The Torah portion this Shabbat, Ki Tavo, addresses a time when the Israelites prepare to settle in the land of Israel. Moses instructs them to place in a basket the first fruits they will harvest in their new land and to present these fruits, together with a prayer, to the kohain (priest) at the sanctuary.
This prayer offered is one of only two fixed prayers in the Torah (the other being Birkat Kohanim, "May God Bless You and Keep You….," in Numbers 6:24). It is a formula of thanksgiving and reaffirmation. It is familiar to us from the Passover Seder:
"My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there….. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us…. We cried to God…and God heard our plea…. He freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand….. He brought us to this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, Oh God, have given me" (Deuteronomy 26:5-10).
In his essay "The Prayer of the First Fruits," Martin Buber notes the harmony and reciprocity of this prayer:
"God’s ‘bringing’ Israel into the land and the Israelites ‘bringing’ the first fruits are set into a mutual relationship, an act of reciprocity, gratitude and thankfulness that establishes the new beginning of the people of Israel’s relationship with God in their new land" (On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, Schocken Books).
What a beautiful prayer! It is a prayer of thanksgiving, recognizing the bounty of nature and God’s role in endowing the land with beauty and fertility. But it is also a prayer that extols the blessings of history. The formula requires the Israelites to remember their roots and identify themselves historically – connecting themselves to the patriarchs, the generations of slaves, the liberation of the Israelites and now their certain entrance into the land of Israel.
Maybe that’s why the opening phrase, "Arami Oved Avi" is so complex and ambiguous. We’re not sure what it really means. Does the notion of a wandering/fugitive Aramean refer to Abraham? Jacob? Abraham was not a fugitive; he owned land and had great wealth and flocks. And Jacob was not an Aramean. Were our ancestors really fugitives, or are we referring to a spiritual loss?
One commentator wrote: "Perhaps it is better to translate the phrase as follows: As an Aramean wandering in exile, I lost my roots, my identity and sense of community. Now that we have a land, we know who we are and what our responsibility is."
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin notes in his commentary to the Haggadah:
"This identification with the past is placed in the sharpest focus by the individual’s speaking in the plural, traditionally, the way in which the speaker addressing God asserts that he is part of the Jewish community. Expressing himself this way, the Jew becomes a corporate personality; all of Jewish history lives in and through him. Only through this total identification with the Jewish people can we insure the historical continuity of Judaism and Jewry."
Elie Wiesel wrote in his book The Fifth Son, "Your only chance of survival lies within the community; it needs you….. you need it. Jewish history is a permanent challenge to reason and fanaticism, to the executioners and their power. Would you really want to desert such history?"
The recitation of this prayer roots the individual Israelite and Jew with his people and its history. It allows each of us to claim that we are direct descendants: we were slaves in Egypt, but at the same time we, like our ancestors before us, must fulfill and maintain our covenant with God so that, in the words of this Torah portion, "we can walk in God’s ways" and be "His treasured people" (Deuteronomy 26:17-:18).
Rabbi Paul Kerbel is a rabbi of Congregation Etz Chaim, Marietta, Georgia, Vice-President of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association and a member of the Executive Committee of the UJC Rabbinic Cabinet.
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