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From:
"Yeshivat Har Etzion's Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit
Midrash"
To:
yhe-parsha@vbm-torah.org
Subject: PARSHA -49: Parashat
Ki Tavo
YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT
MIDRASH (VBM)
*********************************************************
PARASHAT KI TAVO
The Mitzva of Bikkurim (25:1-11)
By Rav Elchanan Samet
I. SHARED AND UNIQUE ASPECTS OF BIKKURIM
At first glance, it would
seem that the mitzva of
bringing the bikkurim (first
fruits) to the Temple
belongs to the category of mitzvot of "reishit" (first)
-
a category which includes
teruma, terumat ma'aser,
challa, the first fleece, the firstborn of animals,
the
redemption of firstborn children, etc. The
commentators
who offer reasons for the mitzvot - e.g. Rambam
(Moreh
Nevukhim III:39) and Sefer Ha-Chinukh (mitzva 91) - agree
on a common reason for all these mitzvot: the offering of
the "first" of everything that one has
represents one's
recognition of the fact that God is Master of
ALL our
possessions, and that He is the source of our bounty.
However, the mitzva of bikkurim (Devarim
25:1-11 and
elsewhere) is unique among the mitzvot of "reishit"
owing
to a few of its important details, and we must
seek an
understanding of this particular mitzva that
addresses
these details:
i.The mitzva of bringing bikkurim is
accompanied in our parasha by another mitzva, the "bikkurim declaration." When bringing
the bikkurim, one is obligated to recite the
formulation stipulated in verses 3 and 5-10. The other
"first" mitzvot have no requirement for any accompanying
declaration (other than the "vidui
ma'asrot," recited "at the end of three years").
ii. The first fruits must be
brought to the Temple: they are a 'mincha' offering. In
fact, Chazal teach that "the bikkurim are brought only before the Temple (i.e., when the Temple
stands)." The other "first" mitzvot applying
to the individual have no such connection with the Temple.
(Although ma'aser sheni and the firstborn of pure
animals are brought to Jerusalem, the obligation of
this mitzva is not cancelled in the absence of the Temple.)
iii. The obligation of bikkurim applies to the "seven species" of Eretz Yisrael (Mishna Bikkurim
1:3). In this it is different from
the terumot and ma'asrot which, by Torah law,
apply to grain, wine and oil, and which are extended by
rabbinical law to include all produce from the land
(according to the opinion of most of the Rishonim). The
obligation of bikkurim is not extended by Chazal any
further than the seven
species. The obligation of bringing bikkurim of the
seven species is not even an absolute requirement, as is the case in terumot and ma'asrot: bikkurim are brought only from
produce of the choicest
quality (Mishna, ibid.; Rambam, Bikkurim 2:3).
iv. The obligation of
bringing the first fruits applies to the owner of the land in
which the fruits were grown. Thus, someone who buys
one tree in a field that belongs to someone else
does not bring bikkurim, since the land is not his
(Mishna Bikkurim 1:6). Similarly, leaseholders
and tenants do not bring bikkurim (ibid, mishna 2).
The other "first" mitzvot pertaining to agricultural
produce apply to fruit that grows in Eretz Yisrael, no
matter who the land belongs to.
II. BIKKURIM AS THANKS FOR THE LAND, NOT THE FRUIT
The explanation for the uniqueness
of the mitzva of
bikkurim should naturally be sought
in the bikkurim
declaration which accompanies their
presentation. We
would expect to find, in this
declaration, words of
thanks to God for the fruits which have ripened and
for
God's mercy in providing rain. But, in fact, the
bearer
of the bikkurim thanks
God for His mercies as
demonstrated in the history of Am Yisrael, from the time
of the forefathers until the inheritance of
the land.
What is the connection between this historical review and
the bringing of bikkurim?
Martin Buber, in his article
"Bikkurim" (in "Darko
shel Mikra," pp.
