Parshah Commentary
This week’s parshah, Ki Tavo, opens with instructions to Israelite yeoman farmers, enjoining them to bring the first portion of their harvest to the Temple as a sacred donation. Upon arrival, the farmers recite a formula that summarizes the Israelite narrative: We were oppressed as slaves in Egypt, but when we cried out, God rescued us with miraculous power and delivered us to this rich land, whose fruits are now brought as tribute.
While this rite has not been performed for two millennia, since the destruction of the Temple, today many extremist religious Zionists see the rebuilding of the Temple—and the revival of rituals like this one—as a tangible political possibility, even though this project callously disregards the site’s holy status in Islam. With a growing segment of the Israeli polity adhering to far-right religious Zionism, what once seemed like a fanciful dream now has the backing of government ministers. Initiatives like the Temple Institute, which used to exude the twee enthusiasm of a re-enactment club, have assumed a malevolent plausibility.
However, even if they were to accomplish their aims, could these ultranationalist Temple restorationists perform the ritual of this week’s parshah with integrity? The farmer’s liturgy, after all, is rooted in respect for the land as the source of wealth and prosperity, thanking God for “bringing us to this place and giving us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” While religious Zionists focus obsessively on the land, advancing a goal of territorial acquisition, this enterprise prioritizes military might and dispossession over the health of the land itself. Indeed, Israel’s production of military technology, a core pillar of the state’s permanent war economy, depletes non-renewable resources, and its use is devastating to the environment. For instance, the toxic metals in Israeli-produced armed drones contaminate water sources and contribute to soil acidification. Of course, religious Zionists’ violent project of territorial expansion is also inimical to Palestinian life and flourishing. This puts it in direct opposition to the second liturgy featured in our parshah—a formula the farmer must recite when tithing produce, which speaks of generosity and care for the marginalized: “I have cleared out the consecrated portion from the house; I have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, just as you commanded me.”
Our parshah has harsh words for those who neglect this care: “Cursed be he who subverts the rights of the stranger.” This ominous line appears in the darker second half of this week’s reading; after the description of agricultural liturgy, we get a torrential litany of punishments that will be the fate of anyone who violates God’s commandments. The curses paint a picture of a debased and defeated people, abandoned by their God and rejected by the land. The land of milk and honey will turn to dust and leave the Israelites impoverished, desperate, and vulnerable to exploitation by the very stranger they were meant to care for. These curses, described in vivid detail and at magisterial length, are meant to awaken the listeners, prosperous and comfortable Israelites who do not expect their fortunes to change. Having lived in exile for countless generations, today’s Jewish people should remember the contingency of territorial control in the Holy Land and heed the warning given to us by our parshah: “Because you would not serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything, you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in lack of all things.”
Avi Garelick is a researcher and organizer based in Washington Heights, New York.
