Ki Thavo: the Deal 

The parsha is about acknowledging  Divine benevolence  and recognizing that straying from the law has dire consequences.  The parsha begins with the Pilgrim's declaration אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי, וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה, 'A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, ...וַיָּרֵעוּ אֹתָנוּ הַמִּצְרִים And the Egyptians dealt ill with us,... וַיּוֹצִאֵנוּ  And the LORD brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders. 

It ends with: אַתֶּם רְאִיתֶם, אֵת כָּל-אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה  Ye have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt .  וְלֹא-נָתַן  but the LORD hath not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day. Between the demands for acknowledgement at the beginning and end of the parsha,  there is a brief list of blessings  for obedience and  a litany of punishments and curses for transgression  of the covenant - the rewards and punishments. 

This is the arrival referred  to by the title of the parsha: כִּי-תָבוֹא: when you arrive . The arrival  is the heart to know and the eyes to see. The slave and wanderer cannot fully comprehend the scope of the plan and spectacle of the reward. It is only now, after the cycle of humiliations and redemption has been repeated (many times)  that you can comprehend  your world. 

How did you get into this agreement?  Now, 3,500 years later, we have seen iterations of the pattern.  My parents lived through the great chastisement  of the twentieth century when all  of the tortures listed in  Deuteronomy chapter 28  were delivered on a scale, and with cruelty,  that the ancients could not imagine. Then, the state of Israel is born and grows fat; the children of the survivors never know the meaning of want. One full turn. What happens next? 

Generally, we recall the Exodus from Egypt as the starting point of this dysfunctional relationship of beatings and reconciliations. The parsha reports that the story begins just before the descent into Egypt. אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי, וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה, 'A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt. It was a wandering Aramean  that descended to Egypt. It was a person with an ethnicity that we do not share, and his descendants were transformed into a people that we can (albeit remotely) identify as our ancestors: the Hebrews.  

The official translation of the Torah is that of Onkelos, in the era of the Roman Empire.  He "translates " the passage: אֲרַמָּאָה בָּעָא לְאוֹבָדָא יָת אַבָּא An Aramean attempted to annihilate my father. This interpretation  translates אֹבֵד as "destroy," rather than "lost." Rashi adds details Laban wished to exterminate the whole nation” . This interpretation preserves Jacob as Hebrew, rather than Aramean.  It also hints at the possibility that Jacob  was, perhaps, slipping  into an Aramean approach to life, a perspective exemplified by the conniving Laban.  Ultimately, it was the Laban-like, callous, transactional  behavior of  selling  Joseph into slavery, that led to the bondage of Israel in Egypt. Measure for measure, Lex talionis

Nothing rational blocks the recurrent  carnage. Poverty did not prevent pogroms, wealth baited the holocaust.  The level of spiritual perfection required to stop the slaughter seems beyond reach. 

There is a pattern to history; make the best of it.  Oy!