The Strange Exodus Story Hidden in Ki Tavo

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Welcome to Madlik.

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This week we read Parshat Ki Tavo and encounter Mikra Bikkurim, a first-person script that
begins the Exodus before Pharaoh and carries it forward into every generation.

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So join us for liberation, personal, and recurring.

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Well, Rabbi, it's almost Rosh Hashanah, and we're talking about Passover, as usual.

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Perfect.

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You know what?

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That just shows the Jewish calendar goes round and round.

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And I think maybe at the end we'll tie it into Rosh Hashanah.

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So if you're in a Rosh Hashanah state of mind, stick with us.

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So as I said, in Deuteronomy 26:1, it says, When you enter the land that the eternal your
God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle it.

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I mean, that's what Deuteronomy is all about.

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Instructions for when you actually get into the land.

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You shall take some of your first fruit of the soil.

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Which you harvest from the land that the Eternal Your God is giving you, put it in a
basket, and go to the place where the Eternal Your God will choose to establish the divine

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name.

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You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, "I acknowledge this day
before the Eternal Your God, that I have entered the land that God swore to our fathers to

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assign us."

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The priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of
the eternal your God.

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You shall then recite as follows before the eternal your God.

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"My father was a fugitive Aramean.

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He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there.

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But there he became a great and very populous nation.

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The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us.

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They imposed heavy labor upon us.

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We cried to the Eternal, the God of our ancestors, and the Eternal heard our plea and saw
our plight, our misery and our oppression.

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God freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power and by
signs and portents, bringing us to this place and giving us this land, a land flowing with

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milk and honey.

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And so I now bring the first fruits of the soil that You, O Eternal, have given me."

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You shall leave the basket before the eternal your God and bow low before the eternal your
God, and you shall enjoy together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst all the

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bounty that the Eternal Your God has bestowed upon you and your household.

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So the reason I say that this is I'd say iconic, but also an outlier, and I try to
emphasize the "I" is because it really is a formula.

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Gerhard von Rad,

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Was a great biblical critical scholar.

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And he called this a little historical creed, or as he said in German, kleines geschichtliches Credo.

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He believed it was an exceptionally early liturgical formula, subsequently incorporated
into Deuteronomy.

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His argument rests on several observations.

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It has the compact form of an oral formula.

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Now, if you weren't following the screen, even in our translation, it puts the two
statements in it in quotation marks.

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Rabbi, it really is a formula, kind of like a berakhah that you would do today.

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You would hold up your berakhah card in front of you or your siddur and you would read from
it.

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It's a quote.

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It's compact.

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The declaration reduces Israel's foundational story to a short sequence: an Aramean
ancestor.

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Descent into Egypt, multiplication into a nation, Egyptian oppression, Israel's cry, God's
deliverance, entrance into the land.

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And for those of you who are knowledgeable with the Haggadah, if I had read it in
Hebrew, you would have recognized it from the Haggadah, where every phrase becomes a touch

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point for a comment.

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It maintains no names, no dates, no genealogies, or narrative details.

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says von Rad, because it's compressed, it has a rhythmical character, as typical of
something memorized and repeatedly recited in worship, rather than composed as ordinary

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historical prose.

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It is also attached to a ritual.

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So these are all reasons that this scholar said there's something unique about this and he
thought it made it very old.

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And of course, we do have in the Torah, such as, correct me if I'm wrong, Rabbi, Az Yashir
Moshe, which is the Song of the Sea, that scholars will say.

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It seems to be older.

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It's a text that was brought in.

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And of course the Torah itself makes references to Sefer Milhamot, Sefer Melakhim.

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There is an understanding within even the Torah, even if you don't buy into biblical
criticism and the fact that some editor came along, clearly it does reference

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pre-existing phrases, formulas.

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And I think that's what he's kind of saying here.

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He thought this was very old.

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Also

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that's for sure right.

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Az Yashir is like this recitation.

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It's not part of the story.

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It's not part of the narrative.

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It's separate from the narrative.

