Ki
Tavo El HaAretz - When you come to the land and celebrate the first fruits.
Our
newlywed children Mariyah and Moshe moved into their apartment this week and
were busy building plant racks for the balcony and arranging things. Mariyah
sent me a picture after shopping at Machaneh Yehuda of her new refrigerator
stocked with fruits and vegetables and it was so apropos considering the
opening topic of this week’s portion. Moving from America with the luxuries we
get used to including immediate food deliveries through Instacart and setting
up a home in Jerusalem with lots of red tape and bureaucracy, presents its
challenges. But they view it as returning home.
And
today was our granddaughter Orly Adele’s third birthday. She celebrated at home
with her siblings and parents in the Holy Land while her oldest sister Choux
Choux brought home her homework to do, all in her native tongue, Hebrew.
Before
there was the internet and podcasts, before there were CD’s and learning via
zoom, there were Rabbi Beryl Wein’s cassette tapes. And spending an hour or so
with the Rabbi each day going through each of his history series was a part of
my daily study curriculum. Rabbi Abittan would explain that understanding
Jewish history, and where and when each of our great leaders and poskim lived
and the socio economic conditions they lived under is crucial in understanding
Torah and halacha,
Rabbi
Wein points out to what we refer to as exaggerated stories or fairy tales
brought by the great sage Rabba Bar bar Hana in Baba Batra 73B and clarifies
that the Talmud’s fairy tales often reflect the realities of life in a very
prophetic way.
“And
Rabba bar bar Ḥana said: Once we were traveling on a ship and we saw a certain
fish upon which sand had settled, and grass grew on it. We assumed that it was
dry land and went up (onto this island) and baked and cooked on the back of the
fish, but when its back grew hot (because of the fire from the cooking), it
turned over. And were it not for the fact that the ship was close by, we would
have drowned.
Rabbi
Wein tells us to look at this story and ponder how it reflects on the history
of the Jewish people. Often, and throughout time, we think that we are on solid
ground; what we call terra firma, but in reality, we’ve settled on a floating
fish, and when things get hot, the fish turns and we get thrown into the sea.
He
recalled when he was the rabbi in Monsey, New York, they were building a new
study hall and synagogue where certain huge ceiling beams were required. He
found a company in Canada that made these beams and they guaranteed them for 80
years. One of the members of the synagogue asked why he purchased these beams
from Canada when there was a company in Finland which charged a few dollars
more, but would give a guarantee for 300 years.
Rabbi
Wein asked: are we planning for 300 years to have a building in exile? Are we
not considering returning home? Are we thinking about building a building for
the people who will take over our synagogue.
As
he told the story, I remembered the stories he would tell about his
father-in-law in Detroit, and how they built a Synagogue and years later when
the neighborhood changed, they all moved away. They built a new synagogue, in
the new neighborhood, while selling the first synagogue to a black minister and
his flock.
And
then years later, when they were going to move again, and they were selling
their synagogue to the same group a second time and building a third synagogue,
the minister told them he wanted to be on the building committee for the third
synagogue because he figured eventually he would buy that too, once the Jews
moved away.
Rabbi
Wein in his special way pointed out that the pity is that we think that we’re
living on dryland, and that nothing is going to move us. We are sure there is
bedrock below us and we have a stable and perfect foundation, but the reality
is everything in Jewish history, from the Torah to the prophets and all through
the last two millennia tells us that we are really living on that fish, and
once the fish gets hot, we get tossed.
In
his synagogue in Jerusalem, there was a certain men who, for the last 16 years,
was the chazan on the eve of Rosh Hashanah for selichot. And this past year,
this man who is a diabetic, must’ve taken an incorrect dosage of insulin, or
had some reaction and there was some imbalance. Towards the end of the prayer,
he was unable to continue, and almost passed out. The words just didn’t come
out and they sat him down and gave him some orange juice and someone else took
over. And it occurred to the Rabbi that this is us. One small imbalance and we
can’t continue.
All
of life is like this, but too often we blind ourselves from realizing it. We
have people who build fortunes, and they think those fortunes will last forever
and a generation or two later, and sometimes not even that long, the fortunes
disappear.
We
have to remember the words of Rabbi Bar Bar Chana when he admits that if not
for the boat, he and they would’ve all drowned. The only way that we don’t
drown in this world is to stay in the boat. The boat is Torah, the boat is
mitzvot, the boat is morality, the boat is kindness, the boat is Hashem’s boat.
The
boat is everything that the world mocks, and the Creator of the world proves
this to us.
And
as I think of the opening words of the perasha, when you will come to the land
and consider that we have one little piece of dryland in the world, a fraction
of a fraction of the world. If you ask anybody on the planet, they’ll swear to
you that this piece of land we’ve returned too after two thousand years is the
prime example of sitting on the back of a fish waiting to be thrown off.
But
this piece of land is in fact a protected boat, just as the boat is our
synagogue and the boat is our family.
Many
people arrive with a long list on Rosh Hashanah, but stop for a second and ask
yourself, what if you could only have one item on your list? What if you could
only ask for one thing? What would that be?
Perhaps
to be on that boat with our children and grandchildren and settled in the land
that was given to us, whether shopping at machane Yehuda to fill the new fridge
in Jerusalem or celebrating a birthday with a three year old sabra in Tel Aviv.
“Then
you will rejoice in all the good things that the Lord your God has given you
and your family, along with the Levites and the stranger in your midst.” Amen
