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Shabbat starts on Friday at 5:57pm and ends on Saturday at 6:55pm. The weekly Torah portion is Ki Tavo.

Mincha 1pm continues at Ainsworth Property – GF/459 Collins Mon-Wed. Join the WhatsApp group where we take a count to confirm each day.

Weekly sushi & shiur will continue on Wed at about 1.10pm (after mincha) at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: collecting on debt security. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.

Thought of the Week with thanks to Mandi Katz.

The Torah reading this week continues Moshe’s final address to the people, pivoting from eradicating the memory of Amalek in last week’s parsha to an instruction to give the first yield of fruit in the season as an offering to G-d.

The text is not specific about the amount of the offering or the species (although the rabbis read this as a reference to the seven species), but the text spells out exactly what the farmer bringing the fruit is required to say. As the Cohen takes the offering from the farmer’s hands, he is required to make a declaration, in a sense the first full liturgical practice in the Torah: “My father was an Aramean about to perish, and he went down to Egypt, and he sojourned there with a few people, and we became there a great and mighty and multitudinous nation. And the Egyptians did evil to us and abused us and set upon us hard labour. And we cried out to the Lord G-d of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our abuse and our trouble and our oppression.

And the Lord brought us from Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and with portents. And He brought us to this to His place, and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

And now look, I have brought the first yield of the fruit of the soil that You gave me, Lord.”

This ritual is remarkable. The requirement to accompany a physical offering with words of reflection and gratitude is in itself a powerful tool.  The giver is required to be intentional and to focus actively on the connection between the practice of gratitude and the obligation to give by recalling the experiences of famine and suffering.

The ritual takes the farmer out of his world of agricultural cycles,  weather, and produce quality and makes this a rehearsal of history by requiring the farmer to recite the words in the first-person singular. This is very much his own story, and it is told as if these events were very recent – the declaration collapses the time between the exodus from Egypt and the farmer’s present.

In the context of Moshe’s grand and final speech that sets out the arc of the history of the Israelites, is a masterfully personal and experiential ritual. Each one of us is part of the story of the Hebrew people and our daily lives and practices are illuminated by holding onto the memory of past suffering and redemption.