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Az Yashir comes in the middle.

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Here also it's a recitation.

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Where does that come from?

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So that's kind of separate from the story.

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Absolutely.

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It's like Az Yashir Moshe.

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They make it sound like this was a pre-existing song.

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Here it's a pre-existing formula.

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But the other things that become fascinating as we'll see is it's written for the future
because it's a formula that Moses is giving to the people that they will say in the future

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and they will recite themselves.

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The farmer is explicitly instructed to say these words while presenting the first fruits
at the sanctuary, because first fruit offerings were presumed to be very old, von Rad

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reasoned.

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That the accompanying recitation might also preserve an early cultic tradition.

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You know, clearly, if in an agrarian society, the most basic thing that you do if you believe that God is responsible for any sort of

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success on your end is you thank God with your first fruits.

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It seems like it's a very seminal moment.

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He conceded that there was no objective chronological marker, but argued that the
formula's concise, simple form and its connection to an ancient ritual brought it close to

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Israel's earliest formulations of its history.

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What makes it interesting is the formula moves from

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Exodus directly toward the land without mentioning Sinai, the covenant at Horeb, and
without mentioning Moses.

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Sounds like when we talk about the Haggadah and we say what's missing.

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Clearly in the Haggadah we say doesn't mention Moses.

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I think this kind of sensitized me to say, hmm, it actually in the Haggadah doesn't
mention giving the Torah at Mount Sinai either.

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I think it's more significant that it doesn't mention Sinai because we know that the book
of Deuteronomy is basically first person Moses.

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So he's the one who's telling them what to do.

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So it's not so surprising that Moses isn't there.

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But the fact that Sinai's not there, that's a good dvar Torah for everybody's Seder.

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Yeah.

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And of course, because Von Rad was a biblical critic, meaning to say that he felt that the
Torah was comprised of edited documents put together at a later time, his argument was why

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was it not mentioning Sinai?

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He argued that the Exodus land tradition, was one group of texts, and the Sinai
tradition were circulated separately and were combined only later.

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You can buy it and you can you can take it or you can leave it.

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But the point was that he clearly identified that Sinai was missing.

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And then he says, this thing about my father was an Aramean seems to preserve an unusual
ancestral memory, which rings true because every year we twist our heads and our

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minds to know what's going on here.

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Who is this Aramean?

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It it's old.

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The other commentaries, and I'm gonna quote a little bit from Jeffrey Tigay.

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Who wrote the JPS commentary on Devarim?

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He says the Hebrew Arami Oved Avi is alliterative.

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What does that mean?

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It has a repetition with the same starting sounds in a group of nearby words, which would
facilitate memorization of this phrase.

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I've seen explanations before that say we use this because people knew it, because farmers
used it.

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Everything had to be memorized because, as Sharon will be happy to tell you, there were no
books.

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And so you had to write it on, you know, on parchment and that was too expensive.

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So something like Arami oved avi had to be known.

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And of course, that's why it's chosen for the Haggadah, because they didn't have Haggadot
in those days.

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These things had to be known to the people.

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And the idea was that you were talking about your old, old ancestors that maybe
you have forgotten.

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They were vulnerable migrants.

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They were poor people, and here you were celebrating the shefa, the richness of the
moment.

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makes perfect sense.

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He adds something else.

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He says that not only would

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This keep the memory of Israel's landless beginnings fresh in the farmer's mind, but he
continues: this clause of saying that your forefather was an Aramean probably was very

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ancient, for it is unlikely that Israelite tradition would have chosen to describe
Israel's ancestors as Arameans once Arameans of Damascus became aggressive toward Israel

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in the 9th century BCE.

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So again,

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There are many scholars, both critical, or in the case of Jeffrey Tigay, more classical,
more traditional, who are arguing that there's something unique about this and it's

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possibly old.

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So let's look at

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about the historical point about what the role of the Arameans was.

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Okay.

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So let's look at the classical rabbinic commentaries and who they say this wandering
Aramean was.

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The Ibn Ezra says that it refers to Jacob.

