Parashat Ki Tavo - First Aliyah
Read the biblical text and try to understand it on your own, before reading the commentary.
From the first fruit to the story of the people
The aliyah opens with the entry into the land and the settling in it. When a person merits a harvest from his land, he takes from the first of the fruit of the ground, places it in a basket, and brings it up to the place that God will choose. In this way the first harvest does not remain only a private achievement of the farmer, but becomes an opportunity to recognize that the land and the blessing within it were given to him.
The person comes to the priest who will be in those days and declares that he has come to the land that God swore to give to the fathers. The priest takes the basket and sets it down before the altar of God. After that the one bringing the first fruits tells briefly the story of the nation: from the earliest days of the fathers, the descent to Egypt, the growth into a great people, the servitude and the affliction, the cry to God, the redemption from Egypt, and the arrival in the land.
The whole story leads to the present moment. The person stands in the land, holds in his hands the first of the fruit of the ground, and recognizes that the harvest he brings is the result of the long road the people traveled and of the gift he received from God. After the setting down of the first fruits and the bowing, the Torah moves to joy: the person rejoices in all the good that was given to him, but the joy does not remain only in his house. It includes also the Levite and the stranger who is in his midst.
Insights from the aliyah
The first fruit turns an achievement into gratitude
Precisely when a person sees the first result of his labor, the Torah asks him to stop. Before the whole harvest turns into property and profit, he reminds himself where the land, the strength, and the blessing came from.
One cannot understand the present without remembering the road
The one bringing the first fruits is not satisfied with having a field and fruit. He returns to the story of the fathers, of Egypt, and of the redemption. The present receives a deeper meaning when it is connected to the memory of the road that led to it.
National history becomes a personal story
The events took place generations before the person standing with the basket, yet he presents them as part of his own story. This teaches that identity is not built only from what happened to me personally, but also from the story that I continue.
Abundance does not sever the memory of hardship
Precisely inside a good land, with fruit in hand, the Torah returns the person to the servitude and to the cry in Egypt. Abundance is not meant to erase the memory of the hard periods, but to turn it into a deeper gratitude.
The small basket joins past, present, and future
Inside one basket there is fruit that grew just now, yet it rests upon a story of generations. This is a powerful image: a small act in the present can carry within it a whole past and pass it onward.
Complete joy includes others as well
At the close of the aliyah the Torah is not satisfied with the private joy of the owner of the field and his household. The Levite and the stranger enter the circle. Abundance that ends only with the one who received it is deficient abundance, and joy expands when it allows others too to be part of it.
Gratitude requires an act and not only a thought
It is not enough to feel thanks in the heart. The person travels, brings, hands over to the priest, tells, sets down, and bows. The aliyah teaches that gratitude becomes deep when it receives a practical expression.
More Questions on the Parsha
More questions on this parsha are on the way. In the meantime, explore our daily Torah learning.
Daily Torah learning