Podcast # 85: Parashat Ki Tavo

The speaker and Elisha discuss the Torah portion, Kitavot, and the significance of the word "ki" (if) in relation to the promised land and the concept of peace. They reflect on the idea that nothing is guaranteed, including peace in the Middle East, and how this realization can lead to creative thinking and a focus on coexistence. They also discuss the importance of behaving according to the Torah's principles and treating others with respect. The speaker pushes back on the idea that peace is not possible, citing existing peace agreements with Arab countries. However, they acknowledge that these agreements may not represent true peace and that it is necessary to work towards and earn peace. Overall, the discussion emphasizes the need to question assumptions and strive for peace through responsible actions and relationships. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. Hello to our listeners. Hello to everyone. It's what day is it? It's Monday. Monday. Monday afternoon. And we're doing this great parasha. Amazing parasha Elisha. It's the 50th parasha out of 54. We're getting to the end of the Torah. It's fairly short. 750 words, reasonably long. A few mitzvot, not a lot. The previous parasha, as we mentioned, had the most mitzvot of any parasha, 74. This one has 3 mitzvot that said positive mitzvot and 3 negative mitzvot, 6 mitzvot. But you're writing your drashah Elisha and this is from your book of drashahs. So I imagine it was written 8 or 9 years ago. Kitavot, our parasha, is a beautiful parasha. It has many difficult parts for those of us who do not like to be scolded or warned. We even read those scoldings very quietly in shul. But nevertheless, it is a parasha that can just about stand alone as a Torah for one's life. Wow. And you explain that sentence in your drashah and we'll talk about it. I want to mention one thing Elisha. I've learned so many things from you in our podcast. One of the things I've learned is that you find meaning in dark corners in the Torah, in hidden corners, in the spaces between words, and in the unimportant, tiny, insignificant words like the prepositions 2 and 4 and 5. And this parasha is vehayah kitavot, el haaretz asher ha'anein, nei le'echa noten lecha, so on. And the word that you emphasize partly in your drashah is ki. And it's brilliant because ki is ambiguous. Because there's an expression in English, if and when. Ki means if you come to the promised land, when you come to the promised land. It's ambiguous. And that raises a lot of questions. Wait a second. If the land is promised to us, our promised land, what do you mean ki? If. What do you mean if? And a great deal of meaning is in that word if and when. If and when you come to the promised land. Right, right. So it's basically suggesting many different things. But we are so sure. I remember, I'll share a little story. I remember in the 80s, mid 80s, or second half of that decade in the 80s, I remember the first Intifada broke out. It was in 87. And it was a very different Intifada than the second one. The buses were not blowing up. It was mostly like throwing rocks. And it continued for quite a while. It led to the Oslo Accords, actually. And I remember realizing then, I was a student at the Heifetz University. I was studying Islam and Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. And suddenly I realized, I think I've shared that already, but I realized that this is not going to be peace in the Middle East. Who says there will definitely be peace in the Middle East? And we were all raised on it's just a matter of time. The Arabs are going to realize we're not going anywhere. They're going to come to terms with us. They're going to make peace with us. Suddenly I studied Islam and realized that that is not a possibility. Islam cannot make peace with a Jewish state anywhere, but all the more so in the land of Israel, in the Middle East, in what they perceive to be part of the Arab hegemony. And I remember realizing that and suddenly questioning, who promised us peace? Who promised us peace? Who said there's necessarily for sure going to be peace? If only we give back territories, we do this, we do that, then there's going to be peace, clearly. And I remember realizing, I remember that day when I realized, not at all, not guaranteed at all. It's a big ish, it's a big key. And I think that if we can remember that indeed no one promised us a rose garden or anything else for that matter, and we take so many promises for granted, so many things, it's clear that one day we're going to get married and have a family. One day we're going to do well financially. It's clear, clearly one day we're going to have our own home. One day there's going to be peace on earth. And what if not? What if we knew that nothing is truly guaranteed? Here we are right now in the middle of a huge, it's a sea change in humanity, around the world. We're in the midst of it. We don't even understand how huge the change that's going on. Everything we took for granted for the past, since World War II, I would say, is now changing dramatically. A whole new world order, and we're in the middle of it all. And we took democracy for granted. We took peace is going to happen at some point, we took that for granted. Human rights, we took for granted. Caring about others, we took for granted. What does it mean if nothing is guaranteed? Everything is one big ish, one big key. Is it scary? Maybe it's liberating. Maybe if we're not so stuck on all kinds of false promises, maybe it will give us some