Ki Tavo
Do we know how to share our happiness?
Reflection by Or HaLev US Community Manager Carrie Watkins
"Parshat Ki Tavo outlines more of Moses’ instructions to the people on how to build a just and lasting society in the Promised Land. It 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 rather delightful step further. `And you shall be made happy by all the good that Hashem your God has bestowed upon your household.` We’re told 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 happiness command appears in the second person singular, addressed to each of us as individuals. 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.
Just as we offer up our first fruits, recognizing that they were never ours alone to possess, so too with our happiness. Our happiness was never meant to be for us alone. It was always meant to be shared.
This Shabbat, as the moon wanes towards the start of our New Year, may we find joy in everything we have accomplished this year, and may we not hesitate to share that joy with others."