D'var Torah Parsha Ki Tavo 5782

D’var Ki Tavo Devarim (Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8) In Parsha Ki Tavo, Hashem continues through Moshe to instruct the people upon entering the land promised them after their long journey through the desert. They are told to bring their first fruits to Jerusalem where they will make a declaration retelling the story of their people from the days of the wandering Aramean, their journey to Egypt and leaving and wandering for 40 years to arrive in this land of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. It goes on and reminds the people of the laws, the blessings, and the curses, some repetition from earlier declarations.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory, who in my opinion was one of the great scholars of Torah for our times, focused in his analysis of Ki Tavo, on this act of presenting first fruits, our obligation to tell the story of our people in a process called vidui bikkurim. Through this obligation, we become a nation of storytellers.

Rabbi Sacks goes on to make a valid distinction in this point. We are not telling history or “his story” but our own memory, our truth as a people, my story. Indeed, in our telling of the story, we tell it as if we ourselves are the ones leaving Egypt, an integral part of our Pesach observance. It’s our collective memory, the glue that holds us together wherever in the diaspora or in Eretz Israel we might reside. In fact, in Biblical Hebrew, there is no word for history. The word used is zachor meaning memory. Indeed, in this parsha Moshe reminds the people no less than fourteen times not to forget and to pass the memory on to the children.

Now I’m one who converted to Judaism. Converts happened all the way back to those days in Egypt and was personified in the story of Ruth. For us, conversion is a lengthy process and acceptance at the end is marked by an appearance before a rabbinical court (beit din) and entering a ritual bath (mikvah). This conversion is not just religious, but to an ethnicity. The story of our people becomes my story. In every way I am Jewish, with no distinctions because I’m a convert. My story, my memory joins the stories of every other Jew out there.

I love this about my faith journey! My parents were story tellers, and their parents before then as well. I grew up sitting around dinner tables listening to and joining in with stories of my own. My love of writing is no accident. There I can weave stories, either memoir or fiction (to protect the innocent and the guilty.) Our stories as Jews are woven into the cultural memory of our people.

To clarify, recent studies suggest not all our people are a part of the Exodus. But over time a group who were had their memory woven into the cultural memory of us all, and it became a shared memory. So, at the seder table, I tell that story and it’s my own, a legacy of shared memory. For example, not everyone who was living in America in 1776 shared the views of our founding fathers. About 1/3 were royalists, 1/3 patriot, and the other third, no feelings either way. But in our shared memory, we tell the stories of those who chose the patriot journey. ::Chuckling:: Side bar here. I have ancestors who were part of the Continental Army. Is the DAR ready for a trans member?

So yes, we are all as Jews, story tellers, guardians of the memory. We are a nation of storytellers. I’m going to wrap this up with another quote from Rabbi Sacks: “By making the Israelites a nation of storytellers, Moses helped turn them into a people bound by collective responsibility – to one another, to the past and future, and to God. By framing a narrative that successive generations would make their own and teach to their children, Moses turned Jews into a nation of leaders.”

Mutual responsibility requires shared leadership. It is the bond that has held us together through the diaspora, pogroms, the Shoah, and will amidst the growing antisemitism of our own time. May we never ever forget.