פרשת כי תבא
This week’s Parsha opens with the essential and enigmatic commandment of Bikurim. The Torah instructs us to bring the first of our fruits up to the Beis Hamikdash and offer them up to Hashem upon which certain special recitations were chanted whose general theme was recognizing all the good that Hashem does for us on a daily basis. Unfortunately, along with the destruction of our Holy Temple, came the cessation of this very special ceremony, and no Bikurim offering has been brought for over two millennia. However, there is an interesting Midrash Tanchuma which exclaims that although we no longer can perform the Bikurim rituals in the way they were once done, we haven’t lost this Mitzvah completely, and it now manifests itself slightly differently. The Midrash cites the verse in Tehilim (95) which says, “Let us come, and bow down, and bend ourselves in order to bless Hashem.” The Midrash finds it strange that these three underlined phrases seem quite repetitive, and therefore derives that they are referring to the three prayers that we recite daily. The Midrash elaborates that when Moshe prophetically became aware that the Beis Hamikdash was going to be destroyed, he was devastated that among other things, the Jews were going to lose the Mitzvah of Bikurim. He therefore immediately got up, and decreed that from now on, the Jews were to Daven three times daily, thereby fulfilling the same idea as the Mitzvah of Bikurim. The obvious difficulty with this Midrash, is to try and understand what exactly the connection is between Bikurim and prayer!
The renowned Torah personality, R’ Gedalya Sher offers a very interesting parallel between Bikurim and Tefilah in order to resolve this obscurity. He explains that the primary trait which gets exercised in performing the Mitzvah of Bikurim is the trait of humility and complete subjugation to the Master of the World. Ask any farmer to try to describe the rush he feels when his arduous labor finally begins to bare fruit. It is indescribably exhilarating to “beat nature.” To till the soil, plant the seeds, water the crop, fertilize the ground, and to finally see a healthy edible crop arise from the previously barren dirt is nothing short of miraculous. To then go and admit that without Hashem, none of it would have been possible is a very difficult and humbling task. Yet this is exactly what the Torah commands us to do. In doing so, the Torah wishes for the farmer, and indeed all Jews, to inculcate into our hearts the reality that every accomplishment we have ever merited to achieve is solely by the grace of the All-Mighty and that without His direct aid, we would have never succeeded.
Prayer too is designed specifically to instill this lesson into our psyche by way of indoctrination. As we turn to Hashem for our basic (and not so basic) needs, we are meant to realize that these needs cannot be met without His help. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, there is no success which we can sincerely claim should be accredited solely to us. Doing so would be ignoring the myriads of factors which had to be set up by powers beyond our control to bring about that success. However, when we pray, we are de facto admitting to Hashem our helplessness and our vulnerability without Him, and asking Him to assist us for no other reason than the fact that He chooses to do constant kindness for us because He is inherently good. It is perhaps for this reason that the Midrash chose a verse in Psalms which uses three separate connotations of humility to refer to prayer. We bend, we bow, and we bless Hashem. In doing so, we are meant to accomplish the true secret of prayer – the ability to sincerely subdue ourselves in front of our Maker. R’ Gedalya ends off by saying that it is no coincidence that this week’s Parsha comes out during this time of year, in which prayer is the primary vehicle we have to return to our creator and attempt to ensure ourselves a good year!
R’ Elyashiv once added that the Gemorah states that one should be very careful to never make his prayer monotonous, but rather must make sure to pray in a style which makes it clear that his requests are genuine. R’ Elyashiv explained that this Gemorah is teaching us something very similar to what we said. It can be determined from a person’s voice whether or not his request is sincere. It he rushes through the request, reciting it from a script without thinking about it, it would seem rather obvious from his voice that he doesn’t really believe he is speaking with someone who can help him, hence he will have missed the whole point of prayer. But if his request is recited in a way which indicates that he truly needs what he is asking for, and he is aware of the fact that he cannot get the thing he wants unless the person he is speaking with grants his request, his intonation will sound completely different.
In truth, this quality of recognition is critical both for our day to day lives, and for the high holidays which are coming upon us. It is evident from Chazal that they wanted us to be thinking about this principle on a constant basis. When we wake up in the morning, the first thing we say is “Thank you” to Hashem for allowing us to wake up, thereby consciously acknowledging the fact that we couldn’t have woken up without aid. We then make a series of 15 blessings, for the various natural functions in our body and vessels, without which we could not exist in the way we know it. It is clear that Chazal wanted us to be well aware of who butters our bread. Similarly, on Rosh Hashana, the primary focus of the day is recognizing Hashem as the sovereign ruler of the universe, and as the sole monarch who has the ability to give or take away life at any moment. On Yom Kippur, the Gemorah in Yuma (87) asserts that the most important part of the Neilah service is when we recite the verse, “Who are we? What is the value of our lives?” This can be understood in light of the fact that Rabenu Yonah says that the primary way to return to Hashem is by humbling ourselves in front of Hashem. It is palpable from all these sources in what esteem Chazal held the ability to subjugate ourselves before our Maker and admit that everything comes from Him.
R’ Aharon Kotler once said to his students, “I know that there are those of you who believe that this kind of attitude will lead to a sense of depression and despair when we fully acknowledge our helplessness in front of our Creator, when in fact the truth is exactly the opposite. By pretending that we are in charge, we will only set ourselves up for great disappointment when this façade becomes revealed. Whereas when we choose to see things the way they truly are, we will have no false expectations, and will therefore be pleasantly surprised and encouraged by any success Hashem allows us to enjoy.”
I would just like to conclude by saying that this message has never been more vital, and at the same time more elusive than it is today. We live at the height of technological advance and can do things that none of our ancestors could have ever dreamed of. We can press buttons and send messages, or even full images to any corner of this earth. We can heat up or cool down food almost instantaneously. We can soothe or heal almost every ailment of the human body that we had no control over in the past. With this in mind, it is self-evident why this message is more critical now then ever before. How easy is it to think, “My strength and my intellect have accomplished these incredible feats?” Yet we are called upon by the Torah and the Mitzvah of Bikurim to resist these tempting thoughts, and always remind ourselves who it truly responsible for all our successes.
May we all merit internalizing this truth, and always being conscious of Hashem’s sovereignty!