Ki Thavo: Arriving

The annual Torah cycle brings us to Ki Thavo in the fall, as the calendar year fades, as the high holidays approach. In the Northern hemisphere, the natural world shows signs of aging: the leaves have their fall colors, animals prepare for hibernation.  The seasons are a cycle, but fall, as the days become shorter, feels like the beginning of the end. It is the threshold of the final arrival. 

Moses knows that he will die when Israelites enter the promised land. He delivers his strongest prophecy, predictions of destruction and glory, that have palpably come to pass. 

Historical records have become increasingly detailed. When the Torah was written, the parchment and scribal services were so expensive that only sparse details could be preserved. Printing expanded the view. The camera and the movie brought immediacy. The film footage of the holocaust does not capture the scope of the horror; most of the abuses and murders were hidden. The viewer needs to multiply the visualized horror by an unfathomable factor.  Now, with AI's ability to create images, there is a significant danger of deception - and multiplying the deception out of habit. 

The first chastisement is confusion. The detailed description is introduced:

אֶת־הַמְּאֵרָ֤ה אֶת־הַמְּהוּמָה֙ וְאֶת־הַמִּגְעֶ֔רֶת

The curse, the confusion and the ….

הַמִּגְעֶ֔רֶת ( Hamigereth) is a unique word that appears only once in the canon text (a hapax legomenon).

Rashi translates

המארה  (hama’eyrah) means PAUCITY and המהומה   (hamihumah) A TERRIFYING SOUND.

Rashi does not translate הַמִּגְעֶ֔רֶת. (Hamigereth)

Targum translates the word: מְזוֹפִיתָא  (mizofitha): frustration, vexation.  Perhaps this is a reflexive translation. It  reflects the frustration of translating a word that appears only once.

This ambiguity of the word begins to convey the horror. After a curse and confusion, there is something bad, probably worse, coming and what it is... is unclear. Obscurity and uncertainty add to the dread. Trepidation is possibly the worst emotion I have felt. 

This is the season of apprehension. The world is changing around us. It gets colder. The leaves fall.  The weather is more unpredictable. We begin selichoth, the extra prayers begging forgiveness for what we have done  and what we have failed to do.  We use this prayer formula because we are not sure that we remember or recognize all of our errors and failings. We do not understand how Gd  answers our prayers.  Will we suffer for our own good? How will we fit into the Big Plan?

The degradation and destruction and desolation described in the parsha is national, not individual. Personal suffering is subsumed into the collective. Is there an obligation for  the individual to move the nation toward good? It would seem so.  Failure leads to personal pain and the torture of watching others suffer. 

For me, the GOOD is confusing. Torah is a nationalist treatise that favors the Israelite although it affords some rights to most other peoples. I grew up in the USA. I was taught that the tolerance value: respect for all people is the saving grace... and my family was the beneficiary of that grace. As I have learned more, I am skeptical  about the practice of that tolerance value... and in the current era, it seems to be dying. To me, tolerance remains an appealing value...something to fight for. 

The curse is presented as a progression. It starts with natural disasters – drought and disease  - and  progresses to defeat , exile and subjugation. The atrocities described evoke the holocaust. It is distressing that this ancient text, describing the most repulsive scenes Moshe can imagine,  does not quite equal the reality of Poland in 1942.

How did this text prepare the Jews in the Eastern European exile?  When the persecution came, did they see it as the expected fulfillment of the prophecy? Did the passage, heard (by many) innumerable  times since childhood, add a sense of familiarity to the persecution? Was there some comfort in the prediction? Did it make the nation more cooperative and thus help the evil enemy?

Today's daf yomi (Horayoth 12a) relates to the parsha. One of the last kings of Judea, יְהוֹאָחָז, Yeho-ochaz, was anointed, presumably with the anointing oil  that Moses had formulated and has been preserved for such occasions. But the gemarrah argues that the authentic anointing oil had been sequestered: 

But isn’t it taught in a baraita: When the Ark of the Covenant was sequestered, the anointing oil, and the jar of manna (see Exodus 16:33), and Aaron’s staff with its almonds and blossoms (see Numbers 17:23), and the chest that the Philistines sent as a gift to Israel, were all sequestered...

And who sequestered the Ark? Josiah, king of Judea, sequestered it, as he saw that it is written in the Torah in the portion of rebuke: “The Lord will lead you, and your king whom you shall establish over you, unto a nation that you have not known” (Deuteronomy 28:36). He commanded and the people sequestered them,...

The prophetic prediction of the downfall of the Jewish monarchy motivated the removal of the equipment needed for its validated continuation. Was this an act of hope for a better, but distant, future? Was the anointing oil hidden to prevent the recognition of pretenders to the throne? 

I worry that the current crest in the cycle, the glory period, is ending. I always enter this season: selichoth, fall, end of the year - with trepidation.  This year, quite a bit more.