Parasha: Ki Tavo · Aliyah: Fifth (Hod)

וענו הלוים, and the Levites will "answer," etc. Actually, the meaning is that the Levites will commence speaking whereas the people will respond by saying "Amen." Onkelos translates the word וענו by writing ויתיבון, "the Levites will sit down." According to Onkelos these words would be in response to the Torah mentioning in verses 12 and 13 that these tribes would "stand" on the mountains to listen to the curses and blessings respectively. Targum Yonathan ben Uzziel translates the word וענו as ויכרזון, "the Levites will proclaim." I find this difficult, seeing the Torah added that they would speak קול רם, "in a loud voice." Why would the word וענו merely duplicate the meaning of קול רם? Perhaps what Yonathan ben Uzziel meant was that not only the recital but also the proclamation should be in a loud voice.

וענו כל העם ואמרו אמן, and the entire people are to respond by saying "Amen." In this instance the Torah was not satisfied to write ואמר כל העם as it did with respect to all the other ten curses listed here. The Torah wanted to make certain that the Israelites were required to respond (not merely say). Had the Torah not written the word וענו at this point we might have thought that it was the Levites who had to say the words ואמר כל העם, "and the entire people are to say."

ארור מקלה אביו ואמו, "Accursed is anyone who degrades his father or his mother." It is important to examine why Moses selected that only people guilty of non-observance of these eleven out of a total of 613 commandments were deserving to be publicly declared as being accursed? Are there not some more severe violations, such as the violation of commandments dealing with incest which would qualify no less for the treatment we see here accorded to the violators of these eleven commandments? Is it not difficult to consider adultery as less serious than moving a boundary stone, for instance?

Perhaps the Torah here enumerates only sins which are normally committed in secret, or which will not be revealed by their victims. This may be the reason why the Torah speaks of ושם בסתר, "and emplace it in secret" (verse 15 where the sin is idolatry). If that sin would be committed in public the sinner would not merely be accursed but he would be executed and the Israelites themselves would be charged with seeing to it that he does not get away with his sin. The same consideration may apply to someone who degrades his father or mother. The Torah speaks of people who do this in private where the hand of the law cannot reach them. This is why Moses wants to make it plain that they will be accursed by the heavenly tribunal. The same consideration applies to someone who moves boundary stones or fences in a manner which is hard to detect. Not only that, who can prove who has moved the boundary? How are we going to convict the culprit? Similarly, the son-in-law who sleeps with his (consenting) mother-in-law is untouchable by the terrestrial courts so that the Torah has to demonstrate by this means that such people are not immune to the consequences of their actions. The reference to someone who strikes his fellow in secret, i.e. where there are no witnesses, is another such example of offences which cannot be adjudged by a terrestrial court seeing that the evildoer will deny having hit the other fellow, or he may not even be accused of doing so if he acted under cover of darkness or wore a mask, for instance.

The reason the Torah inserted the offence of sleeping with a beast between the sin of sleeping with the wife of his father or the sin of sleeping with his sister, is to suggest that commission of either sin is as unlikely as having sexual intercourse with an animal. All three sins represent the most abominable aberration of which one can become guilty.

ארור אשר לא יקים את דברי התורה הזאת, "Accursed is one who does not uphold the words of this Torah, etc." This verse includes both what is spelled out, i.e. the person who fails to observe the commandments mentioned in this paragraph and to thereby undermine the character-building effects of Torah observance, as well as all the other commandments not listed in this paragraph. Our sages in Sotah 37 concentrate on the wording here, i.e. אשר לא יקים…לעשות. Why was it not sufficient for the Torah merely to write לעשות, "to do?" They say that if the Torah had only written the words לא יקים or לעשות, no Israelite would have been able to face G'd. After all, if one does not own a field, for instance, how can one fulfil all the commandments that a farmer has to fulfil? Or, if a person did not own a slave, how could he be expected to treat the slave in accordance with the duties that the Torah imposes on the owner of such a slave? This is why the Torah adds the words לעשות in addition to writing the word להקים, "to uphold," to tell us that unless one has the opportunity to uphold, i.e. to fulfil the commandments of the Torah, one is not subject to the curse pronounced by the Torah through the Levites in this paragraph. It is our duty to make up our minds that we will carry out the commandments when the opportunity arises to do so.

והיה אם שמוע, "It shall be if you surely hearken, etc." We must try and understand exactly what this verse promises. If it is that Gd will make the Jewish people superior to all other nations, the Torah should have written יתנך ה׳ עליון, "G'd will give you to be supreme, etc." instead of writing words such as ונתנך which sound as if they are a continuation of the conditional "if you surely hearken, etc." Perhaps the message of the verse is: "hearken to the voice of the Lord." The meter of the verse would be "if you begin to hearken,-אם שמוע, -then you will indeed listen to the voice of the Lord," תשמע בקול השם. The verse then continues by assuring us that as a further result of listening to the voice of G'd we will not transgress the negative commandments and will carry out the positive commandments, i.e. לשמר לעשות. The reason we will be able to do this is because the Torah saves us from sin, as alluded to in the word שמר. Moreover, the power of Torah study is so great that it will even bring the performance of the positive commandments in its wake, i.e. לעשות. Not only this, but the power of Torah study for the right reason is so great that G'd will make our nation the one that is supreme on earth.

