Weekly Torah Portion Ki Tavo Part 1 according to the Kli Yakar Deuteronomy 26:1-5 5776

okay good evening everybody we are in par that's Deuteronomy 26 verse1 and it starts by saying the it will be when you enter the L and that hasem your God gives you as an inheritance and you take possession of it and dwell in it okay the clear has some really fundamental things to point out to us the first thing he says is we don't find this language of V to come to possess it and to dwell in it except for one other place here if you look earlier on in Deuteronomy 17 ver4 it says when you come to the land that Hashem your your God gives you and you possess it and settle in it and you will say I will set a king over myself like all the other nations that are around me so he his very point of pointing this out to us we'll have to see why is he saying this see what happens is after you settle in it and you conquer it something very negative is likely to happen that Israel will grow fat and rebel meaning that will be very com and as a result he'll talk about later it talks there's a a warning by God that you will forget him when you grow wax and fat you Rebel because you forget God or likely to what was happening in in chapter 17:14 that they were requesting they were looking out they were seeking a an authority like all the other nations that's the reason why in our par there is a direct command for the first fruits the the intent of having the Mitzvah of bringing the first fruits is in order in order to subdue conquer our Hy Hearts our raised Hearts to subjugate them aare because what's likely to happen after we conquer take possession and settle our hearts will be lifted up saying this is what we would say to ourselves yushua that this land now belongs to us because we conquered it with our sword it was through the sword that we actually took possession of it and the result is through thinking these thoughts is that we forget about God and this is a warning and that's why par pum is here so that we can avoid that and that's why it says now it's not actually all command form it's when you come into the land which Hashem the Lord gives you as inheritance Nal is an inheritance but right away this line we're going to have to remember throughout the rest of what we read he says this is something that we have to really remember and it's really hard but in truth it's not within the status the structure of the laws of yusa of inheritance that you're coming to the land see when you think about inheritance you're thinking about entitlement something that's coming to you as a result of who you are who your parents are who your for forefathers were he buy it if you look in Proverbs 1914 it says houses and riches are an inheritance of the fathers so it's coming through them true and it belongs to them true but really in truth this is part of the statement in truth it's from Hashem himself who's giving you the land as a [Music] it's a gift but it's conditional and what's the condition on condition that we pay back Hashem for all the goodness in other words we recognize and we thank and we praise Hashem for all the goodness first is recognition and the guarding of all the mitv then we Merit the land now what he's about to say is what we imagine and it's not really proper but in your own Hearts this is not how it seems this is not what we end up doing or how we look at it Ella when it says and you'll take possession what what are we thinking that we're taking possession as if it belongs to us as the promise to our forefathers right as if it's coming to you as an inheritance without conditions from your forefathers the and you will dwell in it this is not necessarily a good thing either K like a permanent residence loar not like it says if you look in VRA 2523 what is what do we see over there by the laws of Yem is saying you're not allowed to sell the land for ever right it's his the land belongs to him you are just strangers on it you are just visitors or strangers on it you're not permanent resonance and it doesn't belong to you because all these thoughts will bring a person to a certain amount of arrogance and thoughts that the lamb belongs to him when really it belongs to AEM and as a result you will forget about God you'll forget God that's why Hashem is telling us he's commanding us the Mitzvah of these first fruits so too writes the ramban very much similar we saw in the first line here that the prime reason for this Mitzvah is is in order to subdue and feel subjugated to Hashem to actually be under the the of God under God and proof for this is what it says in the confession that we're about to see there's a statement that's made by the person bringing the first fruits he gives it over to the co puts it before the Altar and he makes a statement he so that means and I'll read it in 26 chapter 26:3 you shall come to to the Cohen who will be in those days and you shall say to him I declare today to Hashem your God that I have come to the land that hasem swore to our forefathers to give us in the word he got it I declare or I Proclaim or I'm saying I'm telling over it's a lan AAR Lan AAR means it's past tense I have declared so one second you still haven't declared anything all you're saying is I have declared and you're saying past tense but you haven't said anything what is the intent of the the saying this that it's through the process of transporting and walking to the temple from wherever you live in Israel he got it that just the bringing right you're coming and you're bringing it's already as if it's similar as if you made a declaration in the way of what we call V this whole process we call Vio it's a confession and how are confessions done in Judaism silently and quietly without words but it goes on for I come to the land right meaning to say it wasn't through this um entitlement of a inheritance but rather it was only in this way that there was a swearing there was an oath made by God to our forefathers to give it to us who made and the person coming is saying I'm testifying on myself through bringing these first fruits that it was right from Hashem that this land came to be mine as a portion and as a gift and this is what it means as we're going to continue in the process of be I'll read verse two and you shall take of the first of every fruit of the ground for the co sheep that you bring in from your land that Hashem your God gives you and you shall put it in the basket and go to the place that hasem your God will choose to make his name rest there a shareem so it says and you shall sorry