Ki Savo

The sicha for parshas Ki Savo is Vol. II of Likkutei Sichos.

In the parsha of Ki Savo, we are told about the mitzvah of bringing bikurim. Bikurim means the first fruits, the best fruits that the Land of Israel
produces, at a time when the Land was flowing with milk and honey. From the first fruits of the year, before you take any for yourself, before you bring any to your house, you first fill up a basket of the best first fruits and bring it to the Bais HaMikdash. This was in order to thank G-d for the blessing that He gave to the Land and the fruits of the Land. Instead of being a sacrifice that is burnt on the altar in the Bais HaMikdash, it is brought to the Bais HaMikdash and given to the kohen to eat and to use.

From this we learn two things: firstly, it is possible that a person would argue that although he understands that when the first fruits are produced, there should be some given to the kohen, to holiness, as an expression of gratitude for G-d’s blessings, but does it have to be the best fruits? Does it have to be the first fruits? After all, this is the result of the person’s work and toil.

This argument can only exist if a person thinks that the fruits came as a result of his efforts, of course with help from Above, but as a result of his efforts. This is not correct. Every Jew has the simple, unadorned emunah, belief, that G-d runs the world and that if there are fruits that grow in our fields, it is “ nosatali Hashem”, G-d gave it to me. Not only that G-d helped me and blessed my efforts, but that G-d actually gave it to me because it comes from G-d.

So if a person thinks about this even just briefly, he realizes that the argument is really unfounded and that it makes perfect sense that the first fruits and the best fruits should be taken to the Bais HaMikdash, given to holiness and set aside for the kohen. The only challenge is that this awareness that we have, this simple unadorned emunah should be active and influence our daily behavior on a regular basis.

The second thing we learn from this mitzvah, is that we don’t burn the first fruits, the bikurim, on the altar in order to raise it up to holiness, we give it to the kohen, and the kohen actually enjoys the fruits, derives pleasure and benefit from them. This tells us that if a person raises himself to the level of a kohen, then he could actually enjoy the physical fruits and in doing so, be fulfilling a mitzvah and be doing something holy. That burning a sacrifice on the altar is not the only way we elevate a physical object, and produce holiness. With the proper preparation, first through davening and through learning, we can even eat in a holy fashion and we can do business in a holy fashion. This is assuming that we make the proper preparation.

And so even outside of Israel, and even in the time of golus, we have the concept, the idea of bikurim in effect in a spiritual level. And that is to elevate the physical activity, like eating and working and so on, by recognizing that in all of it, there is the “nosata li Hashem”, there is the gift from G-d and by saying with our whole heart and with full intention, Baruch Hashem, concerning all of these things; that what we have is a result of Baruch Hashem, it is because nosatali Hashem, that G-d gave it to us. And that awareness alone starts to elevate and to make holy these objects, the food that we eat, and the things that we work with, our jobs and so on.

This is the right preparation to bring about the coming of Moshiach, when the Bais HaMikdash will be rebuilt and then we will be able to bring the bikurim in the literal, in the actual physical mitzvah, which when it was brought in the Bais HaMikdash, was concluded with a blessing and a prayer that in the year to come, we should once again be able to come and bring bikurim with joy and with gladness of heart.

Before Rosh Hashanah and also before Shavuos, we read a portion in the Torah that speaks about the suffering of the Jewish people. This is called the tochacha, where the Torah tells us in very grim fashion the results of sin and the suffering that comes as a consequence. Before Shavuos we read it in parshas Bechukosai and before Rosh Hashanah we read it in Ki Savo.

We don’t go directly from the reading of the tochacha into Yom Tov, there is a break where we read other parshas. Before Shavuos, we read parshas Bamidbar, sometimes also parshas Naso, and before Rosh Hashanah, we read parshas Nitzavim and sometimes parshas Vayelech, in order to make a break between the tochacha and the Yom Tov.

The reason for this is because the tochacha are not merely a description of punishment and suffering. Rather it is a description of the cleansing of the vessel, so to speak. That’s why before you come into a Yom Tov, before the Yom Tov gives you its blessing, you have to clean the vessel into which the blessing will be given and in which the blessing will be contained. Just as before you put a precious object into a box, you first make sure the box is clean. The more precious the object, the more you are concerned for the cleanliness of its container.

And so it is also in the spiritual.

And that’s why before the revelations of G-dliness, the closeness of
G-dliness of the Giving of the Torah, which is Shavuos, and before we get to the G-dliness that is revealed on Rosh Hashanah – because every Rosh Hashanah a new G-dliness, a new light comes into the world that had never been there before, not even in the time when the Bais HaMikdash stood, before we receive these great revelations, we first want to make sure that the keli, the receptacle is pure and clean, not withstanding the fact that for a short time the suffering is painful and particularly for a princess or a prince who is an only child.