freedom to think outside the box, to recognize that, I remember when I realized that, there was a lot of redemption in that realization. Stop expecting there to be peace. There might not be peace. Now what? Now what do we want to strive for? Coexistence? What's our goal now? If we understand, there probably won't be peace in the Middle East. Certainly not in our time, and maybe even never. Maybe there will never be peace in the Middle East. It kind of frees the creativity. You're in the creative world. I think it can start freeing our creative juices, and start thinking, okay, if there's not peace, then what? What do we want to have happen? Let me respond to that, Alicia, and push back a bit. There will be peace with some Arab countries. We have peace with Egypt. It's pretty cold. We have peace with Jordan. We have a deal on the table with Saudi Arabia to normalize relations. Saudi Arabia is the leading Islamic nation in terms of religion. We won't have peace with Hamas. That's for sure. With the fanatics, we won't have peace, but the peace with Jordan and Egypt has been crucially important. Yes, we will have peace with the same part of the Arab world and a powerful part. Saudi Arabia is dominant and powerful. With the crackpots, we won't have peace, but we'll deal with them. We'll deal with them. Alicia, the Parshat tells us this. So there's a very strange piece of the Parshat, and a lot of words have been spilled over it. The Parshat tells us, Qitobo, when the Qohen comes to offer sacrifices, the Qohen is instructed to say these words, Oved armi avi. A wandering Aramean was my father, my ancestor. What the heck, Alicia? Why? And those three words are crucial because those three words became part of a Christian doctrine that Jews suffered from for many years. The Christians have a concept of the wandering Jew. We as a Jewish people, according to the Christian faith, are supposed to be wanderers, not to have our own country. The reason is that Jesus was scorned by a Jew, even though he, of course, was a Jew and a rabbi. He was scorned by a Jew when persecuted by the Romans, and because of that, we are doomed forever to wander the world as Jews. Now, we have our country. You and I are blessed to be born at a time when Israel was born. Shalona basically is co-existent with the State of Israel. She was born in 1947. So we've grown up with our little country. But the point of a Parshat, and you make this point, is in the word ki, which can also mean if. That is, we are given this 8,000 square miles, 20,000 square kilometers on the Green Line, this little tiny piece of land around here for America or China. We're given it on condition. It's a contingent gift, provided we behave as we are supposed to, according to the Torah. And Elisha, we have not been doing that, I must say. We have been violating the principle that you note in your drashah. Your drashah is about proportionality, about blessing and curse, because there are many curses in Titovot. And the question is, what does that mean, klalah? And you point out that the meaning of the klalah is that we pursue a blessing to an extreme that becomes a curse. And I think we've seen that with some of the fanaticism, which has made pieces of land the ultimate goal rather than the way we treat our neighbors. Some awful things in the West Bank done by the settlers to our neighbors. And the land itself has become the goal rather than the way we live in our land, and the way we treat our land, and the way we act as human beings. Okay, so you said a lot of different things. So I want to go back to the first topic, where you said you're going to push back. So I'll push back too. But I'll say it in the context of the rest of the conversation. There's a reason why nothing is guaranteed, why peace is not guaranteed. And unfortunately, peace in Egypt and Jordan, the fact that right now they're still keeping up this peace agreement, which doesn't have a lot of, it doesn't feel very much like peace. I know there are accords with the Emirates. I think that's, we really do feel it. Even though the areas where tourists go in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, et cetera, and all those places, I've never been there. These places are empty of locals. They're really run by a lot of foreign workers. So I remember going to Egypt many years ago. We were very much exposed to the people in the markets, and that was very difficult for them to stomach. I think Israelis don't go to Egypt anymore. They hardly even go to Sinai anymore, and even Jordan is now a very dangerous place to go to. So, A, I'm wondering, you know, is this truly peace? Yes, we have accords, and they can change any day. But that strengthens what you said, that nothing is guaranteed because it needs to be earned. It needs to be nurtured, nourished, and earned. We're not guaranteed anything. We have to strive towards it. We have to work towards it. We have to be worthy of it. So I think making sure that it's not guaranteed, the land is not guaranteed to stay in our hands because it doesn't belong to us in the first place. It all depends on our behavior and how we're going to treat the land and, as you said, our neighbors, etc. So it's really important that nothing indeed is taken for granted. And if we oscillate between the political and the historical to the metaphysical and the mythical, so on the one hand we have this physical land of Israel which has a history and has political implications. On the other hand, the land of Israel is also an incredible concept. It's a concept. It's