In addition to the meter of the verse we have just explained, the Torah also wishes to let us know that the level of our Torah study must correspond to the realisation that it emanates in a sacred domain. The word תשמע implies that our listening must take into account who it is we are listening to, i.e. ה׳ אלוקיך. When one listens to what G'd says one does not listen in the same off-handed manner as when one listens to one's peers, but one tries to absorb every nuance of the words G'd says to us in the Torah. Moreover, the words לשמר ולעשות, are a promise parallel to what we have been taught in Avot 4,5 that if the reason that one studies Torah is in order to be able to observe its precepts one is rewarded by the opportunity to study, to teach, to avoid transgressing negative commandments, and to fulfil positive commandments. Our whole verse speaks of this kind of Torah study.

ונתנך ה׳ עליון "then G'd will make you supreme, etc." G'd apportioned the amounts of the goodness He bestows on earth to be commensurate with the מצוה-performance of the community or individual in question. There are 3 levels of such performance our verse speaks about. The words שמוע תשמע refer to Torah study. 2) The word לשמר refers to the avoidance of violating negative commandments. 3) לעשות refers to the performance of positive commandments. Correspondingly, the Torah describes three levels of blessings. 1) Torah study as an independent discipline will be rewarded by the promise contained in this verse i.e. "G'd will make you supreme," you will be on a higher level than all the nations who do not possess Torah.

ובאו עליך כל הברכות, "and all these blessings will come upon you." This is an additional promise to that announced in verse one. The Torah adds further: והשיגוך "and they will overtake you." This may be understood in line with Yalkut Reuveni Parshat Vayikra that seeing that G'd is the source of mercy, if someone appeals to that attribute of G'd He is liable to grant his requests to pour out all His goodness to such a person. However, once this outpouring of G'd's goodness is about to reach the person who had requested G'd's mercy, etc., the Celestial Tribunal will assemble and examine if such a person is entitled to all these blessings. If they find that such a person is not really entitled to all these blessings they will withhold it from him. Our verse bears the message that in the case of Israel, if we have lived up to the demands made upon us by the Torah these blessings will actually overtake us, i.e. they will not be prevented from reaching us once they are on the way by a terrestrial court. [I presume that the author means that just as decisions made by the terrestrial tribunal are only reflections of decisions which have already been arrived at in the Celestial Court, so that, if the celestial court had decided that the potential recipient of all these blessings does not deserve them, the terrestrial court will deny them to the recipient in accordance with what has already been decided in the celestial court (not the attribute of Mercy). Ed.]

You will note that all the blessings mentioned here are a reward for Torah study in the following manner: ברוך אתה בעיר, "You are blessed in the city;" we learned in Avodah Zarah 19 that this blessing appears in all three parts of the Bible, i.e. in the Torah, in the Books of the Prophets, and in the Holy Scriptures. People who busy themselves with Torah study find that their worldly pursuits are crowned with success. [The Gaon of Vilna corrects this statement in the Talmud, substituting the word דרכיו, "his paths" for the word נכסיו, "his material possessions." I am mentioning this to forestall obvious questions. Ed.]

ברוך פרי בטנך, "the fruit of your womb will be blessed." We find that Oved Edom Hagitti who hosted the Holy Ark in David's time when everybody else was afraid of hosting it was so blessed as detailed in Chronicles and Berachot 63 that his wife and his eight daughters -in-law gave birth to sixtuplets (or 6 births at intervals of 2 weeks each.)

ברוך אתה בבאך "You shall be blessed when you come in and you will be blessed when you go out." This means that you will depart from this life without sin. All of this you will accomplish thanks to the merit of Torah study which will protect you against sin (compare Baba Metzia 107).

יתן ה׳ את איביך הקמים עליך נדפים, "G'd will cause your enemies who rise up against you to be struck down, etc." We may understand this in light of Chronicles II 20,22 "As they began their joyous shouts and hymns, the Lord set ambushes for the men of Amnon and Moav and the mountain of Seir who had been marching against Yehudah." Our sages in Shemot Rabbah claim that the word used for joyous shouts, i.e. רנה, is a hyperbole for Torah.

יצו ה׳ אתך את הברכה באסמיך, "G'd will command the blessing for you in your storehouses, etc." Why was this blessing not included with blessings listed earlier? Its place is certainly not after the blessing that G'd will strike down people attacking us! Here the Torah gives us an assurance that the Israelites will not experience what happened to someone who experienced a miracle and whose peers were so upset that this individual was found worthy of G'd performing a miracle for him, i.e. reversed the laws of nature for his sake, so that celestial forces acted as his servant. We are told in Taanit 24 that it happened that Rava was challenged to demonstrate to scoffers who refused to consider G'd's answering prayers for rain in winter (when there was supposed to be rainfall) as an act of providence. He claimed that the same G'd could make it rain in the middle of the summer in response to his prayer. He prayed for rain in summer and so much rain descended that it overflowed the town and ran into the Tigris river not too far away. On the following night Rava's father appeared to him in a dream demanding to know who had had the effrontery to put heaven to such trouble as to make it rain in summer? He told his son to change his bed because he had caused so much anger in heaven. Rava did so and on the following morning he found traces of a knife with which his bed had been slashed. This is why the Torah writes after speaking about G'd frustrating our enemies' designs that we will enjoy blessings even in the hidden storage houses. The evil eye does not exercise any influence on hidden places; this is why the Torah emphasised that this blessing will occur in places which are out of reach of the evil eye. The Torah goes on וברכך בארץ, "and He will bless you in the land, etc." meaning that the nations of the world will not make a united front against you as Jacob had been afraid they would after Shimon and Levi had killed all the males in the city of Shechem (Genesis 34,30).