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I think that's typically what we think of in the Haggadah because we see him fleeing from
Laban.

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So he says that he was poor and had no money.

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So again, echoing what I said a second ago, that we will find later the Mishnah talks
about going from Gnut to

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From maybe embarrassment to shevach, to being very successful.

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Here it's very simple.

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He was poor and had no money, and here you're bringing this basket of rich first crop.

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And it says its import is I did not inherit the land from my father, for my father was
poor when he came to Aram.

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He was also a stranger in Egypt, he was few in number.

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The Rashbam says, Arami oved avi.

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he says it means my father Avraham, who was an Aramite, lost in exile from his
birthplace, Aram.

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We dealt with this a lot in a very popular segment where we talked about the use of
Aramaic.

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and everybody comes from Aram.

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The meaning of the word Oved here is similar.

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the root used to describe wandering without specific objective, almost like walking
because one is lost.

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We also find the word in this connection in Jeremiah.

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My people were lost sheep, their shepherd led them astray.

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עמי רועיהם התעום

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I find the reference to Jeremiah important because remember that Jeremiah is a prophet in
the future of exile and return.

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And so just as our forefathers were lost.

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exile wandering, so too when we bring up that basket of first fruits, we're referring
in the instance where sometime in the future will be again refugees.

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We come from refugees.

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Don't, don't worry about it.

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You can get over it.

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and then of course I love the Shadal.

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By the way, that the word, my father was a wandering Aramean.

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So we always focus on the word Aramean, but the word wandering is a very interesting term,
right?

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That my father was a wanderer.

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That's what you say.

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We're always refugees.

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And we're always referring to that in good times and bad.

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And I think that's powerful.

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Shadal says, My father, this includes all the patriarchs as one, for they wandered from
nation to nation.

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And he says, the Rashbam, who said it was Abraham, was on the right track.

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What I'm trying to get to, Rabbi, very similar to what we did last week with Isaiah, where
he tried to broaden our history.

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To Noah, to Adam and Eve, to Abraham and Sarah.

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Here it's becoming irrelevant who we're referring to with this ambiguous term Aramean,
because its import is that it could be any one of our relatives.

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It could be any one of our patriarchs and ancestors.

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And that's why I love that Shadal says it's all of them.

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It takes away the historic.

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historical antecedents of one Exodus, of one leader of Moses, and it broadens it out.

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And I think that too makes it much more important.

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Fantastic.

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And now back to our podcast.

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So the Exodus prototype precedes Egypt.

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it doesn't e start with Egypt, it goes farther back.

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and I think that if you argue with those who argue that this is an older text, even
as some who say that the present declaration

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belongs to the late monarchic or exilic Deuteronomic period, or others who propose reading
it in relation to returning exiles and those who had remained in the land, it makes

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perfect sense.

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I love the fact that almost the rabbis and the biblical critics are saying this
statement

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becomes so useful because it's not relational to one particular period.

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It could be very old or it could be literally at the moment that Isaiah, who we were
reading last week, was talking.

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Well and of course and we use it every year at the Seder.

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So it kind of—it's above time.

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It is.

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And I love that you brought that up because I'm going to segue now into the Seder because
I'm going to argue today, and we do this many times at Madlik, where we say, you know, the

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biblical critics and the rabbis definitely recognize the same problems.

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And in this particular case, they came out with the same solution.

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So the rabbis of the Haggadah are writing a document.

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Most of us would agree it was made for exile.

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It certainly was made for a post-temple time.

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They didn't need a Haggadah when you were bringing your Passover sacrifice, but they
wrote it for transitional periods, and they went and picked this same ceremonial

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formulaic statement that a farmer says when he brings his crops, and they modeled the
whole Haggadah after it.

218
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So this is what they say in the Mishnah in Pesachim.

219
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He begins, matchil b'genut u'mesayem b'shevach—he begins with the Jewish people's disgrace.

220
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I would say better, humble beginnings.

221
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I don't know why we say disgrace, and concludes with their glory.