an ideal. I mentioned in the parashah the very, very famous saying of Rabbi Nachman, To every place we go, we go to the Land of Israel. And every place I go to, I go to the Land of Israel, which is so beautiful. It is so incredibly beautiful. And the context of it was that he decided one day, on a whim, he decided to go visit the Land of Israel. And his poor wife, he just told her, You take care of the kids. I'm off to the Land of Israel now. He didn't hop in a plane and go on a mission and then hop back. This was a real voyage. The French were at the time having their wars in the Mediterranean Sea. They were fighting over Egypt. In the Land of Israel, they conquered Akko, which was one of the possible ports to land in. And he makes it all the way to what today is Istanbul. Kushta, Constantinople, has a lot of different names. So today it's Istanbul. And from there he was supposed to take, he came from Ukraine, and from there he was supposed to take a ship that would take him to the Land of Israel. So first of all, there was a war going on in the area. So there were not many ships. The only ships that were traveling regularly were military ships. And he had this brilliant idea that you can't go to the Land of Israel. You have to, he said, go to the Land of Israel. It's like, I'll say it in Hebrew. I don't know if there's the same idiom in English. The eye of the needle. In order to get to the Land of Israel, you need to go through the eye of the needle. You need to really, really be worthy of it and prepared spiritually to enter the Land of Israel. In order to do that, in order to go through the eye of the needle, he needs to really work hard on his ego. And he had a huge ego. So he, while living for, I think, three months even, in Istanbul, he started making fun of himself and behaving like a clown, like really, really pathetic. People who knew him from the Ukraine, people who were traveling, who had financial dealings or whatever, they saw him. They also knew he is the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov. He already had a reputation. And there he was in the streets doing really embarrassing, embarrassing things. He felt he needed to peel off his ego in order that he could land in the Land of Israel. And many told him and said, like, are you okay? Is everything okay? Do you need some money? Do you need clothes? Because he would walk around half naked. And he said, no, no, no, no. I'm preparing myself for the eye of the needle to get me to the Land of Israel. Eventually he gets on a ship, him and his aide, and they arrive in Haifa. They arrive in Haifa on Rosh Hashanah, no less. And they celebrate Rosh Hashanah on Haifa. But as he lands in the port of Haifa, he says to his assistant, okay, got it, let's get back on the boat and go back. And his assistant decides himself, what do you mean? We just got here and Rosh Hashanah is starting. Let's at least celebrate Rosh Hashanah. And to cut a very long story short, Rabbi Nachman was here for a few months. He never made it to Jerusalem. It wasn't important to him. He was mostly in Tiberias, in Haifa. Eventually he went to Akko. It was a little bit of a stop. Went to Akko and the war was raging at the time. And he got on an Ottoman warship that took him back to Istanbul, which was also a lot of stories there. And when he came back to Ukraine, he said, I've learned one thing. Everywhere, Israel is not a destination. Everywhere I go, I go to Israel. And everything we do, we never really truly arrive. And what's really beautiful about the story is for him, arriving in the land of Israel was really problematic. He arrived and it's a land like every other land. We think it's beautiful. Not too far from here, we saw Mount Carmel. It was really exciting. But since he wasn't there, he wasn't a Zionist. He was a religious. And for him, it was in a way a big letdown. He actually sank into deep, deep, deep depression when he arrived in Israel. Because, oh, that's it? So we're trying to live at the same time two opposing values. One is the Jews need a political home, a homeland in the world. And it makes sense to have it in the land of Israel because that's our ancestral home. Great, terrific. That's one possibility. The other is that the land of Israel is indeed, it belongs to God. It doesn't belong to us. It doesn't understand politics. Politics just defiles it. And any form of possession is irrelevant to the land of Israel. The land of Israel is an ideal. It's an inner ideal. And we're kind of commanded today. The Zionist movement brought it down to a very practical program which Herzl helped kind of develop. But even though the Zionist movement was a very idealistic movement on many levels, creating a just society, it was very socialistic and just, etc. And we've lost all of that. Now all we have is the land of Israel as a refuge, as a political asylum for the Jewish people. There are no ideals. I'm exaggerating. There are. There are. But it's actually, I don't want to be too political, but historically speaking it was actually the Likud government in 1977. The Likud has always been the liberal party in Israel. And they introduced capitalism to the state of Israel. And why don't we be like America? And if we are like America, then what is this country all about? Why are we just in a refuge? Is this all it is? So it went on and on and on. But I want to hear your thoughts. So Elisha, I had a similar experience to that of Rabbi Nachman. But not physically. Not physically. Physically, my wife and I landed in the port of Haifa on the car ferry