doesn't say V it says you shall take from the first of all the fruits but he points out shouldn't it have said and you shall give and you shall give it wasn't said Ella it says and you shall take so what is that coming to tell us that is from this first this is what you're you're you're it's this first thing that you're bringing to the house of God in order to do what in order to give thanks and praise and glory to hasem it was from God that you were able to take of all the fruits of the land and then you Merit to take all the rest you're only taking them because Hashem gave them to you and as a result of doing this you'll you'll be you'll Merit you'll be able to take the rest after you've praised and acknowledged for you have brought the first from your land which hasem gave you this land is not called your land until what it's only mentioned your land after you bring from the first not before not called your land before you bring and it's only through bringing this that you're able to take all the rest of the fruits of the land and this bringing and this bringing is is brought with this Proclamation by mentioning this verse I proclaimed today now the next verse he goes on and discusses again the rest of the process you shall come to the Coen who will be in those days and you shall say to him I declare today to Hashem your God that I have come to the land that SW to our forefathers to give USU so he wants to point out in this verse especially which will be the who will be in those days in the 13th chapter page 105b Al there was a story about bringing fruits or different gifts to judges and whether judges are allowed to take gifts that are not bribes maybe as a salary but Alicia someone actually brought these first fruits to Alicia and the question is what would Alicia be able to eat them he was not a Coen and the person bought first fruits seemingly so no theor says coming to teach you what that anyone who brings a gift to a sage a wise Rabbi it's as if he's offering up B what he's giving him is just a gift has nothing to do with first fruits and yet it's as if you actually fulfilled the Mitzvah on a metaphysical level of offering up what do we see here that there is this um equation there's a hanging up there's placing the Duron these gifts to in the same category as so you might have had a you might have thought mistakenly there were 24 different groups of Kim that served twice a year and um during those two week service they would um receive the gifts different gifts and one of them was the first fruits so you might have thought that you're not supposed to give these gifts of these borim you're supposed to only give them to a Cohen who is a not an ignor who was serving in the mishmar the serving in that um the tour serving in the um the guard when you were bringing your offerings so no so you might have thought that well if supposed to give that's serving then so what if there's no so maybe I would have thought mistakenly that I should just wait until you know bringing my gifts and giving it to in the next mishar no that's why the Torah says you should give to the Cohen who will be in those days as a directive that you should give to the Cohen during the mishmar that you were assigned to he was assigned to and that in which you brought and he just mentions a God that's not the way the Raman explains it which I'm not going to go into right right now he got right and the verse said that you're supposed to say to the Cohen I declare but it's past tense as we already mentioned already this bringing is even though there's no real words there's no expression being made Al D now if you look into hm that's Psalms 19: 2-4 I have some of it written here the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament tells of his handiwork that's really the main part that we're going to start to see right the heavens declare and the firmament tells of his handiwork the word because we're trying to discern what the word he got at is it's a telling over but the rest of vers is but there are no words and their sound was not heard I'll read the whole verse again the heavens declare in the glory of God and the firment Tells of his handiwork day following day utters speech and night following night declares knowledge there is no speech and there are no words and their sound is not heard it's it's an action but without words so too the action of bringing it's a declaration and it's a testif it's testifying on myself that's why I came to the land not on my Merit not because I'm so righteous but it was only God's guarding the oath which God guarded God guarded his own oath that he swore to our forefathers who MB kapar now this V this confession is actually acting as a as an altar of atonement it's as if you're bringing a Corbin even though all you're doing is bringing it but it has the same effect as a sacrifice therefore the next verse doid for says the Coen shall take the basket from your hand and do what with it and lay it before the altar of hem your God meaning to sayar that just the act because it says you're putting he's placing it before the altar of God that it's removing your sins different types of sins and is acting as an atonement because the Coen who's the high priest who the priests and they're taking the this basket out of your hand and they're placing it right in front of the altar of Hashem then we're on verse 5 verse 5 says like this then you shall call out and say before Hashem your God and Aran would have destroyed my father and he descended to Egypt and so Jan there few in number and there he became a nation great strong and numerous the an so he points out this statement is out loud you shall call out and say before Hashem so it's not at all like a normal confession which is done quietly we know that it's a Brazen thing it's very it's Brazen for one who specifies and details his sins in public as brought down in the gamor s that would be but this type of what we call confession it's not it's not the normal confession this type of statement is to be made out loud that actually this will help in the process of removing the sin from the seed of Jacob and hanging and depending on the downfall of um the reason for the downfall which is ready for this we're actually putting the blame on the fact that we come from the seat of our mother this the mother's side which she was and arami we're talking about either yak's wives or yak's wives y's wife but it says so we're talking about yob and L but it doesn't mention Lan's name at all but it just says our father so and arami wanted