Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Ki Tavo Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8

By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - “And the Egyptians did evil unto us…” (Deuteronomy 26:6).

This week’s Torah portion opens with the commandment that once we enter the land of Israel, we must bring our first fruits to the altar of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem; we must accompany this gift of commitment to G-d with a song-speech which reminds us of our humble slave origins and expresses our gratitude to the Almighty, who heard our tearful calls of oppression and brought us to our ancestral homeland of freedom. These poetic words of the individual pilgrim-patron of the Temple are further immortalized by the author of the Passover haggadah, where each phrase is explicated around the seder table as the basis of the “retelling of the story of our sojourn in and exodus from Egypt.” But there is one phrase which remains difficult in context: “the Egyptians did evil unto us and afflicted us…” Obviously, if they afflicted us, they did evil unto us! What is the specific meaning of “they did evil unto us” (Vayareyu)? I believe that a novel translation of this Hebrew word will greatly illuminate the existential meaning not only of Jewish persecution but also of the Israeli experience in our own generation.

Firstly, the Hebrew noun ra, or rea, can mean evil, but it can also mean friend. In the beginning, the Egyptians acted friendly towards us, they extended the hand of acceptance - in effect, an acceptance which led to our assimilation, a Laban-like kiss of death. “And the children of Israel grew fruitful, and swarmed, and multiplied and became very very mighty; the land became filled with them” (Exodus 1:7). The description superficially seems to be one of growth, of positive development. But the verb’s supply a very different image: to “swarm” implies to creep all over like detestable, impure reptiles, and to “fill the land” hints at excessive visibility, a palpable Jewish presence in every corner including the discos and the gambling parlors, the bars and the red light district. The Israelites were becoming more Egyptian than the Egyptians - and such activities are the death-knell for Judaism which demands a life-style of discipline and sanctity.

G-d entered into a covenant with Abraham which guaranteed that the Jews would never disappear from the world’s stage. Hence, the historical rule of Judaism - overseen by G-d - must be either you will live as a special people, set apart by your values, laws and customs, or if heaven forfend - you forget your uniqueness and run the rule of assimilation and extinction, I (G-d) will send a tyrant who will force you to be a people ghettoized, reviled and set apart. Thus the very next verse, after the picture of Jews devoid of self - established boundaries: “And there rose up a new King over Egypt, who knew not Joseph” and who persecuted and demonized the Israelites, causing them to become an anathema, an object of scorn and disgust, to the Egyptian majority (Exodus1:8 ff). Vayere’u, the Egyptians first befriended us, causing us to assimilate, until G-d sent a tyrant to afflict us, -vaya’anunu - thereby forcing us to remain a people apart.

An alternative and no less novel form of translating vayareyu is, “they caused us to be evil.” How so? Everyone knows the very famous adage of Lord Acton, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I would add, And powerlessness corrupts worst of all!

More than a decade ago, when visiting Australia on a lecture tour, I saw a play called “The Edge of Night.” The major plot dealt with a very accomplished daughter of a successful holocaust survivor who is married to an ineffectual Jewish “nerd” and meets a suave and sophisticated Christian wasp who “sweeps her off her feet.” The sub-plot zeroed in on the real character of the holocaust survivor, a businessman with unusual acumen whose noblesse oblige made him a generous philanthropist and a respected leader of the Jewish community of Melbourne. The son-in-law nerd, who assists his wife in his father-in-laws’ company, receives an anonymous letter with an actual picture from the concentration camp proving his father-in-law to have been a Kapo - a Nazi collaborator who won favors by punishing his co-religionists.

The son-in-law, in the midst of a heated discussion with his father-in-law during a family seder, suddenly hands the survivor the letter and picture in the midst of the family gathering. The patriarch crumbles before our eyes. Before leaving the seder table, he brokenly says, “Do you think there were heroes in the Concentration Camp? There were no heroes. There were only two kinds of Jews: those who survived and those who didn’t survive.” And apparently when you’re the underdog fighting for survival, you will attempt to survive by using any possible means! Powerlessness corrupts worst of all.

Despite the basic truth of this insight, there are many personal and confirmed testimonies which demonstrate acts of Jewish humanity and even heroism during the most difficult of times. Witness the writings of Elie Wiesel, and the Diary of Anne Frank, as well as the Fear No Evil by Natan Sharansky. But by and large, suffering is not to be idealized; it generally brings out the worst, and not the best, in human nature. “Vayareyu”, the Egyptians caused us to act evilly when they afflicted us.

To a great extent, the Jewish experience in these last seven decades has seen the Jewish people rise from a non-position of powerlessness to an international position of power, at least from the military perspective. And I believe we have passed with distinction both tests, the test of powerlessness and the test of power. Yes, there have been individual violations of our own ethical code, but these have been condemned and prosecuted by the Israeli establishment. Much more to the point: we never asked to be occupiers; we only asked to be able to compromise and live in peace with our neighbors. We certainly cannot be blamed for choosing to be occupiers rather than occupies, to be the victors rather than the vanquished, especially since we know how our enemy treated areas they controlled and people they conquered! And even in a war in self-defense as we are now waging, the IDF chooses to suffer Israeli casualties in house-to-house searches for would be assassins and weapon stockpiles rather than engage in aerial bombing in order to limit collateral damage.

Tragically the world was silent when we were the victims and the world condemns us when we attempt to defend ourselves as ethically as possible - even when we build a fence to prevent attacks by suicide bombers. But we must remain true to our Jewish souls: we dare not become powerless victims once again, but we must continue to exercise power with the moral restraints that our Torah demands.

Shabbat Shalom.