Mitzvah d'var

You may have noticed during my parshah even if you don’t understand Hebrew, that I repeated the phrase: V’amar kol ha'am, amen many times. You may wonder why that is. The phrase means “and all the people shall say 'Amen'.” I will talk about this more in a minute but first let me tell you a little bit about my parshah.

My parshah is from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 27:14-26 and is called Ki Tavo which means “when you come”. Deuteronomy is the last book in the Torah. In this book Moses gives many important speeches to the people, including the ones in this Torah portion, that remind them of what G-d expects of them and how to live their lives once they go into the land of Israel. 

My parshah specifically describes a ceremony that Moses told the Levites to lead once they have crossed over the Jordan River.  He tells the Levites to send the leaders of six of the tribe to Mt. Gerizim to receive blessings and to send the leaders of the other six to Mt Ebal to receive curses.  The curses are recited first and they are meant to scare the people and warn them against engaging in both spiritual and civil acts that go against G-d’s wishes - like making idols, disrespecting parents, widows, and orphans, cheating your neighbor, engaging in inappropriate sexual relationships and most importantly, failing to follow the laws that G-d has given them. 

The next section goes on to describe the blessings that will come to the Israelites if they follow G-d’s laws like prosperity, a healthy environment, healthy families, wealth and victories in battles.  It then goes back to remind them of the negative consequences if they don’t take care of the earth and each other, describing in great and horrific detail what will happen to them if they ignore G-d’s laws. This section describes what a curse might look like. 

 A lot could be said about the fear tactics G-d uses to impress upon the Israelites the importance of listening and following G-d’s laws.  Scaring them by describing the gory details of what will happen.  I however was more interested in the concept of Amen and why all the people recited it together.  

Amen has many different meanings. Amen could mean strong and enduring. Amen is implied as an oath or promise, a prayer for fulfillment. According to Rabbi Louis Jacobs The word Amen comes from the Hebrew word emunah which means  faith, trust, and honesty and emet which means truth. Other commentators state that it means “so may it be.” 

The Amen’s recited in this parshah are one of the few times in the Torah that the word is spoken and the only time it is spoken as a group despite what an important word it is to our religion.  In saying Amen as a group after each curse, the people are acknowledging to G-d that they heard what was being said to them and agree to what was being said. 

When we say Amen after a prayer, or blessing according to a rabbinic saying, it is like you said the blessing yourself even though you did not say it out loud. In the present day we use words like “okay, or I understand” to let someone know that we heard what they said, and we were paying attention. 

We are used to saying Amen after a blessing - we have done this a few times already. But my big question is why say “Amen” to a curse? Why agree to have something terrible happen to us if we make a mistake, especially if the curse is a little more serious than having your phone taken away? 

Rabbi Dorothy A. Richman says  “By affirming each sin, the eleven answering tribes, individual by individual, voice a commitment to being a holy nation. 

They affirm their commitment to a shared standard of justice–each prohibited act represents a communal value.” 

This means that we make a promise in public to not engage in the bad behaviors that G-d has warned us about, especially since these behaviors are ones that are usually done in private. 

In Nina Wouk’s commentary Private Feelings Public Consequences she states that: “Since no community works without people whose hearts are in making it work, Moses tries to develop people who look into, care about, and develop their own hearts. As he says at the end of Parashat Ki Tavo, G-d didn’t give you eyes to see or hearts to understand until today. Even trying to do the right thing is very difficult without a clear inward gaze. Thus the climax of his speech provides a ritual for developing that vital self-consciousness….. By making people consider themselves cursed for doing wrong even before no mortal witness, he hopes to assure that they will, under pressure, find the inner strength to do right.”   

Moses knows the Israeilites are going into the promised land without him and he wants to make sure that they understand how important it is to behave morally both in public and in private.

Rabbi Richman Stated -  “let us hear the curses on the mountains as an affirmation of our shared communal values. Let us also articulate new blessings to challenge the curses, affirming our power to create change. And let our words bring us to act. Together, when we seek justice, when we volunteer, when we donate, when we engage in advocacy, we add our contemporary Amens to the chorus on the mountain, to the ancient Jewish commitment to justice.” 

Speaking of behaving morally and volunteering, as part of my Mitzvah preparation process, I engaged in a Mitzvah project where I helped raise money for a non profit organization called High Fives. High Fives is committed to helping people who have faced life-changing injuries be able to participate in sports, such as skiing and snowboarding. To take part in helping them succeed, I raised $500. Thank you to those who made donations. Another part of this was to go to the ski-a-thon and help with signing people in and also seeing how many laps I could ski during a certain amount of time.

Now that I know the teachings from my Torah portion, I will definitely be tuning deeper into how my actions affect the consequences. I will also be more aware of the times when I could say Amen. When you reach to give someone a fist bump, and they leave you hanging, it could be like not getting an Amen back after you have read a prayer. 

As I head into the next few years I will encounter situations where my parents are going to want me to do something and I may not want to do it, or I may not be inclined to say Amen out loud, but I could say it in my heart. I know my parents' intentions are always good, and they are looking out for me, like Moses did for the Israelites. 

And to that let us say Amen.
Shabbat Shalom!