50: Ki Tavo
Welcome to TLDR Torah: a synopsis of the weekly parsha based on Robert Alter’s translation, plus a question to spur your Shabbat dinner (or any!) conversation.
Parsha Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8)
TLDR:
Ki Tavo starts on a high, with a recounting of how to thank God upon entering Canaan and directive to remember the Exodus with the recognizable Passover line: “My father was a wandering Aramean.”
Moses commands the people to set aside a 10th of their crop yield for charity (the derivation for the 10% charity level, with lingering questions of pre or post-tax and relevant deductions), and to set up large, plastered stones inscribed with Deuteronomy (or the full Torah).
Now, for the main event! In epic fashion, the tribes divide up and stand on either side of Moses to hear him issue a mouthful of beautiful blessings and crushing curses.
The blessings are a friendly reminder of what we have to be thankful for… “blessed shall be your issue from the womb… blessings for you upon your barns… Hashem will make you the head, not the tail…”
But it doesn’t take 2,000+ years and a PhD to wield loss aversion as an enforcement tool; the forthcoming curse section is four times the length of the blessing section.
It is graphically disturbing: “The Lord will turn your land’s rain into dust… your carcasses will become food for the birds… a house you will build and you will not dwell in it.”
It starts astonishing but grows sad and paralyzing, an exercise in thinking about all of the things that can go wrong: “And your life will dangle before you, and you will be afraid night and day and will have no faith in your life.”
And yet! Almost to avoid ending on such a dismal note, the parsha concludes with a few lines about how God is indeed with the people now to help them succeed.
Question:
I wonder whether a behavioral economist has ever taken the sections of the blessings and curses, randomized the order, and handed them to unknowing college students, asking them which section left a greater impression (after accounting for religiosity and other confounding factors). It would have made a great chapter for Fast and Slow. Ask yourselves the same question. What motivates you more? The gifts of success or tribulations of failure?
Bonus question: the Passover section consolidates a legendary nation-making story into five lines. Try picking another country (e.g. the U.S.) or people (e.g. your family), and write a five-line bio.
My father was an Aramean about to perish, and he went down to Egypt, and he sojourned there with a few people, and he became there a great and might and multitudinous nation. And the Egyptians did evil to us and abused us and set upon as hard labor. And we cried out to the Lord God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our abuse and our trouble and our oppression. And the Lord brought out from Egypt with a strong hand hand with an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and portents. And He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with mile and honey.”