82-87), provides a beautiful
explanation, part of which we shall quote here:
"Gifts offered to the gods
from the first of the harvest are a familiar phenomenon of all
cultures...as are prayers... thanking the gods for
the blessing of the land... and asking them to
ensure that the land remains fertile. But of
all these types of prayers in the world, I know of only one in
which the worshipper praises God for having given him a LAND. The opening already points to this: 'And it
shall be when you come to the land which Hashem your
God gives you'... Only the beginning of the mitzva speaks
to Am Yisrael (in the verse quoted above),
while all the other verbs ('you shall take, you shall
say,' etc.) ... are quite clearly addressed not to the
nation as a whole but rather to the individual... The
condition for the mitzva is collective, but the
obligation is individual. Furthermore, the condition is
a one-time historical phenomenon, while the
obligation applies on a yearly basis...
Even in later generations, the bearer of the bikkurim is not to say, for example, 'My
forefathers came to the land,' but rather, 'I have
come to the land.' Here the two entities addressed by
the Torah, the nation and the individual, come
together. 'I have come to the land' means, first and foremost, 'I
- the nation of Israel - have
come to the land.' The speaker identifies with Am Yisrael and speaks
in the name of the nation...
The speaker does not say merely 'I have
come to the land,' but rather he states that he 'declares'
to God that he has come to the land.
The significance of this is as follows: I testify and identify
myself as a person who has come to the
land... He does this because he has to say,
'Not only the nation of Israel, but also this man who stands here has
come to the land. I, the
individual, identify myself as someone who has come to the land, and
from time to time, when I bring the
first of its fruits, I recognize this fact anew and
declare it anew...'
Every farmer in every generation of Israel
thanks God when he brings his bikkurim for the land to
which He brought HIM."
Thus we learn that the unique
reason for the mitzva of bringing bikkurim is to serve as an
opportunity for
every owner of land in Israel to thank God for the
gift
of the land - that historical phenomenon which took place
in the past and which continues and is relived until the
present moment when the Israelite farmer stands
in the
Temple, his basket of bikkurim in his arms. Let us refer
once again to Buber:
"This 'bringing' of the bikkurim and
that 'bringing' to the land are included together in the
prayer with a covert parallel (9-10): 'And He BROUGHT us
to this place... and now I HAVE BROUGHT
the first of the fruits of the land...' What is expressed here
is the mutual interaction between God and His nation.
'I was brought by Him to this
fertile land,' says the
farmer, 'and now I am
bringing Him some of its fruit.' This conveys more than
just gratitude. The entire land is given to the nation by God's
hand; the produce which the man who is
brought there brings from the ground is likewise from God's
blessing and His actions; one cannot GIVE Him something of
it, but one may BRING Him something - the
choicest of the
first fruits as a symbol and as
sanctification."
The root
"b-o-a" (to come, to bring) appears six
times in the parasha of bikkurim, in two groups of three.
The parallel between the two groups indicates
the two
major movements of the parasha (God bringing man to
the
land, and man bringing
bikkurim to God) and the
relationship between them.
But there is another root used in
this parasha that
serves to indicate the unilateral action of God
towards
Israel - the root "n-t-n" (to give).
God, Who BROUGHT
Israel to the land, also GIVES it to them. By
contrast,
the root 'n-t-n' is never used in conjunction
with the
bringing of bikkurim. This verb appears seven
times in
the hinting to the reader that this "giving" is
the crux
of the parasha. As Buber notes, in the first
three and
the last three appearances of "n-t-n," this
word refers
to God's gift to Israel, while in the center (the fourth
appearance) we find a strange "giving" -
"and they [the
Egyptians] gave upon us hard labor."
This incongruous
use of "n-t-n" illustrates most
tangibly the negative
contrast with the Divine giving. Furthermore, Buber
continues,
"God's great gift to Israel
is the land; this is impressed in our minds with a
five-fold repetition [of 'n-t-n']. Finally (25:11), this root is used
in a more general way in order
to leave no room for mistake: 'You shall rejoice in ALL
THE GOOD which Hashem your God has given you' - not
only the land itself but also its yearly produce comes
as a gift from God's hand."