222
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He expounds from the passage, an Aramean tried to destroy my father.

223
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That's Deuteronomy 26, 5.

224
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And here the Mishnah is telling us what to do at the Seder at the moment of Maggid, that we
are required to tell the story.

225
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The declaration one recites when presenting the first fruits in the temple, until he
concludes explaining the entire section.

226
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So that's why we are discussing.

227
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Passover today because it is literally our paragraph in the Torah portion of this week
that provides the basis, the proof text that we use in the Haggadah.

228
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In terms of the traditional Talmudic explanations of what it means to begin with genut,
with what I call our humble beginnings.

229
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Rav says it's idolatry and Shmuel says it's slavery.

230
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But again, if you look at the context, it's clear as any entrepreneur who is successful
and talks back to his humble beginnings that this is part of this wonderful formula.

231
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I started, my dad had nothing, and this is what God gave me and created this wonderful shefa.

232
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I'll just say that Jewish tradition teaches us always to go back to our humble beginnings.

233
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I wonder if that comes from the Haggadah.

234
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That's just part of our DNA, that that's our tradition, that you always you start
from our humility.

235
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Yeah.

236
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Yeah.

237
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And it's and it's very powerful, but we think of it so many times as something it's kind
of the right thing to do.

238
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But I think what we're going to take away today is, but it's a powerful, empowering
thing to do.

239
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Because if your beginnings are humble and you were a wanderer, guess what?

240
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If you're a wanderer again, you're going to take solace from that.

241
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You're going to say, I've been here before.

242
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I've seen this movie, and I know we can get out of it.

243
00:21:00,570 --> 00:21:07,772
so again, the key question is why not go to the book of Exodus to base the Haggadah on?

244
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Why go to Deuteronomy?

245
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And the answer seems to be that Exodus contains all the details of the events.

246
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But Deuteronomy contains a speech in which an Israelite is commanded to retell those
events.

247
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Exodus is third-person narrative.

248
00:21:24,897 --> 00:21:29,098
The Israelites were enslaved, God heard them, God brought them.

249
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but here it's first-person.

250
00:21:31,450 --> 00:21:36,044
He saw us—and look, it comes right from the Haggadah.

251
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Vayare'u otanu ha-Mitzrim, va-nitzak, va-yotzieinu, va-y'vieinu.

252
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It happened to me, says this farmer.

253
00:21:42,949 --> 00:21:44,030
It brings it

254
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into the present.

255
00:21:46,111 --> 00:21:48,771
And that's of course what the next Mishnah says.

256
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B'khol dor va-dor chayav adam lir'ot et atzmo k'ilu hu yatza mi-Mitzrayim.

257
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Therefore, each person, and they took that right from the farmer, because the farmer is
standing there reciting a formula that Moses provided in the book of Deuteronomy on the

258
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banks of Moab, that he was to say in the future to relive the moment.

259
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I think it's magical.

260
00:22:14,350 --> 00:22:15,040
It's fantastic.

261
00:22:15,040 --> 00:22:17,602
Well, that's the most famous line of all, right?

262
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We have to imagine that we left Egypt.

263
00:22:20,294 --> 00:22:26,588
We have to imagine ourselves as slaves and we have to imagine ourselves as achieving our
freedom.

264
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Yes.

265
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And of course, it therefore tells the next most famous thing, which is that therefore we
need to look upon ourselves as if we went out.

266
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And then it goes on to learn from Laban, and it says therefore we went down to
Egypt and resided there just a handful of souls, and there we became a nation large and

267
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plenty.

268
00:22:53,869 --> 00:22:56,920
It feeds right into the story of

269
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The Haggadah.

270
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And I would say that it becomes now very similar to what we were stretching for last
week.

271
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And this becomes, therefore, an outlier for another reason.

272
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If you recall, last week we said you'll never find Moses talking about Abraham.

273
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You'll never find Moses talking besides the covenant.

274
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You'll never find him talking or referencing Noah.

275
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You'll never find him talking or reference Adam and Eve.