Every Jew is an only child to G-d, so every princess and every prince are so sensitive that the slightest suffering is already unbearable, to the point that we have to make a break from the description of the suffering and the Yom Tov, yet our Father in Heaven who is compassionate and kind, finds it appropriate and worthwhile to go through this moment of discomfort in order to receive the blessing that follows.

The difference between the tochacha in parshas Bechukosai, which we read before Shavuos, and the tochacha of  parshas Savo, which we read before Rosh Hashanah, is that in the parsha of Bechukosai, the Torah enumerates forty nine curses, forty nine degrees of suffering, whereas in parshas Savo, ninety eight forms of suffering are enumerated, a double portion, twice as much as in parshas Bechukosai.

From this we can understand how much greater the revelations of Rosh Hashanah are than the revelations of Shavuos, to the degree where the revelations of Rosh Hashanah demand twice the preparation, twice the cleanliness that Shavuos demands. The revelation of Shavuos comes from above, memalei l’mata, from above downwards, as the Gomorrah says regarding the Giving of the Torah, that at the Giving of the Torah, every Jew became a convert, and a convert is as a new born child. So it didn’t start with us, it started from above, from memalei l’mata, from above downward.

But the revelations of Tishrei, that’s primarily tshuva, and tshuva is a return, a response on the part of the human being, and that is from below upwards. And that’s also why the month of Tishrei, the name of Tishrei, is spelt tof, shin, resh and then a yud. Tof, shin, resh is alphabetically backwards, so it is returning, working its way up from the last letter back towards the first letter.

That’s why in the preparation for Shavuos, the months before Shavuos are Nissan and Iyar, and a few days of Sivan. These represent the months of the avodah of a tzaddik, dodi li v’ani lo, where G-d reaches down memalei l’mata, G-d reaches to us and we respond to Him.

But the preparation for Rosh Hashanah is the month of Ellul. And that is the level of baalei tshuva, ani l’dodi and then dodi li, I first reach out to My Beloved, to G-d, and then G-d responds. So the revelation that comes from a reaction, from a response is much greater than the revelation that is given directly from Above, in the same way that the baal tshuva is greater than the tzaddik.

We find this also with the luchos, the tablets of the Ten Commandments. The first set didn’t last very long, they were broken by Moshe when he came down from the mountain. Whereas the second set, which were not given on Shavuos, but on the day after Yom Kippur, in the month of Tishrei, they were much higher than the first and that’s why they lasted. They were twice as great as the first, which corresponds to the fact that for Rosh Hashanah we have to have twice the preparation as for Shavuos.

The same is true also of golus in general, that the source of the golus is the sin of the golden calf, where it says that we were punished twice, a double punishment, the same is also with the result of the sin, with the golus, the golus is also a doubly dark golus, and in response to that, we have the consolation of nachamu, nachamu, that G-d consoles us doubly with the geulah, speedily in our time.

Concerning tochacha, suffering, we are told that there are two expressions that the Sages use to reveal to us, to teach us, that even that which looks negative or bad, is really for the good. The two expressions are 1) all that G-d does He does for the good, and that’s said in Aramaic, not in lashon kodesh, in Hebrew, and 2) gam zu l’tova, this too is for the good, which is said in the Holy tongue, in lashon Kodesh, in Hebrew

The difference is that the Holy tongue, lashon kodesh, means that the holiness is revealed, whereas Aramaic is a translation, an alternative language. And in a translation the message is the same, but it is not as clear, not as sharp.

We will understand the difference between these two expressions by the stories that the Gomorrah gives to describe the events that happened that brought out the expressions and their statements.

The incident that the Gomorrah tells us about concerning the expression all that G-d does He does for the good, is the story of Rabbi Akiva, who was traveling and he had with him a candle, a donkey and a rooster. He came to a certain city, and asked for lodging for the night. The people were very stingy and wicked, and they refused him lodging. So he had to spend the night out in the fields. During the night a wind came and blew out the candle. Then an animal came and attacked his rooster. The donkey was also attacked and killed. He needed his donkey in order to travel, he needed his rooster to wake him up, and he needed the candle to study by, and he lost them all. In each case, his response was all the G-d does He does for the good. He found out in the morning that a band of robbers had attacked the city and had killed everyone there, and had he been there, he would have been a victim as well. And what’s more, had he been burning his candle they would have noticed him, or had his rooster or donkey made any noise, it would have given him away.