Nili in 1967, just a month after the war. And we stayed. And interestingly enough, you were on the boat called the Nili. That's right. Which was really interesting because you ended up eventually settling in Zichon Yaakov, with the Nili underground, exactly as Zichon Yaakov kind of, it was all meant to be. It was meant to be. And we had a wonderful life. But Elisha, the promised land is also a metaphor. So many things in the Torah are metaphors. The promised land is the vision that each of us have, the goal that we're striving for, this distant goal. Like Don Quixote. And I had that distant goal. I'm an academic. And the goal was to become a professor, a full professor. A full professor with an endowed named chair. And it took me a very long time with a lot of failures along the way and mishaps. And that was my dream. And I reached it. I finally reached it. But Elisha was not the promised land. I discovered this is not the promised land. And for so many of us, this goal we have, many of our goals, they're ephemeral. They aren't real. They aren't accurate. And I took early retirement. Realizing that all these words and books that I had written, they weren't doing much good. And I went out into the world to try to do something. To find the real promised land. So this is one of the messages, I think, in Kitavu. Wait, did you find it? I did. I did, indeed. I found it in working with entrepreneurs, which is a... And Elisha, the entrepreneurship, the creativity, we spoke earlier about the Elan Vital of Henry Bergson, this creative life force that we have in spades more than any other country in Israel, for sure. We can prove that. This is what will drive us forward in the future and has driven us in the past. It's not the capitalism. It's not the search for wealth. The promised land of being a billionaire. And the entrepreneurs I work with, many of them become incredibly wealthy. But that's not the goal, and they just go back and do more of it because it isn't about the money. This amazing wellspring of Elan Vital that Bergson talks about, the Jewish people have it, and we have it in spades in Israel. And this will drive us forward in the future and already is, including in the military. There are so many amazing things that the military has. Some of them can't be talked about. When they fire rockets at us, Elisha, they usually don't succeed, even the one the Houthis fired at us. There was a mishap. It was intercepted but not entirely destroyed. We'll figure out what the reason was. This creativity, this Elan Vital that we have, that Bergson talked about, the creative part of evolution, creative evolution. We have that, and this will drive us forward. This is the promised land. Okay, so here we already have a very different... So you're saying this is not a political asylum for the Jewish people. No, it's the place where... Maybe we should explain to those who are not part of our Beit Midrash program. Right now it's the month of Elul, so in our Beit Midrash program, we're exploring four different thinkers. We're talking about will. Hurtful is not one of them, but I'll quote him now. If you will it, it is no dream. We're studying Rav Kook, Henry Bergson, A.D. Gordon, and Eugene Gendlin. All four are Jewish, and they all talk about the creative process called will. So Rav Kook called it will. Bergson called it Elan Vital. Gordon calls it life, and Eugene Gendlin calls it the implicit, that which is implicit and wishes to become. So all four are suggesting that there's a creative life force that is driving creation, driving evolution. So both Rav Kook and Bergson believed in evolution, but they said it's not the survival of the fittest, and it's not the gene mutations. Rather, it's the Elan Vital. It's the life force that drives everything into higher realms and into more complexity, etc., etc., which is a beautiful, beautiful idea. I totally buy into it. I totally love that. So if that's the case, then what you're saying is Elan Vital is a place where, for the Jewish people, the Elan Vital can work at its best. So we're not about a political asylum. We're not. We're about being really closely attentive and mindful of the divine creative force and living force within everything, something we have a really hard time doing elsewhere. It can be done in the land of Israel, because here the Jews are free to explore that site. So in other words, the land of Israel is the land of becoming, the land of the life force which strives upwards, and this could be another definition of the land of Israel. So once again, land of Israel is an ideal. It's not quite an ideal, but it's not a concrete piece of land. It is also a concrete piece of land. But the minute we see it as only a concrete piece of land, we lose the entire Jewish story. Then we're like any other nation, and God doesn't need us like any other nation. He has many other nations. God wants us, as his chosen people, to bring his will, his life force, his Elan Vital, into the world. Exactly, Alisha. Regarding Elan Vital, the life force, the creative evolution, this is proven in history. In history, Alisha, after times of great crisis, during the Great Depression, there were amazing innovations that were created out of desperation. After terrible wars where millions were killed, after World War II, a huge outburst of Elan Vital. And here in Israel as well, after the Yom Kippur, I remember this well, there were 10 really hard years. The economy struggled. We had inflation. But then we had this outburst of innovation and entrepreneurship. And this will