Don’t F** Up, It’s a Commandment: Ki Tavo
I know I’ve missed a few weeks of Torah blogging, but time off/vacation is always a necessity, any year and especially this year. After extending my vacation, I was then forced to cut it short in order to avoid being caught in—yes, a hurricane, yet another climate crisis.
Which easily brings me to this week’s Torah reading, Ki Tavo: When you come into the land the Lord Your God is giving you...(last week was Ki Teitzei: When you come out, interestingly enough).
As we come to the end of Torah, there are more and repeated warnings of all the curses that will come upon the people Israel for not walking in God’s ways, and all the blessings if we do.
It’s pretty frightening reading of environmental catastrophe and skies of copper when you know that’s what we actually see skies of copper as forests continue burning. There is no doubt in my mind that prophetic voices are recorded in Torah.
The confusing question remains: What does it mean to walk in God’s ways?
How many people do we each know who profess to doing exactly that, yet their value systems are completely opposite to ours?
While on vacation, I read a historical novel (yes, I had time for that!), one of the best I’ve ever read, called The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. It’s about slavery, the intricate and complicated relationships between Black and white, rich and poor, light-skinned and dark-skinned, immigrant, native and native-born. It delves deeply into the complexities of Black slave ownership, into the mind and mentality of the time and of the characters.
It’s beautifully written, fascinating, and as painful as the subject was, I didn’t want it to end.
There’s one character, a white slave owner, who believes God doesn’t care what we do, and even if He does care, you can hide from Him (we have psalms that also ask God not to hide from us, so that’s not so surprising).
Another white character, the sheriff, continually looks to the Bible for answers on how to live his life, and finds perfect justification for slavery within our Holy Book—so disturbing to us now, both the idea of slavery and that this is our holy book.
The anti-abortionist and anti-gay population today easily find what they’re looking for, too. The fact is, if you look, you can easily find something that justifies your opinions.
This isn’t to say that there are no hard truths. And those who have experienced or seen the harm and trauma our holy books have caused may have already decided to walk away.
But then they would have missed out on the parts where we are reminded to take care of each other and the earth, where we get the chance to repair what we’ve done, to set things right—to heal.
They’d also miss out on the commandment to rejoice, which appears again in this week’s parsha, and they might stay in a place of doom and gloom.
During this month of Elul, as we work on ourselves, getting ready for the High Holy Days, trying to be better people and not f** up any more than we already have, let’s not forget to put aside the hard work we’re doing at least once a day—to rejoice in who we are, the gifts we already bring to the world, and what we have.
It’s a commandment.
(Afterthought, as in P.ost S.cript: In deciding whether it was too risky to use the title I really wanted for this blog, I consulted a teacher who has been very important to me. They suggested the asterisks; “As they say, you only have your asterisk.” I decided the risk was worth it.)
