Ki Savo: Our Divine Mission - Bringing the Heavens Down to Earth
It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it?” (Devarim 30:12)
What mitzvah would you give the Jewish nation as their first task upon entering the Land of Israel? Undoubtedly, you'd choose a mitzvah that encapsulates and highlights the nation's mission in the Land, right?
In Parshas Ki Savo, we get that mitzvah. But, rather than conquering Jerusalem and building an altar to Hashem, or something of the sort, Moses instructs the Jewish people to erect massive stones and engrave them with the entire Torah in all 70 of the world's major languages (Devarim 27:1-8). The verses repeat this commandment three times, which the Talmud (Sotah 35B) interpretes to mean that they must erect and inscribe 3 sets of stones. To understand the magnitude of this mitzvah, let's do a little math:
600,000 characters in the Torah
70 languages
3 sets of stones
600,000 X 70 X 3 = 126,000,000 characters (equivalent to 252,000 single-spaced pages in Microsoft Word)
And these letters had to be carved into stone without modern tools or technology. Compared to just about any other mitzvah in the Torah (aside from building the Tabernacle), this mitzvah stands out as perhaps the most labor intensive.
Why does God choose such a “monumental” task as top priority upon entering the Land of Israel?
The Ramban, the renowned 13th century leader of Spanish Jewry, offers two beautiful interpretations:
"It was for the sake of the Torah that you have come [to Israel]." - The whole purpose of the Land is to carry out the Torah
"As a remembrance so that you may come into the Land and conquer it and drive out all these peoples, [a conquest that will be yours only] when you will remember the Torah and keep all its commandments.” - You will only be able to conquer the Land and its inhabitants when you keep the Torah.
While these answers teach us about our mission and responsibility in the Land of Israel, they don't fully explain the magnitude of the mitzvah nor its specific characteristics. We’re left with the questions:
Why such a Herculean task?
Why must we carve the entire Torah into stone?
Why three times?
Why translate it into 70 languages?
To answer these questions, I'd like to offer my own interpretation; an addendum to the Ramban based on a classic idea from the Alter Rebbe, the founder of the Chabad Lubavitch movement.
First, a little context: before entering the Land, the Israelites sent twelve leaders to spy out the Land and bring back a report. The mission bore disastrous consequences; the spies returned and slandered God’s Land to the Jewish people. Upon hearing the report, the Jews despaired, cursing Hashem for taking them out of Egypt. Hashem responded in kind, punishing the generation to wander in the desert for 40 years before entering Israel.
Now for the Alter Rebbe's interpretation: Why did the spies give a negative report? Because they wanted to maintain their elevated spiritual state without needing to toil over earthly pursuits. In the desert, they lived on miracles, eating manna that descended from heaven, dwelling in the protection of God's Clouds of Glory, and much more. In Israel, they would be required to fight wars, work the land, and engage in commerce.
When the spies describe Israel as "a land that consumes its inhabitants," the Alter Rebbe interpretes their words to mean that the Land consumes one's time and energy with worldly demands, stifling one's capacity to study Torah and meditate upon its truths.
In essence, the spies refused to renounce the spiritual utopia of the desert for the entanglements of an earthbound life in the Land of Israel.
But were the spies so wrong for wanting the time and energy to fully devote themselves to achieving lofty spiritual heights? If anything, that seems like a holy and noble goal! Maybe we should celebrate the spies rather than condemn them!
This view couldn't be farther from the truth. First and foremost, by refusing to enter the Land, the spies expressed that they knew better than God; the worst of all sins. Furthermore, by choosing to stay in the desert - the spiritual realm - as opposed to entering the Land - the physical realm - they undermined the entire purpose of God's Torah. Almost every single commandment in the Torah involves some aspect of the physical world: tefillin, matzah, challah, succah, and on and on. The Jewish approach is to use physicality to serve spirituality, thereby elevating the physical world through our spiritual actions. Think about it: if God wanted us to live a purely spiritual existence, why did He put us in physical bodies in a physical world?
