Ki Tavo
September 20, 2008
I wonder how many of us thumb through catalogues looking for just the right container for just the right task. Or even more I wonder how many of us already have a whole collection of containers that we regularly use. There are baskets, boxes, closets, trunks and hope chests of every size, color and shape imaginable. They are delightful to look at and so much fun to use. We love filling them, as well as arranging where they live in our homes.
As much as we love containers, I doubt that many of us were aware that a particular container was essential to one of the rituals mentioned at the very beginning of our portion.
“When you enter the land that Adonai your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit (bikkurim) of the soil, which you harvest from the land that Adonai your God is giving you, put it in a basket (hateneh) and go to the place where Adonai your God will choose to establish His name…The priest will take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of Adonai your God. [Deuteronomy 26:1-4]
The word teneh is not the commonly used word for basket. In Biblical and Modern Hebrew, the word for basket is ‘sal.’ Teneh is used only four times in the Torah and all of them are in this week’s portion.
Why use the word teneh instead of sal? First we have to know what we are carrying in the teneh. We are told to pick a portion from the first fruits that we grow and bring them in the basket to the holy place which God will choose. Once there the Priest will take the fruit and offer it to God.
The teneh was a functional container, one whose primary purpose was to carry something from one place to another, rather than to display it. In Los Angeles and in Jerusalem all the meals hosted by students were pot luck; cover dish I think is the southern term. We would cook our part of the meal at our home and put it into a metal tin with a cover and carry it to our dinner. Then the host would take the contents of the tin and put it in a serving bowl or plate.
The tin container was our teneh and the serving bowl was the sal. One was purely functional and the other was decorative. Unless the host was very poor and did not have enough serving dishes, the metal tin was never set directly on the table; that would have been tacky. But using the tin to carry the food was expected.
We learn from the Mishna that in Rabbinic times, people changed the custom of how the first fruits were carried. The poor still used baskets made of wicker or willow branches but the wealthy brought their offerings in very ornate baskets, decorated with silver or gold.
It would be tempting to think we are supposed to learn from this that the bikkurim, the first fruits that the rich brought were more important than those of the poor. But we learn in Pirkei Avot, Chapter 4, Mishna 27: ‘Do not look at the vessel, but at what it contains.’
All the bikkurim had equally value. Each container carried the same type of first fruits so how could one person’s offering be more valuable or more important than another’s. The container did not make its contents any more special. It just showed how wealthy or poor the person was who brought the offering. In the Rabbinic times, for many Jews, how much money people had became more important than how the laws were followed.
In our culture we are also tempted to admire the person driving the fancier car more than the person with a more modest one. But if we do that, we have forgotten that cars have no lasting value at all. They all end up as scrap metal eventually. People, on the other hand, no matter how wealthy they are, have exactly the same intrinsic value.
Just as the baskets of our portion were uniformly modest during the biblical times, let us experience the vessels that we live in the same way. They are just the means for carrying the really important contents of our soul and humanity.
The vessel that we sit in today is the one that we will bring with us to synagogue on the High Holidays. The only thing that matters about that vessel is what kind of intention, kavannah our soul has as we pray to God to forgive us and write our names in the book of Life. Rather than focusing on the grandness of our container or the containers of those around us, let us focus our whole attention this year on how we sit before God, on how much passion we put into our prayers, and on how sincerely we want to change.