Ki Tavo – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom from Jerusalem. My name is Joseph Shulam, and I’ve been recording together with Brad TV, the Torah portion that are being read in every synagogue every week on Shabbat. This next Shabbat, the reading will come from Deuteronomy 26:1 to 29:8.

The name of the portion is Ki Tavo, which means, and you shall be when you come into the land. When you come into the land, Ki Tavo. The previous portion was when you go out to war. So now it’s when you come into the land. Shavuot is one of the three pilgrimage holidays that the Torah commands to Israel. And these three holidays are still practiced and still celebrated, not only in Israel but in every Jewish community around the world. These were known as pilgrimage holidays because the people of Israel were commanded to come to Jerusalem to worship in the temple on Shavuot, the feast of Pentecost. They were commanded to bring their first fruits and dedicate their first fruits to God in the temple and pass it on to the priest and to the Levites.

Today, of course we have no temple, but Shavuot is a very, very important holiday. And believe it or not, at the beginning of springtime and beginning of summer, Shavuot, the end of the wheat harvest in the land of Israel, and in our communal farm on our Kibbutz, Shavuot is still celebrated. Pentecost is still celebrated in every Jewish community around the world, especially in the land of Israel because it has to do with, when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you possess it and you dwell in it you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground and you shall bring them from the land that the Lord your God is giving you and put it in a basket and go in the place where the Lord you God has chosen make his name abide. Okay.

So, clearly this portion starts with the feast of Pentecost. Now, isn’t it strange, dear brothers and sisters, isn’t it strange that the holidays that are in the word of God, commanded in the word of God, practiced by Jesus himself, and by the apostles, and celebrated the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost in Acts 2, are totally ignored by the church, all 38,000 of them? Denominations, groups, sects, call themself Christians, ignoring the examples of the apostles and the commands of the Torah and the practices of Jesus himself. What he celebrated; Christians don’t celebrate. What the apostles celebrated; Christians don’t celebrate. What the Holy Spirit gave them on Pentecost, they don’t celebrate. What do they celebrate? I’m not going to say it. You can guess it, but here is the rules and this fantastic text that is unique in the whole Bible in which we know what the worshipers that came on Pentecost bringing their basket of first fruit said to the priest that received them in the temple. We have the words. I think that this is fabulous and fantastic and very important.

Let me read again a little bit further down. I’m starting again from verse one. “And it shall be when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. You possess it and dwell in it.” You, means Israel here. It doesn’t mean anybody else. The Lord your God, who created the heavens and the earth, has given you, the people of Israel, that were slaves in Egypt, and came out of Egypt, to possess the land, the land of Canaan, as an inheritance. “You shall take some of the first fruits of all the produce of the ground, which you shall bring from your land, that the Lord your God is giving you and put it in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide,” meaning the temple in Jerusalem. That’s a code word in the book of Deuteronomy for Jerusalem, “the place that God has chosen.”

I imagine he doesn’t have to say it word for word, but the gist of it, he has to say:

This is the only text we have, of what a person that came and brought his tithes, his first fruits, and dedicated them to God.

But let me back up. When he gave it to the priest, what happened with that basket full of first fruits, the best of the field, the purest, the most beautiful? What happened to it? Notice, it wasn’t only for the Priest. It was for the fatherless, the orphans, for the strangers; which means the non-Jews living in the camp of Israel. It was for the widows, for the orphans.

That was the purpose of the tithing folks. That was the purpose of the blessing that God gave this man. And he, on Pentecost is bringing them, and dedicating them to the Lord, on the altar of the Lord. And then the priest takes that, and divides it to the fatherless, to the widows to the strangers, to the poor, to those who are sick, to those can’t work in the fields, and produce fruit. It’s fantastic!