Great. So what does this have to do with the Land of Israel? The place where our mission of sanctifying the physical world reaches its fullest potential is in the Land of Israel. Many of the essential mitzvos of the Torah depend on being in the Land: pilgrimage festivals, leaving crops over for the poor, building the Temple, and much more. Hashem sought to imbue this essential truth of using physicality to serve spirituality upon the hearts of the Jewish people as they entered the Land. He therefore gave them the mitzvah of carving the entire Torah into stone.
A stone represents the coarsest expression of physicality - heavy, dense, lifeless. God's Divine Word - the Torah - is the opposite; sublime, immaculate spirituality. To carve the Torah into stone is to manifest the Divine in the mundane, encapsulating the very purpose of life itself, and establishing the mission of Jewish people in the Land of Israel.1
As we mentioned earlier, God commands the Nation to repeat this carving process three times. If you look closely at the verses, you’ll notice that the location changes in each repetition: once on the riverbed of the Jordan, the next on the plains of Gilgal, and finally on Mount Eival. Notice a trend?
Riverbed - Low
Plains - Middle
Mountain - High
What's the message? Each place has its own particular and unique potential, but the mission never changes. We must elevate all aspects of the physical world to serve the Divine.
One last detail that we need to illuminate: Why 70 languages? Because to truly bring the Torah out into the world and Godliness down to earth, the Jewish people must become a light onto the nations. If the Nation carries out its mission properly, anyone who comes to the Land should sense the tangible connection between heaven and earth and be inspired to follow the ways of Hashem.2
The following story of the founder of the Mussar Movement, R. Yisrael Salanter, illustrates the Jewish vision of spirituality brought down into the physical world: Weeks before Yom Kippur, word began to spread amongst the residents that the great Rabbi Yisrael Salanter would be leading the prayer ceremony on Yom Kippur. People from all over flocked to the town of Salant to hear the great Rabbi lead the holiest prayer of the year. Finally the day came. The synagogue was packed and the crowd eagerly awaited his arrival. They waited... and waited... but he never came. What happened? They'd later discover that, on his way to shul, R. Yisrael heard a child crying incessantly. He waited for a family member to assist the baby, but no one arrived. He realized that the family had left the child to go hear him lead the prayer service. Seeing that the child was in need, he entered the house and cared for the child until the parents returned. Whereas the child’s parents had mistakenly assumed that they needed to travel to the synagogue in order to connect to the spirituality of Yom Kippur, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter understood that spirituality must first come from attending to our immediate obligations in the physical world.3
According to the Torah, there is no greater act of spirituality than one that has a tangible effect on the world around us. Of course, there's a time and a place for developing an inner spiritual world as well.4 But the ultimate goal of the Torah is to bring spirituality to the physical world; to bring the heavens down to earth. As you approach the High Holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, zoom out on your life circumstances and ask, "Am I in a time of dwelling in the desert or is my mission to work the Land? Are there areas of my life where I need to rebalance these two aspects of divine service?" If you’re in a place where you’re heavily invested in spiritual growth, ask yourself, "Have I made the mistake of focusing on my spirituality at the expense of corporeal demands?"
May we be blessed with the strength to bring out Godliness in the most mundane parts of our lives and our world!
Shabbat Shalom,
Avraham
Rabbi Akiva Tatz points out the contrast between writing and carving. With writing, you take an external medium and put it on top of a surface. With carving, the medium is the message - the very stone in which you carve contains the wisdom of the words carved upon it.
One last idea: Where else do we see God's word carved into stone in the Torah? The 10 commandments, inscribed by God Himself. With the 10 commandments, God engraved His infinite wisdom and spiritual perfection into the physical world as a gift for humanity. Then, He gave us the mitzvah of, upon entering Israel, inscribing the entire Torah on stone. With this mitzvah, God metaphorically passes us His baton as we accept our divine mission of manifesting His word in the physical realm
His actions reflected the principle in Jewish law that the obligation to care for a child in need eclipses the Rabbinic enactment to pray in a congregation on Yom Kippur.
Significantly, before the sin of the spies, the Jewish people spent many months in the desert amidst Hashem's many miracles before entering Israel. Every spiritual journey must end with expression in the physical world, but it’s equally important to start by cultivating an inner depth and connection to Hashem.