And so it turns out that in fact everything that G-d did was for the good.

Then there is another story that created the expression gam zu l’tova. In the times of the Gomorrah, there was a Tanna by the name of Nochum Ish Gam Zu. He was given that title Ish Gam Zu because of his oft expressed reaction to negative news of gam zu l’tova.

He was once sent to the king of Rome, to prevail on the king to improve conditions for the Jews and he was given precious stones to take along as a gift to the king. Since he was sent as a shliach from a Jewish community, he was very careful that he shouldn’t lose them and he was hopeful that G-d will help him fulfill his mission. However when he came to the king of Rome, and the box containing the gems was opened instead of being filled with precious stones, it had been filled with sand. During the night he had spent at an inn, the innkeeper had stolen the precious stones and had replaced them with sand.

So at first the king was very angry and wanted to punish him, a punishment befitting one who commits treason. But G-d sent Eliyahu HaNovi, in the form of one of the advisors of the king, and he said to the king, maybe this sand is like the sand that Avraham used when he went to war against the four kings, where he threw sand at them, and every grain of sand miraculously turned into an arrow or into a spear.

At this time, the king of Rome was at war with other nations, and they sent the sand to be immediately tested. It turned out that the sand was in fact miraculous and as result the king of Rome fulfilled Nochum Ish Gam Zu requests completely. So it turned out again that this disaster, or this seeming disaster was gam zu l’tova, this too was for the good.

Now the difference between these two examples is that in Rabbi Akiva’s case where he said everything G-d does is for the good, in his case, things happened that really we don’t see as good. The death of the rooster and the donkey, and the loss of the light is not a good thing- it’s not good to be left in the dark, it’s not good to lose your animals, or have them die – it’s that the result was good. Through these things, which basically are not so very good, but compared to the goodness that resulted from it, the fact that it saved Rabbi Akiva’s life, then these small unpleasantaries become insignificant and all ends up being for the good.

In the case of Nochum Ish Gam Zu, nothing negative happened at all. It only seemed to be negative for the moment. But in truth had he brought the original gift, the precious stones, it would have meant very little to the king who had all the precious stones he could possibly use. It was a conventional gift at best. Whereas when it turned into sand and the sand was miraculous sand, this was a much greater gift, a much more significant and appreciated gift, and as a result the king agreed to everything that Reb Nochum asked, far more than if he had brought him the precious stones.

So the replacing of the stones with sand was not a negative thing at all, and it was very clear that gam zu l’tova, this is for the good, not that this is bad that it produces good, not that this is a negative event, but it’s justified because of the greater good that comes as a result but this too, this itself is for the good, only at the moment when a person is shortsighted and can’t see the outcome or doesn’t yet know the outcome, for the moment it looks like it was bad to have the stones replaced with sand. Later we find out that it itself was a good thing.

With Rabbi Akiva’s case it’s not that it appeared to be bad, death of the animals is bad, but it weighs to insignificance compared to the greater good that resulted from it. And that is the difference between an expression said in the Aramaic language versus an expression said in the clear Holy tongue of the Torah.

It is significant that Reb Nochum Ish Gam Zu was the teacher of Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Akiva’s Rebbe. Which means that Rabbi Akiva was a generation later, after Reb Nochum Ish Gam Zu. So in the generation of Rabbi Akiva, the golus had gotten darker and the world had gotten darker. There was another generation of golus, and with each generation the golus becomes darker and darker, and that’s why even though what was happening to Rabbi Akiva was good but in the physical, it was not as revealed, it was not as obvious as it could have been, as it was in the generation before Rabbi Akiva, in the time of his rebbe, Nochum Ish Gam Zu, who was closer to the time of the Bais HaMikdash, and then the goodness that comes from heaven is much more revealed and much more obvious.

Now at the end of the golus, where we are coming to a time when the sun will come out in its full strength, which means that G-dliness will be revealed without concealments, without disguises, a time when G-dliness will be revealed to a degree that we will be able to say “ this is G-d for Whom we have longed.” At the end of the golus, we will be able to say we have longed for G-d but we will be able to point and say “ zeh Hashem ” this is the G-d for Whom we have longed, because to point to something and say “ this ” you have to be able to see it clearly, “ zeh” refers to or describes something that is visible and clear that you can point to it with your finger and say “ zeh” this is it.

And so we come to that time when we are beginning to see in all events not only that it might in the end lead to something good, that there is a silver lining to every cloud, but that the cloud itself is good, gam zu, this itself, is l’tova, is good.

Shopping cart

0 Product(s) in cart

Total $0.00

» Checkout

It's Good News