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THOUGHTS ON Ki TAVO BY RABBI GIDEON SCHULMAN

Brokenness, and the Burden of Arrival

There’s a strange tension in Parshat Ki Tavo that’s hard to ignore. On the one hand, we open with celebration — vidui ma’asrot, bikkurim, the first fruits brought in joy and gratitude: “ve’samachta be’chol ha’tov.” It’s a moment of fullness. A moment of standing in the Land, fruits in hand, history in your mouth.

But then, not long after, come the tochacha — the curses. The grim and vivid portrayal of exile, confusion, madness. “Vehaya im lo tishma….” And the great sin, the transgression that breaks it all? “Tachat asher lo avadta et Hashem Elokecha besimcha uvetuv levav.” — “Because you did not serve Hashem with joy and a good heart.”

That’s it? That’s the failing that triggers all this collapse?

This isn’t about an external enemy. It’s about something internal — something missing even when mitzvot are fulfilled.

The Vilna Gaon, in Aderet Eliyahu, notes that the bringing of the bikkurim is not just a ceremonial act. It is a mikra bikurim — a verbal testimony that traces the story from Arami oved avi through Egyptian servitude to redemption and arrival. It’s a narrative mitzvah. If the first fruits are the action, then the declaration is the memory, the meaning. Without that — it’s just fruit.

The joy, then, is not generic. It’s covenantal. You’re not just happy that you got good crops. You’re declaring that this bounty is part of a larger, binding story. It’s a joy that knows where it came from.

Rav Soloveitchik might describe this as the difference between natural simcha and covenantal simcha. Not all joy is religious, but religious joy is born from knowing there is a relationship between the individual and Hashem. Joy that comes not from comfort, but from consciousness. In Al HaTeshuva, Rav Soloveitchik writes that the sin of modern man is not rebellion, but indifference – doing mitzvot without passion, speaking to Hashem without feeling spoken to.

And that’s what Ki Tavo warns against. That spiritual deadness is not just a lack of feeling — it’s a breach of faith. A person may fulfil the law externally yet fail to internalize it. That absence of joy, of tuv levav, is not a mood issue, it’s a theological wound.

Rav Kook, in Orot HaTeshuvah, echoes this powerfully. He writes that sin — especially the kind that eats away silently — begins when we sever the joy of living a divine life from the halacha that gives it structure. When mitzvot are done mechanically, they shrivel. The outer shell remains, but the fire dims.

Joy, for Rav Kook, is not the endpoint. It is the medium through which Torah uplifts and human souls rise. A Judaism without joy isn’t just sad — it’s spiritually dangerous. It pushes us into exile long before geography ever changes.

That said, joy isn’t always easy to come by. Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon — especially in his halachic writings on avodat Hashem in modern life — reminds us that halacha acknowledges struggle. Joy is a goal, but not always a starting point. The avodah of a farmer in Ki Tavo, for instance, is seasonal. It takes time, sweat, waiting. It mirrors life.

And then there’s Rav Moshe Feinstein, whose teshuvot often embody a quiet, unwavering integrity. In one responsum (Igrot Moshe, O.C. 4:49), he reflects on the importance of raising children with ahavat Torah — not just yirat shamayim. He saw in America the risk of mitzvah observance becoming stiff and lifeless — and believed the antidote was to love Torah visibly, audibly, joyfully. Children learn Torah’s truth from books — but they learn its beauty from their parents’ faces.

So what does this mean practically?

We read Ki Tavo just weeks before Rosh Hashanah. And while most focus on the dread of the tochacha, maybe the deeper takeaway is not the fear of punishment — but the tragedy of disconnect. That mitzvot can become habits. That Torah can become background noise.

We often focus so much on what to fix in Elul — and we should — but maybe we also need to ask: What do I love? What excites me? Where is my tuv levav in this life of mitzvot?

A Reflection

I think about the phrase “asher natan lecha Hashem Elokecha” — repeated again and again in Ki Tavo. The Land is not earned. It is given. And yet, the expectation is that we respond with fullness — with gratitude that feels alive.

This parsha is, in some sense, the final test before arrival. The Land is in sight. The mission is real. And the Torah is asking: Can you live this covenant with joy — or will it remain external, perfunctory?

Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook would say that redemption begins not with sovereignty, but with awareness of its source. To live in Eretz Yisrael, to be blessed materially, and yet forget the Giver — that is the deeper exile.

So yes, Ki Tavo includes curses. But maybe its most searing critique is not what happens to us when we fail — but what we become. A people of mitzvot without joy. Of Torah without song.

And maybe that’s the work of Elul. Not just repentance — but reattachment. Not just fear of failure — but rediscovery of delight.

 

Shabbat shalom

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