A.
Our parasha opens with the commandment that Israel’s farmers bring the bikkurim, the first fruits of the seven species through which Eretz Yisra’él is praised (olives, dates, figs, pomegranates, grapes, wheat, and barley; cf. Deuteronomy VIII, 8) to המקום אשר יבחר ד' אלקיך לשכן שמו שם (“the place where Ha-Shem your G-d chooses to make His name dwell”; XXVI, 2-3).
As our passage makes clear, the proximate cause of this is an expression of simple hakkarath ha-tov, gratitude, for the decent harvest: ושמחת בכל הטוב אשר נתן לך ד' אלקיך ולביתך וגו' (“And you will rejoice in all the goodness which Ha-Shem your G-d has given you and your household....”; ibid., 11). However, this verse is preceded by a remarkable recitation which the farmer makes: ארמי אבד אבי וירד מצרימה ויגר שם במתי מעט ויהי שם לגוי גדול עצום ורב: וירעו אתנו המצרים ויענונו ויתנו עלינו עבודה קשה: ונצעק אל ד' אלקי אבתינו וישמע ד' את קלנו וירא את ענינו ואת עמלנו ואת לחצנו: ויוציאנו ד' ממצרים ביד חזקה ובזרוע נטוי' ובמורא גדול ובאותות ובמפתים: ויבאנו אל המקום הזה ויתן לנו את הארץ הזאת ארץ זבת חלב ודבש: (“A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there in small numbers, and became there a great, mighty, and numerous nation. And the Egyptians mistreated us and tormented us and placed upon us hard labor. And we cried out to Ha-Shem, G-d of our fathers, and Ha-Shem heard our voice and saw our poverty and our labor and our oppression. And Ha-Shem brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with great fear and signs and wonders. And He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey”; vv, 3-9).
In short, the farmer expresses gratitude not merely for Ha-Shem’s role in satisfying his immediate needs, but also for Ha-Shem’s role in guiding all of Israel’s history, from the time of the patriarchs until his day. As we shall see, this is a most appropriate preface to the rest of this parasha.
B.
A bit later on, Moshe declares: היום הזה ד' אלקיך מצוך לעשות את החקים האלה ואת המשפטים ושמרת ועשית אותם בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך: (“This day Ha-Shem your G-d is commanding you to perform these laws [ha-huqqim ha-élle] and the judgments [mishpatim] and you will keep [vë-shamarta] and perform [vë-‘asitha] them with all your heart and with all your soul”; ibid., 16).
Rashi explains Moshe’s intent: בכל יום יהיו בעיניך חדשים כאלו בו ביום נצטוית עליהם (“Every day they should be new in your eyes, as if that very day you were commanded concerning them”).
Consider the historical context of Moshe’s remarks: The Torah had been commanded forty years before, at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Israel had spent most of the subsequent forty years familiarising themselves with the Torah’s contents (the huqqim), analyzing them and formulating their ramifications and applications (the mishpatim, exercises of human judgment), committing the results to memory to preserve them and pass them on to future generations (vë-shamarta), and ordering their lives according to those results (vë-‘asitha).
It was thus impossible for the mitzvoth with their huqqim and mishpatim to be “new” in any ordinary sense of the word when Moshe uttered these words, as though they had never heard them before. Rather, what was new, what was just about to change, were the circumstances of their lives. Having spent forty years wandering the desert in a cocoon of miracles, protected and supported in a gigantic kolel so that the entire nation could engage in full-time learning, they were now about to embark on a war of conquest, followed by the division of the land amongst the tribes and the beginning of a settled, agricultural economy in which the precepts they had been learning would be applied and observed.
Moshe’s message, then, was that the Torah is timeless, that the stuff of the huqqim, faithfully preserved and carefully applied through the processes of mishpat, would serve to order and adapt their new lives to it, as they had in the past and would in future.
We find similar language again, a bit later, in XXVII, 9-10: היום הזה נהיית לעם לד' אלקיך: ושמעת בקול ד' אלקיך ועשית את מצותו ואת חקיו אשר אנכי מצוך היום: (“...This day you have become Ha-Shem your G-d’s people. And you shall listen to the voice of Ha-Shem your G-d, and perform His mitzvoth and His huqqim which I am commanding you today”), and the Talmud asks our question, thereby cementing the relationship between Israel’s nationhood and the Torah: וכי אותו היום נתנה תורה לישראל והלא אותו יום סוף ארבעים שנה הי'?! (“And was it then ‘that day’ that Torah was given to Israel? Was not ‘that day’ at the end of forty years?”; ברכות ס"ג:).
Rabbi Shimshon Rëfa’él Hirsch follows up to say that this was precisely why Moshe made his pronouncement on "that day," before the inception of Israel’s invasion of the Holy Land, to demonstrate that, unlike other nations whose national identity is a matter of ethnicity, a common country, and a state, Israel’s national identity begins and ends with Torah and mitzvoth. The Holy Land is holy because so many mitzvoth can only be performed there; the value of a state is its establishment of essential Torah institutions such as the Béyth ha-Miqdash and the Sanhedrin, i.e., it lies in its relation to the Torah.
