Ki Tavo
What happens when we don’t have any joy to share?
Reflection by Carrie Watkins, US Community Manager:
"Parshat Ki Tavo begins with a commandment to take all the first fruits the people will harvest in The Land, put them in a basket, and take them to the priests as offerings. When they make the offering, they are directed to recite a passage (which we still recite thousands of years later in the Passover seder) reminding them of their slavery in Egypt and subsequent freedom.
It is a ritual meant to remind the people where they came from and keep them from taking their new bounty for granted. The fruits of their labors are not, and were never, entirely theirs.
The verse directly following this commandment of the first fruits takes the mitzvah a step further. 'And you shall be made joyous by all the good that Hashem your God has bestowed upon your household.' It’s a prescriptive statement, a commandment. Be happy!
What does it feel like to be commanded to be happy? Check in with yourself for a moment.
I imagine for some of you, it’s a delight. What a great religion, that these are our laws! For others - how can we be commanded to feel something, especially in these days that the world can feel so heavy? What happens if we just aren’t feeling it?
We’re told in our parsha in the command form - ושמחת - that we will be made happy by the abundance that we will harvest, and then the verse continues, `you and the Levite and the stranger in your midst` (Deut 26:11). Ibn Ezra, a Spanish commentator from the Middle Ages, says that this addition of categories of people who don’t have their own land to harvest from, `means you are obligated to cheer them up with the fruit of your land.` We are obligated to cheer people up with fruit!
This simcha command appears in the second person singular, addressed to each of us as individuals. As it turns out, this form appears a small handful of other times in the Torah, all in Deuteronomy, and all closely followed by the commandment to not keep that happiness singular but to share it with others.
So simcha doesn’t mean, `be happy!` but something more like, joy shared.
Just as we offer up our first fruits, recognizing that they were never ours alone to possess, so too with our joy. Our happiness was never meant to be for us alone. What we’re commanded here is to share in our joy, just as we share the first fruits.
So, where does that leave us when we don’t have enough joy for ourselves, let alone to share?
I would like to offer that this is one of the reasons so much of Judaism is practiced in community. Just like Ibn Ezra says, when we have enough, we’re obligated to share it with others. That means that when we don’t have enough, others are obligated to share with us. And we don’t share out of a sense of charity. Everyone benefits. Simcha isn’t simcha unless it's shared.
Wishing you a Shabbat of sharing in and receiving joy."