276
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But here by using this word Aramean, which is in the book of Deuteronomy, it opens up
permission for us to say this story goes way back.

277
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And as a result, and this is key, it goes way forward, that it will be with us all the
time.

278
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And that's why we can say, V'hi She'amda, that it is in every generation.

279
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That they stand up against us.

280
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That's literally what it's saying.

281
00:23:51,163 --> 00:23:54,565
It's saying that the Exodus story was not a one-off.

282
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The Exodus story was a model, a template, that we can repurpose going forward.

283
00:24:01,607 --> 00:24:09,930
So it's, I think, fascinating to look at this in the context of what we were discussing
last week with regard to Isaiah.

284
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That's that is actually fantastic, right?

285
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To look forward, to look backwards.

286
00:24:15,140 --> 00:24:24,443
yeah, I mean, the question to me is why is it that we need to see it as if we left
Egypt?

287
00:24:24,443 --> 00:24:31,485
What do we gain by acting as if we were slaves and we were free?

288
00:24:31,485 --> 00:24:35,232
I think it means that we appreciate Jewish history.

289
00:24:35,232 --> 00:24:37,423
And that's what Isaiah is, right?

290
00:24:37,423 --> 00:24:45,949
That if we understand that experience of going from slavery to freedom, then we are we fit
into every period of Jewish history.

291
00:24:45,949 --> 00:24:48,830
B'khol dor va-dor—in every generation.

292
00:24:49,322 --> 00:24:50,583
I totally agree.

293
00:24:50,583 --> 00:24:55,006
And what I'm trying to say, I guess, is we know when Isaiah lived.

294
00:24:55,006 --> 00:25:05,393
Isaiah lived at, you know, some of what he wrote, he might have written even in Babylon,
and some when he came back to Israel and was hoping that others would follow him.

295
00:25:05,413 --> 00:25:08,055
The rabbis, we know when they wrote the Haggadah.

296
00:25:08,055 --> 00:25:15,581
It was after the temple was destroyed, probably even after the Jews were exiled from the
land.

297
00:25:15,581 --> 00:25:17,812
So imagine the audacity.

298
00:25:17,812 --> 00:25:32,133
Of picking a paragraph that a farmer who farms the Holy Land, the Promised Land, says, and
you're asking a community that is no longer in that land to take power from it.

299
00:25:32,133 --> 00:25:44,472
But again, what it shows is that the power of this, these phrases were literally not for
when we saw the liberation or were living the liberation.

300
00:25:44,472 --> 00:25:50,446
But when we were backsliding into some sort of golah or exile.

301
00:25:50,446 --> 00:26:01,552
And I think that's therefore—I would even say—that almost gives a little bit of
strength to the argument that this might have been written at the same time as Isaiah or

302
00:26:01,552 --> 00:26:04,224
edited and brought in at the same time as Isaiah.

303
00:26:04,224 --> 00:26:05,983
That supports that idea.

304
00:26:06,178 --> 00:26:12,501
But certainly, whether you buy into that or not, it becomes powerful in those
instances.

305
00:26:12,501 --> 00:26:15,922
And I think that is what makes it l'dor va-dor.

306
00:26:15,922 --> 00:26:21,805
It makes it something that transcends a particular moment or a particular time.

307
00:26:21,805 --> 00:26:32,119
And of course, what that means is that the rabbis take it from the temple to the home,
from the pilgrim's basket to the Seder table, from possession of the land to life in

308
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:32,989
dispersion.

309
00:26:32,989 --> 00:26:34,962
it makes it

310
00:26:34,962 --> 00:26:39,166
so much more powerful going forward.

311
00:26:39,166 --> 00:26:52,917
And I think that it to me, this convergence of criticism, biblical criticism, and the
rabbinic interpretation really proves to me that there aren't really any

312
00:26:52,917 --> 00:27:03,166
conflicts here, that we can look at these timeless texts and we can look at them ha
hafokh bah va-hafokh bah, from every different perspective, and we come out many times

313
00:27:03,166 --> 00:27:05,287
with the same language.

