Dvar Torah on Parshat Ki Tavo

Parshat Ki Tavo  contains some very difficult material. As Moshe comes to the conclusion of his book-long final speech to the people of Israel - the entire book of Devarim - he continues to give them mitzvot  which will be particularly relevant כי תבוא אל הארץ - "when you come into the land" - hence the parsha's name - as well as other, more general ones. The bulk of the parsha, however, contains two in a series of blessings and curses, for those who do or do not keep the covenant with God, respectively. (All these blessings and curses are known as תוכחה - reproach or rebuke.) We had a very similar section back at the end of the book of ויקרא - Leviticus - in parshat  בחוקותי - Bechukotai, and there is one here in Ki Tavo which is to be ritually repeated once the Jews get to the land of Israel, at a ceremony on Mount Grizim and Mount Eval, in the Shomron. But the really impressive one, taking up the bulk of our parsha, contains the lengthiest series of blessings and curses in the Torah. The blessings section is relatively short - fourteen lovely verses. They are followed by no less than 54 extremely scary verses, containing, by traditional count, 98 curses. They are really hair-raising, and have particular resonance for a generation for whom the Holocaust is a very recent memory.

These 98 curses are similar to the ones in parshat Bechukotai, at the end of Leviticus, with a few obvious differences. The basic one is size - the earlier version has 49 curses, exactly half the number here. Another difference is this: in Leviticus the curses are in the plural, and are addressed to the nation as a whole. In our parsha they are in the singular, addressed to individual sinners. In addition, some of the curses from back in ויקרא are repeated here, but with some small differences. For instance: back in Leviticus the threat is "your skies will be like iron and your earth like brass", and here in Devarim  it is switched to sky like brass, earth like iron. We will get to this later.

The traditional explanation for the differences is found in the Talmud, Tractate Megilla, page 31b. It posits that the first series of blessings and curses was said by God Himself. The second rendition, in our parsha, was said by Moshe. The basic indicators of this distinction are obvious: the curses in Vayikra are spoken in the first person: "If you don't listen to Me", "If you are not faithful to Me", so it clearly seems to be God talking. The ones here, in Devarim, are in the third person: "if you don't listen to the Lord your God", "God will smite you", etc., making it clear that Moshe is the speaker. The explanation for the extended length of the later rebuke is connected to who the speakers are. Moshe, as he has been for all of the book of Deuteronomy, is nervous about the way the Jewish people will behave in Israel, after he is gone. He is unsure of their commitment to the mitzvot, to the covenant with God, and is afraid they will behave like the immoral, idolatrous Canaanites who will continue to live among them, or like their annoying, complaining, somewhat clueless selves during the forty years in the desert. Therefore, in an attempt to scare them into behaving well, he doubles the amount of curses which will befall them if they sin. The other basic difference, the fact that God addresses the people in the plural, while Moshe speaks to them in the singular, is seen as an attempt by Moshe to ameliorate the punishments they are being threatened with: hopefully only some individuals will suffer these awful consequences, not the nation as a whole. The other change I mentioned earlier, the brass/iron one, is seen as an attempt by Moshe להקל - to go easy on them - as Rashi says, by making changes which, in some way, lessen the sting of some of the curses, as the change from brass to iron and iron to brass makes the bad situation a bit better (this has to do with moisture and rain; I won't go into the details). 

I want to discuss the statement in the Talmud that claims that while God was the author of the first retribution, in Vayikra, the curses in our parsha were said by Moshe himself - משה מפי עצמו אמרן - as the Talmud puts it. Historically, there is some nervousness about this assertion. The notion that Moshe had the right to make changes in the curses - making them longer, with twice as many curses, to impress upon the people how serious this all is, while, at the same time, trying to be to be lenient with them, by directing the curses to individuals, in the singular, rather than the entire nation, as God does, while throwing some other leniences (brass/iron) in there as well, is seen as contradictory to the traditional belief that God gave, dictated, taught, the entire Torah directly to Moshe. This basic belief would  seem to not leave this much room for Moshe to decide to make these changes on his own. Moshe seems to have had a surprising degree of autonomy when he gave us this section of the Torah. In an attempt to play down this autonomy, the Tosafot, in their commentary on the Talmud, say that Moshe made these changes ברוח הקודש- while divinely inspired - which would again make God the real author of the new text. Frankly, this explanation, while retaining the divine authorship of the Torah, does so in a way that subverts the thrust of the Talmud's statement, that it was Moshe, with his specific concerns for the people, who presented the punishments  in this new and different way. The simple meaning of the Talmudic statement clearly seems to give Moshe the freedom to say this material in his way. As divinely inspired as we believe he was, it would be, I think, a mistake to lose this radical idea. 