But the most fantastic part of it, in my opinion, is what the guy said about our origin as Israelites, as Jews. How he describes who Abraham our father is. Abraham, our father is a lost Syrian, a lost Armenian, who was about to perish, according to the English translation. Because he was about to perish, he went down to Egypt. Not only Abraham, but he is expanding Abraham into Isaac, and Jacob. All went down to Egypt, because of the hunger that was in the land of Canaan, because they were about to perish. And in Egypt, the nation grew from a few people, according to what he’s confessing here, into a great and mighty nation. And the Egyptian mistreated us, afflicted us, laid us into hard bondage. And then we cried unto the Lord, and the Lord heard our cry and delivered us from Egypt and gave us the land, which he promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I am just so touched every time I read this text. Yes, it might be because I’m a Jew. It might be because I live in the land of Israel. It might be because I know God, and I know his son Yeshua, our Lord, our divine Messiah, savior of the whole world. But these words are emotionally touching my heart, and teaching me as a disciple of Yeshua, of Jesus, about giving, about tithing.

Tithing is coming here from a man who is humbling himself and humbling his origins as an Israelite, as a Jew, as a member of the 12 tribes, the sons of Jacob. He says “our forefather”, meaning Abraham, “came out of Syria.” Humble, about to perish. We are children of a lost Armenian. Literally that’s what the Hebrew says. But we are racially proud of something. We have something to be proud, because we are Jews, because we’re Israelites. No, not according to this word.

On the contrary, we are indebted to God, and to our society and to our community. We are indebted for all the blessings that we enjoy from God. And I say this not only because I’m an Israelite and I’m a Jew, but I say it to my Christian brothers and sisters. We are all under the grace of God, and we have nothing to be proud of ourselves, but only proud of the God who loves us, and has given us a great inheritance on earth and in heaven. That doesn’t give us a right to have our nose up in the air. It gives us a right to be humble. Obligation to be humbled from our origins, whether you are a son of a king of England, or a son of Genghis Khan, or a son of Pol Pot in Cambodia, that murdered hundreds of thousands of people, it doesn’t make difference.

We are all indebted to God for any goodness, for any fruit, for any money, for any house, for any job, for any family that we have, we are indebted to the almighty God for everything. And we need to be grateful and humbled with the privilege of giving tithes, with the privilege of giving gifts, with the privilege of supporting missions and churches, and synagogues, and the fatherless, the orphans and the widows, which we are commanded in the law of Moses, in the prophets and in the New Testament, to take care of these less fortunate than we are.

I think that this is a fabulous portion, very important, because of the words that the worshipers say when they come to Jerusalem. Sometimes they come from the Galilee, sometimes from the Negev, sometimes from Cypress or from Greece or from Assyria, or from Persia, from all over the ancient world. This portion of the Torah, this is the flag of tithing. What it means, the signal, what it means to tithe on Pentecost. When the worshiper comes to Jerusalem.

Let me read one more verse. Verse 11 of the same chapter. “You shall rejoice in every good thing which the Lord your God has given you and your house, you and the Levite, and the stranger who is among you.” Again, “you shall rejoice in every good thing which the Lord your God has given you.”

What does that say? To me it says that nothing that I have, I have earned on my own. Not even my life, not even my breath, my eyesight my ability to speak, my family, my children, my wife, my house, my car. Nothing, that I have received from God, I have earned; as the Western paradigm of America, of being a self-made man, doesn’t exist in the Bible. None of us are self-made men, whatever we are, academically, educationally, financially, family wise, is all something that we should rejoice for every good thing which the Lord your God has given you, and be grateful for his gifts, and for his mercy. That gives us breath and life and everything that we enjoy.

This is in the book of Deuteronomy, it’s not in the New Testament, although the same principles are in the New Testament, but this is in the book of Deuteronomy.

And I think that verse 15 of the same chapter 26 of Deuteronomy, also has a message that I would like to end this teaching for today.

Look down from heaven. He’s praying to God now. It says, in verse 14,

Gratitude to God is absolutely necessary. We can complain, but even in our complaint, we need to be grateful. Think about Luke 17, about the 10 lepers that were healed by Jesus on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem through Samaria and only one returned. The Samaritan returned, bowed down in front of Jesus, kissing his feet. And Jesus says, oh, I’m glad you came to thank me, but where are the other nine?

And I’m asking you, dear brothers and sisters wherever you are, where are the other nine? Look at yourself, ask yourself, am I that Samaritan that came back to Jesus, and was grateful? And thanked him? Or am I one of the other nines that enjoys the blessings and forgets the gratitude?

May God bless us all. And forgive us, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.