Mindful Torah...and more

This week's parashah /portion is Vayelekh ( Devarim / Deuteronomy 31:1-30). As Moses prepares to die, he continues his oration to the people. In this parashah , he informs them that God has revealed to him that, after his death, the people will go astray, break the covenant that God has made with them and worship alien gods. As consequence, many evils will befall them. But God reveals to Moses that they will realize the error of their ways and proclaim, " 'surely it is because God is not in our midst that this evil has befallen us.' Yet I (God) will keep my countenance hidden on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods." (Deut. 31:17-18). Rabbi Isaac Meir Rothenburg Alter of Ger (1787-1866) commented on this passage, that if a person is aware that something is hidden from him, then the disaster is not so great, for he will follow his yearning, and break down every barrier that exists in order to discover what is hidden. Howe

This week's parashah /portion is Ki Tavo ( Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:1 -29:8). The opening lines describe the ritual that the people are meant to enact when they enter the Promised Land and bring their first fruits of their harvest as an offering of thanks to God. When the people bring the basket of first fruits to the priest we read: "And the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of YHWH, your God. And you shall answer and say in front of YHWH, your God:   My father was a wandering Aramean, so he went down to Egypt and resided there with few persons and became a large, powerful and numerous nation there. And the Egyptians oppressed us and degraded us and imposed hard work on us. And we cried out to YHWH ... And YHWH brought us out from Egypt ... to this place and gave us this land ... and now, here, I've brought the first of the fruit of the land that you've given me, YHWH." (26:4 - 10) . The phrase used to begin