Photo courtesy of Chabad.org
A WEEKLY TORAH THOUGHT BY RABBI MORDY
This week’s Parsha (Ki Tavo) continues with commandments relating to residing in the Land of Israel and laws relating to the first fruits that the Jewish people are instructed to bring to the Temple. After a series of laws, the Torah then repeats something we read in the earlier Books (as was with the Ten Commandments), known as “The Rebuke.” These are a series of curses that will befall the Jewish people should they turn away from G-d. I’m not going to go into the gory details but please trust me, they are gory. There is a famous story told about the Alter Rebbe, the founder of Chabad, who was the Torah reader in his synagogue. One year the Alter Rebbe was away for this Shabbat and so someone else took his place to read the Torah. When Rabbi Dovber, the Alter Rebbe’s son and also a future Chabad leader, heard the words of rebuke read by someone other than his father, he fainted. When the people who revived him asked him what happened, Rabbi Dovber responded that it became overwhelming to hear these terrible things that may befall the Jewish people. “But surely it’s not the first time you’re hearing these?” they asked. “Yes,” he replied, “but when my father reads them, I only hear the blessings.”