to or sought out to destroy our fathers it doesn't mention L's name at all but it does because we know that he was from Aram because he was from there was a certain type of behavior that these people displayed and this what we said originally in the PK of taking possession and dwelling in it are not necessarily very positive uh attributes or character traits but this is coming from the mother's side what are we talking about anybody who's looking towards having a peaceful life in this world is barking up the wrong tree and this is one of the things that yakob was held to account for he was looking to have sha and what took place was a a anger of ysep which we'll talk about shortly the whole story about losing his son and being disturbed as soon as he was looking for sha he lost it Hashem gave it to him over the head so to speak and preempted this um these years of sha so going back to the text so we know that he was from Arab and he acted like the people of that place and because of that we know that continued down this bad character trait as it says in our verse this is something that the Jewish people people sought to do that's what we were seeking like if you look in the med over there it's talking about yob so re he says okay I'm just going to go back to that one statement because it wasn't talk about yob here is talking about Abraham so Abraham was transvers through the area called AR and a place called arur and he saw people rob you saw different people and they were eating and drinking in the gluttonous fashion and you know what he said to himself this is only part of the med but he didn't want any portion in this type of land meaning with these type of people therefore it was from the same place that and and took RKA and Yakov took his wives so it seems like through the mothers there runs a lot of bad blood over there and from here this is where we know that yob learned to request or to look for this type of a peaceful lifestyle in this world [Music] and it was through this that either was jumped or awoken this anger of Y it's almost like we're about to say like a domino effect and it was through this sequence of events that we ended up going down to Egypt and that's where we ended up being gim to fix what yakob wanted to do to be a to be a um a to a a settler and it was there in that place that we came to be to to The Crucible an iron Crucible in order to cleanse us from this sin of wanting a peaceful lifestyle now when we talked about this domino effect so what happened so we had this uh let's say this Bad Blood eventually gets into yako system and yako is looking to have a peaceful lifestyle and within this peaceful peaceful lifestyle he's looking and he requests to have this and there as a result Hashem doesn't want to give it to him and he wants to prevent that so what does he do he orchestrates where this we call the anger of ysep meaning that ysep was sold and then we end up going down to Egypt as a result so then it goes on and [Music] says right the statement in the confession that we're making is that that um there was a person who sought to destroy our forefathers and we went down to Egypt almost like it's a running thought as a result and it's mentioned here in a way as an apology for the guilt as it says here that in order you're coming to land and you're going to possess it and you're going to settle in it that's not necessarily a positive thing toos there was still a this sin that remained as a impression a little bit for the future Generations that's why it says and is not past tense as he tried to destroy but he's destroying as it's present tense it's something that's very destructive that remain this also for Generations so I want to like recap a little bit before we go any further it's a very hard thing to get around because we are all to a certain extent as we would say the word Zionism means the longing to come back to our homel and so we're all on one level one type of Zionist or another whether the people watching this are political zionists or religious zionists or modern zionists or post zionists somehow Zion is um is part of what we are and the question is what kind of zionists are we so one of my famous rabbis always talked about the definition of Zionism is the longing the longing to return to Zion and then I think that everybody no matter where you are in the world even you know satare in New York are probably very big zionists if you define it that way and um the question is how are we supposed to remain here and get a real foothold so I think that it's very clear that when we're total acknowledgement that this is a gift from Hashem that it's an undeserved reward it's a Matana it's a gift and the only it's conditional the only way that we're going to make St you know have a foothold and stay here is through acknowledging that it's a gift from Hashem that we are constantly in a state of thankfulness and appreciation for God and all that he's done for us from the day we were born from the day the Jewish people came into existence till this very day and that we are sh the mitz that we are um observing guarding careful to do the Mitzvah of hasem the will of God and I think that really sums it up for everybody I know thatth this may strike some people the wrong way if you're right-wing you're going to say of course we have every right to possess it in fact it's a it's a commandment I won't deny it and on the other hand if you're a leftist you say we have no right to it there you're wrong H we have every right to it as promised but it was a gift and it's conditional on us really appreciating Hashem and all he's done for us until this very day and to show him it that's why we bring the the first fruits and of course to guard all the Mitzvah any mitzvas that come into our hand and we should seek them out and this will be the real guarding and the real foothold in how we can really establish ourselves in the land listen a good army and um all the uh instruments of war are helpful and people going to the Army are helpful but the real e car the real principle and making sure that we stay in the land is for the the two reasons mentioned here is the praise to Hashem and the thankfulness for the gift of the land and to keep the Mitzvah inem we should have many many many years here building the third base of mikdash with the Messiah swiftly on his way and bringing all our brothers and sisters back home to where they belong in AR Israel be alect to the Nations as we always should have been and will will be and with that I say I wish everyone a good chabis