Ki Thavo: the contract

The parsha is titled: "when you arrive [in the land]" The parsha is the agreement concerning the obligations to The Granter and the consequences of not fulfilling the obligation.  The reward, living in The Promised Land of Milk and Honey, comes at a price...if the conditions are not met. 

The litany of punishments is hard to read.  Were it not that they actually happened in the lifetime of my parents, they would be unbelievable.  But the worst of these punishments was imposed on millions of the descendants of the people addressed by Moshe.  These consequences of the evil exile all came to pass prior to the renewal of the agreement with the First Flowering of our Redemption, the establishment of the State of Israel. 

The curse is the natural consequence of the blessing of  accepting the reward.  Once the people accept a relationship to The Land,   a dimension of longing for the return is added to the exile.  This is a significant block to integration into the new place.   A curse and a blessing.

After the presentation of the evils that will befall the wayward people, Moshe reminds us that Gd is capable of miracles.  The great miracles seen in Egypt and the the smaller miracles of  clothing and shoes that last for forty years, life in the absence of bread wine and spirits.

The choices: Egypt, bread (presumably leavened) wine and spirits  are reminders of the gifts of technology.  Egypt had been the technological capital of the world.  They had harnessed the fermentation process to produce products that were so good , they seemed to become necessities of life; it became miraculous to live without them.  These wondrous products  were the yield of human ingenuity, a human contribution to the world.

 Benefiting from technology is also an implicit contract.  It calls on Gd to maintain the conditions for the technology to work ... and someone has to clean up the mess left behind.