happen again. Mark my words. It will happen as we speak. Our young people especially, but not just, they will drive this country forward with amazing innovations in artificial intelligence and genetics and biomechanics and all of these amazing, amazing areas. They have so far. There's no reason why they will stop. It will simply increase. Alisha, before we run out of time, I want to squeeze this in because going back to what we originally talked about, this is your interpretation in your Doshah of this puzzling and yet beautiful three words that the Kohen is supposed to say. So you paraphrase. Therefore we say, dear Kohen, I come to you today to bring you the firstfruits of my land. Bringing firstfruits to the temple. I know where it has come from and I know what my story is. I know that just like everyone else, I sometimes get lost, as do all human beings, as I did. But I continue to search for the way. Many times I have enslaved myself, and with the help of that power that brought my forefathers out of the land in which they were mired, Egypt, I too was released. And here I have come and I always will, but I will never arrive. I know this land is not mine. I remember it again on this day and remember too that the moment I mistakenly think it or any other land is mine, I am once again enslaving myself and losing my direction. Alicia, imagine if the world would convene a gathering of leaders and ordinary people and the United Nations would convene it and we would announce, this planet is not ours. We are not the masters of this planet. This planet belongs to the Lord of the Universe and we have been mistreating it badly. Take a look at what is happening to it. And we are sorry for this. And we are not going to do this anymore. We are going to treat this planet as we should because it is not ours to mistreat. Yes, I think that is probably the ideal of the Torah. That is why Abraham said, go forth to the land that I will show you. I am not going to give you a place on the mat. It explains also why God placed human beings on earth. He said to work it and to protect it well. Yes, we are guests here. We arrived in this world naked. We are going to leave this world naked. None of our possessions are going to continue with us to the next realm, the next world. And indeed none of this is ours. It is not ours. It is not even ours temporarily. It is here for us to manifest the divine on earth by doing our thing, doing what we are meant to do. And it is extremely liberating. And the question is, the question comes up, I don't know how much time we even have. I think we have to end shortly. But given that there is a war right now, how does that idea of, it doesn't really belong to us and so how does that inform us at a time of war? So here we are fighting over it in the Torah. They fought bitterly on their journey to land of Israel and then after the Torah and Joshua and Judges and Samuel and Kings, they fought and fought and fought over this land. And I think that if we remember that we're going out to war not because it's ours, but we're going out to war because this is, because we are here to fulfill a certain mission. We're on a mission and this is the land where we are to fulfill that mission. So we are going out to war in order to ensure that we can fulfill our mission on this land. But it doesn't mean the land is ours. And if we can really truly remember that, I don't think it will solve any of the anti-Semitism. I don't think it will solve the anti-Israel sentiments around the globe. I don't think it will change any of that. But for us, I think many of our soldiers, many go to war thinking they're protecting their family. And that's beautiful, that's really beautiful. But I think that many are also going out to war recognizing they're protecting our God-given mission on the face of this earth. And I think that if we always have our eyes on So what is our mission here? What truly is our mission here? It will be so much easier to handle all that's going on right now. And it's going to be much easier handling the fact that right now there's a war and peace is not, we don't see peace in the near future. So it reminds us, it gives us a compass. It reminds us, so why are we here? What are we doing here? And I think we've reached a really good place of saying we're here to be very attentive, very attentive to what God wants from us. And the Parsha says it, Elisha, and it's pretty simple. We're really not fighting over land. We're fighting over a worldview. And our worldview is to be a blessing. Our worldview is that life is precious and God-given and life is to be enhanced. And we face a bitter enemy, a fanatical enemy who believes the exact opposite. That somehow in death you serve the divine. And this is a battle over these worldviews. The West doesn't understand that. It takes them a very long time to understand anything. But we understand it and we face it. And when you see it in this fashion, I think it becomes a little clearer. Exactly, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so we do have to end. We have to let people go out there and bring, you know, connect with their Ilan Vitan. They can't lose themselves forever after all. So we want to wish everyone Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom. And really, you know, see if it works for you to connect with this life force that's emanating everything and is seeking to manifest itself through everyone and one of us. Exactly, well said. Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom. Thanks for listening, everyone.