model for adversity was my life partner, who reeks of positivity—he always looks on the bright side, the cup that is full and not empty. I wrote about his struggle with Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) for almost 10 years, and how we were fairly lucky because it was caught by our doctor friends who were dermatologists and plastic surgeons. I discussed his first treatment of an intravenous drug, called immunotherapy and how well we were treated as part of the cancer family. I thought it would be a six-month journey and that we would celebrate the cure then. Unfortunately, that was not the case and now we are back again to the original medication, hoping against hope that it might work. Mind over matter; blessings over curses; positivity over negativity. That was my new mantra (at least a year ago). Our sages in Pirkei Avot wrote:  איזהו עשיר השמח בחלקו —-The rich man is the one who is content with his lot (M Avot 4:1) . He is now happy again with his lot, now that the diary he kept from October 6^th, 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, has been published, after being translated into Hebrew.

RABBI MICHAEL GRAETZ WITH HIS COPY OF THE YOM KIPPUR WAR DIARY. Picture taken by author with permission

CURSES AND PESSIMISM

However, all of this was before October 7^th 2023. It was easy for me to be optimistic then. His health has deteriorated since then and the health of the country has deteriorated to the point where I no longer recognize it as the country we came to in 1967. Perhaps the lowest level to which our politicians have sunk is the latest talk of bringing in a politician with no army background whatsoever to replace the current Defense Minister. Ironically, his party is called New Hope—tikvah ha-hadasha. To this I say avda tikvatenu–we are slowly losing all hope in the current government’s ability to run the country. The Hebrew newspapers all are writing that if this happens, it will be clear that it is the government against the people of Israel and that the politician is selling his soul to the devil.

In the US they are gearing up for the presidential elections. It is hard to fathom that a former leader is allowed to speak with such abominable rhetoric against his opponent. The US has been experiencing abusive language not only on the fringe but also in the mainstream population. The candidate who wishes to be President sank to a new low by demonizing immigrants by saying they eat pet cats and dogs, which of course, evokes racist tropes. Yet, despite this, there are many Jews who still support him, especially in Israel. We should know better the danger of scapegoating others. Who will be the next group to be targeted by him? Where are the mothers of yesteryears who would tell this candidate to “wash his mouth with soap”? Society is in the midst of demonization, or “othering”. In Israel, we are experiencing the same. The demonizers have cast aside all principles (assuming they have some to begin with) just to stay in power. Their self-definition is hatred of the other.

THE CURSES OF THIS WEEK’S PORTION KI TAVO

When we read this week’s Torah portion, parashat Ki Tavo we have texts which promote hatred and demonization directed at us by none other than our deity!  There are two lists of curses. The short one at the beginning is relatively benign and most of us would agree with the list—these are things we should not do, and if we do commit them, we should be cursed, i.e., punished! Moses charges the people that after they cross the Jordan some of the tribes will stand on Mount Ebal to hear the curses which the Levites will proclaim in a loud voice to all the people of Israel:

Cursed be any party who makes a sculptured or molten image… who insults father or mother… who moves a neighbor’s landmark…who misdirects a blind person who is underway… who subverts the rights of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow…who lies with his father’s wife… who lies with any beast…who lies with his sister…who lies with his mother-in-law… who strikes down a fellow [Israelite] in secret… who accepts a bribe in the case of the murder of an innocent person and whoever will not uphold the terms of this Teaching and observe them. And all the people shall say, Amen (Deuteronomy 27: 11-26).

But the next list is a horrifying one. It begins with a lengthy litany of curses with which God threatens His people if we/they don’t obey Him. Preceding these curses are blessings with which, if the people obey God, they will prosper:

Now, if you obey your God, to observe faithfully all the divine commandments which I enjoin upon you this day, your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings shall come upon you and take effect, if you will but heed the word of your God.

Ironically it states:

Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings. God will put to rout before [your army] the enemies who attack you; they will march out against you by a single road, but flee from you by many roads….The Lord will make you the head, not the tail; you will always be at the top and never at the bottom-if only you obey and faithfully observe the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day, and do not deviate to the right or to the left from any of the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day and turn to the worship of other gods” (Deut 28: 13-14).

But if we do not obey God and faithfully observe all His commandments and laws we will be cursed. We will be like “others” to God and treated with vicious rhetoric and not mercy. The curses that follow are frightful, one worse than the other. They include:

curses on all that is born to you (vs. 18); being utterly wiped out (vs. 20); pestilence (vs. 21); “consumption, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, blight and mildew” (vs.22). “Your carcasses shall become food for all the birds of the sky and all the beasts of the earth, with none to frighten them off” (vs. 26). And to add insult to injury: “The LORD will strike you with the Egyptian inflammation, with hemorrhoids, boil-scars, and itch, from which you shall never recover” (vs. 27).

And this screed continues for 40 more verses. If you have the stomach, feel free to read them yourselves (Deut 28: 18-68). To me re-reading them is like re-living the holocaust. How can we read these curses out loud without thinking of October 7^th. These curses sound like God-hatred of His chosen people. Where is the God that loves His people? How can He can threaten us with these calamities simply for not observing the commandments. Surely this is an example of hyperbolic overkill. One wonders if the scare tactics ever worked, since people have continuously sinned in the past and will do so in the present and are likely to do so in the future. Does God see us as the other, as objects of His hatred, to punish us as He pleases?

THE DANGERS OF ENGAGING IN DEMONIZATION

It is almost as if God has demonized us. We have become his enemy, because we sin; because we reject HIM. We have been independent, since the days of Adam and Eve, and independence allows us to choose, both good and evil. God in demonizing us, is engaging in binary thinking (we are either good or evil). If we do not repent, we are to be punished. It would seem that this is our destiny, to be constantly punished.

THE HOPE OF ELUL

Jacob Wright has recently published a book where he claims that we are “antiquity’s biggest losers”, yet despite that we are responsible for the world’s most influential text, namely the Tanakh. Perhaps right now, our perception of ourselves is at a new low, but this should not be unfamiliar to us. We’ve been there before and occasionally we have risen from the ashes. Here and there we have glimmers of hope: births, marriages, people recovering from illnesses; people caring for each other altruistically without hope of benefiting from these acts of kindness. The balance is up in the air. In the month of Elul, we should hope that all is possible and that we can and should turn the tables on years of demonization and remind ourselves that we are capable of repentance, and are able to change our views and accept the others in our midst. We have to avoid the cursing (even if the exemplar of this is God) and the gratuitous hatred that surrounds us–especially today during the pre-election period. If possible, we should focus on the blessings that we have (even if the curses outnumber them in this parasha) and try inasmuch as we can to act properly, focus on positivity, and censor what comes out of our mouths, so that we need not wash them with soap.