Those people who feel uncomfortable with the notion that all of the Torah, from start to finish, as we have it, was given at Sinai, and would like to accommodate modern thinking by positing some sort of ongoing writing of the Torah, point to this section as an argument for their position. If, as the Talmud seems to be saying, Moshe decided on his own to present these curses in the way that he felt they needed to be presented, then there is an opening, a chink, in the position that says that "it was all, every word, dictated by God to Moshe".  His freedom to edit, rewrite, change the reproach section (even if he did so prophetically),  may open the door to believing that we can posit other edits, other rewrites, also divinely inspired, without placing ourselves beyond the pale, outside of Orthodox Jewish belief.  After all, if the Talmud is not afraid to say that this section was said by Moshe himself, maybe there is room for some other editors, some other human-driven changes, in the Torah. (There are a few other Rabbinic statements which seem to challenge, or at least shift somewhat, the idea of the absolute divine authorship of the Torah, and the unique role that Moshe played in receiving it, including the last verses of the Torah, which speak of Moshe as dead, but I will not go into those here).

If we accept what the Talmud seems to say at face value, that Moshe had the freedom to write this section of the Torah on his own, then, in addition to being grist for the mill for the authorship question I discussed above, we also have an interesting model for how those who do add to the Torah, create new Torah - the Rabbis, when generating oral law - are meant to do it; how we are meant to engage in the ongoing interpretation and transmission of Torah. There are two basic directions to what Moshe did here. First, he was strict. He added a large number of frightening curses to the already depressing list supplied earlier by God, in order to try to guarantee compliance with the laws of the Torah. This dynamic parallels the classic Rabbinic project of making a fence, or safeguard, around the Torah, in order to be sure we keep it. Adding prohibitions on Shabbat, which safeguard the original Torah prohibitions, or separating us much more from mixing milk and meat than the Torah does, are all there to make sure we stay away from the real, core,  original Torah prohibitions, as Moshe was doing by adding curses. However, Moshe also does something else, in a very different direction. He makes changes in the curses in order להקל   - to go easy on the Jews, as Rashi says. He puts the curses in the singular, rather than the plural. He softens the blow of some of the curses, by changing their content. This is a model for the other job that Rabbis, as the interpreters and creators of Torah, have: they must try to restate the Torah  להקל - in a way that makes things easier for the Jews, makes the Torah more doable, more acceptable, more positive, more of a blessing and less of a curse, when the need arises. Rabbis who only know how to be like Moshe when he added on to the curses, and fail to follow Moshe's lead in making things a bit easier for us when restating the curses, are missing a big part of what Moshe is teaching us.

The act of interpretation and adjustment, which Moshe apparently makes here, in the Torah, in regard to the reproach, is a model for our own ongoing project of interpretation and adjustment.  Just as Moshe added curses when he had to, to impress the people with the toughness of God's demands, and, on the other hand, tries to be more lenient when he can be, we need to to embrace both tendencies in our interpretive project. We must be serious about safeguarding the observance of the covenant and its commandments, and just as serious as making that covenant an easier and more livable one for the people. To simply add more restrictions, in an ongoing effort to prevent the breaking of Torah law, without the balancing dynamic of trying להקל - to make Torah observance easier on the Jews, is a misunderstanding of the Rabbinic role that Moshe is modeling for us here, as he restates, reshapes, and reinterprets God's will.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix