Please join us in shul this Shabbat Parashat Ki Tavo
This week’s parasha, parashat Ki Tavo, contains what is perhaps one of the central people-building moments in Jewish history. Moses, drawing to the end of his epic speech that is the book of Deuteronomy, gives the Israelites one last explanation of the blessings that they will receive should they heed God’s commandments and of the curses that will come should they fail to do so.
Just before Moses goes into the details of these blessings and curses, he says:
“Silence! Hear, O Israel! Today you have become the people of the ETERNAL your God.”
The word meaning “silence,” in Hebrew, hasket, is unusual—it appears less than a few times in the entire bible. Such a rare word prompts the rabbis to wonder whether it really means “silence” or if it could have a hidden meaning.
In a midrash, the rabbis offer an alternative explanation for this word. They break the word hasket into two pieces: hass, meaning “quiet,” and kat, meaning “group.” For the Israelites to become a nation, for them to truly listen to what Moses is telling them, they must first hass, be quiet, then kat, split into small groups so that they can better learn and understand what it means to be a nation. Only then can they receive Moses’ instruction; only then can they learn to be a unified community.
This advice holds true for our community as well. We need micro-communities within our community so that those who have more in common with one another can find people who make them feel at home. Only once people feel at home will they identify with our broader synagogue community. It takes finding your people, those with whom you share life-experiences or interests, to build a sense of ownership over our broader synagogue community. In fact Our community is already composed of successful smaller communities: Sisterhood, MPC, young families, empty nesters, people interested in ritual life, people interested in cultural life, and more.
Central to Moses’ message, however, is that we break into small communities only for the purpose of strengthening the larger people. Our synagogue is strengthened when the micro-communities it contains work to strengthen themselves with the understanding that their strength is our strength, their success is our success, and when they lift themselves up, they lift all of us up.
Read more about this week's parasha here.
Have a gut shabbos!
-Rabbi Eitan Bloostein
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