Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Ki Tavo, in which we hear about the commandment to bring the first fruits of our harvest as a sacrifice to God, the tithes that must go to the priests and to the needy, and the blessings and curses that will be bestowed upon the Israelites according to their adherence of the mitzvot. The beginning of the parasha also contains a verse you may recognize from the Passover seder: 

You shall then recite as follows before your God: “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. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to HaShem, the God of our ancestors, and God heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. HaShem freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents.

Sometimes the word translated here as “fugitive” or in many haggadot as “wandering” is instead translated as “destroyed” or “sought to kill”, inverting the meaning. Was our father an Aramean fleeing hunger, seeking spiritual and material sustanance? Or was our father fleeing from an Aramean who sought to kill him? Rashi reads this as the latter, insisting the Aramean in question is Laban, Jacob’s uncle who tried to deal unethically with Jacob and was bested by Jacob’s wisdom and work ethic. Ibn Ezra, clearly responding to Rashi, says if the Scripture meant Laban the verb would be in a different conjugation, and besides, Laban was not the reason Jacob ended up in Egypt, so that reading doesn’t even make sense. 

However, as we are in the month of Elul, and hopefully beginning our cheshbon hanefesh, the accounting of our souls, taking stock of our sins and goodnesses, evaluating what we will carry into 5785 and what we will leave behin, and beginning our apology tour, I think it is interesting to think about the way this verb can work in both directions. Are we seekers or refugees? Are we seeking nutrients or destruction? Are we fleeing from enemies or ourselves? Often I think it is a mix of all of these things. To someone we may be an inspiration as a survivor, to another, we may be a perpetrator of harm. To yet another we may be pitied as a victim, or disdained as one who is not honest with themselves. We contain multitudes, and the gift of Elul is the opportunity to recognize and reconcile those multitudes into a more balanced version of our best selves. 

This Shabbat and throughout this last stretch of 5784, may we be introspective and emotionally honest with ourselves. Let us look deeply at who we truly are, where we come from and where we’re going. And may 5785 be a year of finding and building. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.