With all of the above in mind, the word hadash, conventionally translated “new,” in Rashi’s comment bears re-examination. Applying our etymological theory of primal roots, the word appears to be based on a basic root dalet-vav-shin with a radical prefix héth. The primal root underlies the word dash, which means “threshing cereals” in both Hebrew and Aramaic. Threshing is a process by which the kernels are freed from the stalks and chaff, so that they can be ground into flour and put to productive use. Interestingly, Hazal employ this word to refer to sexual intercourse, which properly has a productive purpose (עיי' למשל נדה מ"א: ופסחים פ"ז:).
I have elsewhere suggested that the radical prefix héth is an intensive form of hé’, which has a causative sense (on the strength of the causative hif‘il conjugation), and so we may surmise that hadash refers to something “new” or ”renewed” by virtue of its being stripped of its carapace to reveal its essentials (i.e. analyzed) to serve a productive end. This fits perfectly with the mitzva that one engage in daily, intensive Torah-learning, revealing fresh insights and deeper understanding through the processes of mishpat. This, in my humble opinion, is what Rashi is getting at.
C.
Therefore: ארור אשר לא יקים את דברי התורה הזאת לעשות אותם ואמר כל העם אמן (“Cursed is anyone who will not uphold the words of this Torah to perform them, and the entire people will say, amen”; XXVII, 26). Rashi tells us: כאן כלל את כל התורה כולה וקבלו' עליהם באלה ושבועה (“Here he included the entire Torah, and they accepted it upon themselves with an imprecation and an oath”).
Ramban builds on this to tell us what Moshe really means: אם יכפור באחת מהן או תהי' בעיניו בטלה לעולם הנה הוא ארור, אבל אם עבר על אחת מהן כגון שאכל את החזיר והשקץ לתאותו כו' איננו בחרם הזה כי לא אמר הכתוב "אשר לא יעשה את דברי התורה הזאת" אלא אמר "לא יקים את דברי התורה הזאת" לעשות כטעם "קימו וקבלו היהודים" והנה הוא טעם המורדים והכופרים כו' ואפילו הוא צדיק גמור במעשיו והי' יכול להחזיק התורה ביד הרשעי' המבטלי' אותה הרי זה ארור וגו' (“If one denies one of them, or it becomes in his eyes nullified forever, behold he is cursed; but if he has transgressed one of them, for instance, he has eaten pig or some crawling thing to satisfy his appetite... He is not [included] in this ban, for Scripture does not say ‘anyone who will not perform the words of this Torah,’ but rather says ‘anyone who will not uphold the words of this Torah,’ to perform in accordance with ‘the Yëhudim upheld and accepted’ [Esther IX, 27]; and behold, this is the reasoning of the rebels and deniers.... And even if one is a complete tzaddiq in one’s [own] deeds, [who] would be able to uphold the Torah in the hands of the evil-doers who nullify it [and does not], this person is cursed....”).
In other words, the curse does not apply to ordinary sinners; people who recognize and acknowledge the truth, but stumble on the way can be led to tëshuva. Rather, it applies to those who would numb their consciences by denying the Torah’s validity, by alleging that it is no longer relevant, and that there is some other basis to Israel’s nationhood.
The effect of such an outlook was graphically demonstrated by the fate of the northern kingdom of Israel, whose inhabitants were exiled eastwards by the Assyrians. When the Assyrians’ Babylonian successors meted out a similar fate to the inhabitants of the southern kingdom of Yëhuda about a century later, the northern tribes were nowhere to be found. They had melted away, assimilated to the local, surrounding populations.
The Yëhudim had a somewhat greater sense of national cohesion because they had had the béyth ha-Miqdash in their midst, but were ultimately spared the fate of their northern cousins by the miracle of Purim, brought about by a national wave of tëshuva, to whose culminating event Ramban alludes in his comment above: "קיימו וקבלו היהודים" – קיימו מה שקבלו כבר (“‘The Yëhudim upheld and accepted’ – they upheld what they had already [previously] accepted”; שבועות ל"ט.), the Torah and its mitzvoth.
D.
These two passages contain the entire secret of understanding Jewish history, and of Jewish survival in the face of the world’s unremitting hostility. Nothing can harm us if our adhesion to the Torah ha-qëdosha remains intact.
However, כל ישראל ערבין זה בזה (“All Israel are responsible for one another”; שבועות שם). The meaning of the last statement quoted from Ramban supra becomes clear. Whilst it is vitally important that we continue to learn, to deepen our own understanding of the ramifications and details of the mitzvoth, huqqim, and mishpatim discussed herein, it is as important that we reach out to our estranged brethren, that those who know something, even if a little, nonetheless seek to uphold the Torah on which the rësha‘im have laid hands, and impart it to those who know less. It is incumbent on us to lead lives as though we live in the proverbial “goldfish bowl,” in the hope that others may be inspired to follow the example.
So, even someone who is otherwise a tzaddiq gamur, but is indifferent to the state of the general Jewish society around him, can come to be included in the curse.
In this coming new year, with all the gathering clouds on the horizon threatening aheinu bënei Yisra’él in our Holy Land, it is good to remember that G-d directs our history, and that we have some input into its course, by upholding our national identity in Torah and mitzvoth, learning ourselves and strengthening our own observance, and taking the many opportunities we have to help our estranged brethren recognize what they, too, can and must do.
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