314
00:27:05,287 --> 00:27:10,148
but at the end of the day, all of these texts give us a grammar.

315
00:27:10,148 --> 00:27:13,289
And the grammar has two components to it.

316
00:27:13,289 --> 00:27:15,250
On the one hand, it's personal.

317
00:27:15,250 --> 00:27:20,291
I emphasized when I read the text how it says I, I, I.

318
00:27:20,291 --> 00:27:22,892
It is a single individual farmer.

319
00:27:22,892 --> 00:27:29,154
and the other part is because it separates it from a particular exodus.

320
00:27:29,154 --> 00:27:35,960
From a particular Moses or a Jacob or an Isaac or an Abraham, it means that it's a
recurring pattern.

321
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:44,487
It doesn't really matter who the key players are, because in every generation it has
meaning for us.

322
00:27:44,487 --> 00:27:51,332
So this first person script is something that we started by saying makes it unique, but it
becomes very important.

323
00:27:51,332 --> 00:27:55,916
And the recurring pattern, I think this idea of Bikurim too is important.

324
00:27:55,916 --> 00:27:58,360
It wasn't done on a particular holiday.

325
00:27:58,360 --> 00:28:03,173
There's an open season, so to speak, for bringing bikkurim.

326
00:28:03,173 --> 00:28:06,715
This wasn't the kind of bikkurim that we think of on Shavuot.

327
00:28:06,715 --> 00:28:12,039
It is bikkurim that was brought whenever you got those new crops.

328
00:28:12,039 --> 00:28:19,924
You were empowered then to come to the place that God chose and present these
gifts.

329
00:28:19,924 --> 00:28:22,966
So I think it's a wonderful, wonderful message.

330
00:28:22,986 --> 00:28:24,347
A fantastic message.

331
00:28:24,347 --> 00:28:25,708
It's really, really good.

332
00:28:25,708 --> 00:28:30,852
And connecting it to Isaiah and what we've done the past two weeks is also wonderful.

333
00:28:30,852 --> 00:28:33,824
This is week number six of the seven haftarot.

334
00:28:34,082 --> 00:28:34,683
Yes.

335
00:28:34,683 --> 00:28:41,127
So now I want to get back to the open question that Von Rad opened, which is what about
Sinai?

336
00:28:41,127 --> 00:28:44,570
Why do we not mention Sinai, therefore, in the Haggadah?

337
00:28:44,570 --> 00:28:50,454
Why do we not mention Sinai in the Bikurim formula?

338
00:28:50,454 --> 00:28:55,918
Sinai is so important, even in the Haggadah.

339
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:58,371
You might say we do mention it in Dayenu.

340
00:28:58,371 --> 00:29:02,032
We say, had you not given us the Torah, would it have been enough?

341
00:29:02,032 --> 00:29:09,210
But ultimately, there is an article in TheTorah.com that literally asks this question.

342
00:29:09,210 --> 00:29:16,656
and it comes up with numerous answers, none of which I find particularly appealing.

343
00:29:16,656 --> 00:29:22,518
It seems to me, Rabbi, and this I'm gonna go out on a limb and I want to know what you
think.

344
00:29:22,518 --> 00:29:31,444
I think that while Exodus repeats itself over and over again, this kind of revelation at
Sinai might have been a one-off.

345
00:29:31,444 --> 00:29:35,267
In other words, we don't want prophets coming and making new laws.

346
00:29:35,267 --> 00:29:38,748
The law was given at Sinai once.

347
00:29:38,748 --> 00:29:51,854
Yes, we re-listened to that law, but that moment where we had this kind of public
opening up of heaven and getting God's opinion, getting God's laws.

348
00:29:51,854 --> 00:29:53,402
It happens only once.

349
00:29:53,402 --> 00:30:00,909
It happens once, and it's unlike Exodus, where we can make the case that it can become
very personal.

350
00:30:00,909 --> 00:30:04,673
I, we argue against private epiphany.