III. THE BIKKURIM DECLARATION
In verses 5-9, the bearer of
the bikkurim reviews
the history from the period of the forefathers up
until
the inheritance of the land. This review is characterized
by the fact that the bearer of the bikkurim
speaks of
Israel in the first person plural:
"They were evil
towards us... and we cried... and He took us out...
and
He gave us," unlike the declaration in verse 3, in
which
he speaks in the first person singular: "I
declare... I
have come." At the conclusion of his
historical review
the bearer of the bikkurim returns once again, in
verse
10, to the present, and speaks again in the first person
singular: "And now, behold, I HAVE BROUGHT the
first of
the fruits of the land which God HAS GIVEN TO ME."
The content and structure of
the historical speech
in verses 5-9 is reminiscent of another speech, which we
have discussed in the past: that of God at the beginning
of parashat Va'era. The similarity between the two is not
coincidental: God's speech represents His undertaking to
fulfill that which He promised to the forefathers:
that
their descendants would be taken out from the
Egyptian
slavery, that they would be brought to the land and that
He would give it to them. The speech by the bearer of the
bikkurim is the human
confirmation made by the
descendants, testifying to the fact
that God has
fulfilled His promise to the forefathers: He indeed took
their descendants out of Egypt, brought them to the land
and gave it to them.
Let us analyze the structure of this
declaration and
see what we may learn from it. The speech is comprised of
two equal parts, with verse 7 serving as a central
axis
between them.
PART 1:
(5) "My father was a wandering Aramean,
and he went down to Egypt and dwelled there
few in number, and became there a great, mighty and
populous nation.
(6) And the Egyptians
were evil towards us and afflicted us, and placed upon us hard
labor."
PIVOTAL AXIS:
(7) "And we cried to Hashem, the
God of our fathers, and God heard our voices and saw
our affliction and our labor and our oppression."
PART 2:
(8) "And God took us out of Egypt, with a
strong hand and an outstretched arm and
with great terror and with signs and with wonders.
(9) And He brought us to this place and gave
us this land, a land flowing with milk and
honey."
What distinguishes each half
from the other? The answer is quite obvious: the first half describes
HUMAN
ACTION - God is not mentioned in this half. The
second
half describes DIVINE ACTION: the exodus
from Egypt,
God's leading of Israel "to this place," and
His giving
it to them.
What is the meaning of
the absence of God's name
from the first half of the
speech? The first half
describes the historical events as being of the type
in
which God's presence is hidden, where even Israel do not
perceive His hand. The descent of Ya'akov and his family
to Egypt and what happens there to his descendants, both
for the good (the miraculous multiplicity) and
for the
bad (slavery and affliction), represent the
realization
of God's decree as made explicit in the "brit
bein ha-betarim," but God did not reveal Himself to
His nation
throughout that long period.
This break comes to a halt in the
"central axis" of
the speech: the turning point takes place when Israel are
at their lowest point: "And we cried to Hashem,
the God
of our fathers." In the wake of Bnei
Yisrael's cry to
God, "God heard our voices and saw our
affliction." In
the central axis of the
speech we see a mutual
relationship being established between God and
Israel:
the "hester panim" (hiding of God's face)
is over, but
the execution of the
necessary action is not yet
described here. It is only in the second half that God's
awesome historical act is revealed, redeeming His nation
from Egypt and bringing them
to the land for an
inheritance. Thus the central axis of verse
7 is the
outgrowth of verse 6 in the first half
- it is the
affliction and hard labor that give rise to the
cry to
God - and this in turn is the cause of verse 8
in the
second half - when God hears the
cry and sees the
affliction, that gives rise to His
historical action:
"And God took us out of Egypt..."
There is a clear contrasting
chiastic structure in
this speech, of the form A-B-C-B-A. Verse 5
opens the
speech with the wanderings of the forefathers in
Canaan
and their descent to Egypt; verse 9 concludes the speech
with their descendants being brought from Egypt back
to
Canaan. Verse 6
describes the Egyptians' cruel
mistreatment of the Israelites; verse 8,
in contrast,
describes God's removal of His people from Egypt and his
punishment of their oppressors.
The background to the entire
speech is undoubtedly
the brit bein ha-betarim which God made with Avraham (the
"covenant between the pieces," Bereishit ch.
15). There
are clear linguistic and thematic connections between the
two. The significance of the "bikkurim
declaration" is
therefore recognition and gratitude for
God's having
fulfilled the covenant He made with Avraham.
Therefore,
the section of the Pesach Haggada which
expounds the
"bikkurim declaration" is preceded by the following:
"Blessed is He who
keeps His promise to Israel, Blessed be He. For the Holy One
calculated what He would do in the end, as He said to Avraham our
father in the brit bein ha-betarim..."
IV. THE SPECIAL CONNECTION BETWEEN BIKKURIM AND THE
LAND
Why was it specifically bikkurim,
of all the "first
gifts," that were chosen to serve as the vehicle for
our
gratitude to God for the gift of the land? The
bikkurim
combine two qualities which are not found together in the
other "first" gifts brought from the produce of the
land,
and it is these qualities that make this mitzva special.
Firstly, the bikkurim are
brought from the seven
species which are the epitome of the
praise of Eretz
Yisrael. Secondly, the farmer has a special affection of
the fruits that are the first to ripen; he awaits
their
appearance with great excitement.
Yishayahu (28:4)
describes the anticipation:
"Like the first ripe fig before
summer which, when one sees it, he swallows it up while it
is still in his hand."
But the Israelite farmer does not treat his first fruit,
the joy of his heart, in this way:
"A person goes down to his field and sees
a fig that has ripened, a cluster of grapes that has
ripened or a pomegranate that has ripened -
he ties a thread around them and says, 'Behold, these are bikkurim!'" (Mishna Bikkurim 3:1)
The bikkurim of the seven
species with which Eretz
Yisrael is blessed are therefore the
essence of the
praise and beauty of the land, and bringing them to
the
Temple as a 'mincha' offering to
God expresses most
appropriately our gratitude to Him for having given us a
beautiful land that gives forth its
fruit with such
generosity.
This answers the third
question we asked at the
outset: Why do we bring bikkurim only
from the seven
species? In light of this, we can also explain that other
laws that are unique to the mitzva of bikkurim:
1) The "bikkurim
declaration" is meant to clarify
the special reason for the mitzva of bringing
bikkurim,
which is unlike the reason for the other "first"
mitzvot.
2) The crux
of the reason for the mitzva of
bikkurim, which is an expression of gratitude to God for
the gift of the land, lies not in
the fact that it
represents one of the twenty-four gifts given to the koh
but rather in the fact that it is a 'MINCHA' TO GOD
Who
gives the land. The kohanim consume the bikkurim in
the
same way as they have the merit
of consuming other
offerings brought to the Temple. For this
reason, the
mitzva depends on the existence of
the Temple. The
destruction of the Temple was a (temporary) disruption of
God's gift of the land to Israel. When this halt occurs,
the mitzva of bikkurim cannot continue.
4) Even when Israel dwell in the land
and the Temple
stands, the obligation of bringing bikkurim applies only
to the person who brings them from his own portion of the
land. Ownership of the fruits is not in itself sufficient
reason for the obligation; the owner of the fruit
needs
to be a partner in Israel's inheritance of the land.
If
the fruits grew on land which was not his own, then they
do not provide sufficient basis for his gratitude for the
gift of the land.
(Translated by Kaeren Fish)
YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH
ALON SHEVUT, GUSH ETZION 90433
Copyright (c) 1999 Yeshivat Har Etzion
All Rights Reserved
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