351
00:30:04,673 --> 00:30:12,500
We don't want a Paul walking on the way somewhere and saying, Hey, I just got this great text from God.

352
00:30:12,500 --> 00:30:13,861
It's gonna change.

353
00:30:13,861 --> 00:30:19,006
And I think that the rabbis understood that in the famous Talmud of

354
00:30:19,006 --> 00:30:20,227
the Oven of Akhnai.

355
00:30:20,227 --> 00:30:26,813
They said, “Lo ba-shamayim hi,” quoting Deuteronomy: the Torah is not in heaven.

356
00:30:26,813 --> 00:30:34,619
They said, Rabbi Yirmiyah says, since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not
regard any divine voices anymore.

357
00:30:34,619 --> 00:30:37,341
It's nitnah livnei adam.

358
00:30:37,341 --> 00:30:43,146
So maybe, maybe that is the answer of why Sinai is not connected.

359
00:30:43,146 --> 00:30:48,202
And I'll go one step further because I did promise to tie things into Rosh Hashanah.

360
00:30:48,202 --> 00:31:00,127
On Rosh Hashanah, right after we recite this iconic paragraph that's used to get to teshuvah,
that's get that gets us absolved.

361
00:31:00,127 --> 00:31:01,728
“Adonai, Adonai.”

362
00:31:01,728 --> 00:31:08,551
In the Selichot, we say, “We have all sinned—aval anachnu va'avoteinu chatanu.” [We and our fathers]

363
00:31:08,551 --> 00:31:17,356
Again, there we're using this same tool, which is to say that we've been sinning from time
immemorial.

364
00:31:17,356 --> 00:31:23,472
We were sinning before, we're sinning today, and we're going to sin in the future, and we know
how to deal with this.

365
00:31:23,472 --> 00:31:25,995
We were given tools to deal with this.

366
00:31:25,995 --> 00:31:37,125
I think it's the same type of comforting context where we connect ourselves with the past
that gives us power into the future.

367
00:31:37,186 --> 00:31:37,987
Think that's great.

368
00:31:37,987 --> 00:31:44,812
I just say that you know, this declaration is very much tied into bringing us to the land.

369
00:31:44,812 --> 00:31:51,716
You know, Sinai is important, but Sinai is like a parallel train track to going into the
land.

370
00:31:51,716 --> 00:31:56,860
Sinai is independent, you're obligated to keep the law even outside the land.

371
00:31:56,860 --> 00:31:58,771
Going into the land is something else.

372
00:31:58,771 --> 00:32:02,184
So I think also, in light of what you said, I think we understand that.

373
00:32:02,184 --> 00:32:03,545
Sinai is something else.

374
00:32:03,545 --> 00:32:05,606
This is about getting into the land.

375
00:32:06,686 --> 00:32:07,727
perfect.

376
00:32:07,727 --> 00:32:21,216
So anyway, another Shabbat as we get ready for Rosh Hashanah and Passover, but one
which really teaches us these timeless tools that the Torah provides or people, in order

377
00:32:21,216 --> 00:32:31,442
to repurpose stories from the past, traditions from the past, laws and truths from the
past to give us strength today and into the future.

378
00:32:31,608 --> 00:32:32,271
Fantastic.

379
00:32:32,271 --> 00:32:33,526
Shabbat Shalom, everybody.

380
00:32:33,526 --> 00:32:34,892
We'll see you next week.

381
00:32:34,892 --> 00:32:36,780
We're getting close to the end of the Torah.

382
00:32:36,780 --> 00:32:37,820
Be well, everyone.

383
00:32:41,336 --> 00:32:47,429
Do you agree that the Exodus repeats itself while Sinai happened only once?

384
00:32:47,489 --> 00:32:52,252
Or do you believe that revelation can also occur in our personal lives?

385
00:32:52,492 --> 00:32:56,975
I'd love to hear your thoughts, disagreements, and questions in the comments section.

386
00:32:56,975 --> 00:33:05,139
Please also share other questions about Jewish texts and traditions that you'd like us to
explore in future Madlik deep dives.