17 Sep KI TAVO: ON THE DEFINITION OF JEWISH NATIONHOOD WHEN THE KLAUSENBURGER REBBE DEMANDED THE CURSES BE READ ALOUD

Elizabeth
A couple is in the
midst of a tremendous
fight, as a gunman
breaks into their
home. Pointing his
rifle at the woman of
the home, he asks her for her name. The
terrified woman mutters, “Elizabeth.”
“This is your lucky night,” the gunman
responds. “I just can’t get myself to kill
somebody who carries my mother’s name,
may her soul rest in peace. My mother was a
special woman. I won’t shoot you.”
He then points the rifle at her husband’s head.
“What is your name?” thundered the gunman.
“My name is Harry,” the horrified man
replies, “but they call me Elizabeth.”
Today You Become a People
It is a strange verse. Benei Yisroel have been
wandering in the desert forty years. An entire
generation passed since they were liberated
from Egyptian bondage. Moshe is speaking to
the people weeks before his own passing. He
tells them:
Moshe and the Levitic priests spoke to all
Israel, saying, “Pay attention and listen, O
Israel! This day, you have become a people to
the Lord, your G-d.
“Today you have become a people?” This is
strange. They have been a free people for four
decades. Even before, while in Mitzrayim,
they have been a distinct people. How can
Moshe deny the long and arduous history of
his nation?
Imagine if at a State of the Union address the
President of the United States declares:
“Today you have become a people!”
Americans would, naturally, be offended.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams are
meaningless? How can Moshe bluntly say,
“This day you have become a nation”?!
Rashi is perturbed by this question. Rashi
answers that Moshe was giving a message
that “Every single day, it should seem to you
as though you are today entering into a
covenant with Him.” Judaism ought to be
fresh and novel.
Yet the plain meaning seems to suggest that
Moshe was saying that precisely now, as they
stood poised to finish their years in the desert
and enter the land, that is when they became a
people.
Genesis of Nationhood
I heard a marvelous insight by Israel’s former
Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau. When is
the first time we, the Jews, are defined as a
nation? Who conferred on us first the title of
Nation?
Throughout Bereishit we are never called a
people; we are a family, titled “Benei Yisroel,
the children of Israel,” children of Yaakov

who was later named Yisroel. Who, then,
decided to alter us from a family into a
people?
The answer is counterintuitive and astounding,
but so profoundly telling. It was Pharaoh, the
tyrannical Emperor of Egypt, in the opening
of Shemot, who called us a people.
A new king arose over Egypt, who did not
know about Yosef. He said to his people,
“Behold, the nation of the children of Israel
are more numerous and stronger than we are.
Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest
they increase, and a war befall us, and they
join our enemies and [cause us to] depart from
the land.”
Pharaoh then develops a systematic program
of genocide for the blossoming nation who,
he fears, will take over Egypt and expel the
natives.
130 years have passed since Pharaoh called us
a people. And now, in the wilderness, Moshe
declares: “Hayom hazeh nehayata Laam,
today you have become a nation!” How can
this be? Why would Moshe say to the people
that they have become a nation today, more
than a century after Pharaoh defined the Jews
as a nation?
What Is a Jew?
The Torah, in a subtle and sophisticated way,
is addressing one of the great questions that
would define the Jew throughout history.
What does it mean to be a Jew? What makes
you Jewish? What is the common thread that
binds all Jews?
There are two possible answers to that
question—one is given by Pharaoh; the other
by Moshe. Pharaoh defines us as a group that
poses a challenge to the Egyptian Empire.
What sets us apart as a people is that Pharaoh
is threatened by us and determined to rid the
world from our influence. What binds us as a
people is the fact that Pharaoh hates us.
This is astounding. Our first mention ever as a
people, a collective unit within humanity, is in
the context of anti-Semitism, when the
Egyptian monarch declares, that “Behold this
nation, the children of Israel, pose a threat to
the rest of us.” What makes us Jewish? What
is the definition of our nationhood? We are the
group that triggers profound hate. What does
it mean to be a Jew? That someone out there
despises me.
Moshe’s definition of our peoplehood is
radically different. “You shall become a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” he tells
us at Har Sinai. Or in his words in Ki Tavo:
“Today you have become a nation, and you
shall observe all of G-d’s Mitzvos.” We are
bound together by a vision to construct a holy
world, to grant history the dignity of purpose,
to build a world saturated with morality,
compassion, and love. What unites us is a
covenant of love, a shared commitment to
recognize the image of G-d in every human
being and the unity of humanity under a

singular Creator.
What binds us as a people, says Moshe, is not
that you Pharaoh hates you, but that G-d loves
you and chose you as His ambassadors to
sanctify the planet.
Which is why Moshe is so adamant, declaring:
“TODAY you have become a nation.” Not
yesterday, but today. I know that, as history
drags on, some of you might be tempted to

define your nationhood in terms of anti-
Semitism. I know that some of you may allow

Pharaoh to define the meaning of being a Jew.
No, says Moshe. Don’t allow the Pharaohs of
history to define the meaning of being a Jew.
“Today you have become a nation.” Today,
after forty years of studying Torah in the
desert, internalizing its vision at Sinai, you
can finally appreciate what binds you together
as a people: the courage to live with the
consciousness of Oneness; the dedication to
the Divine blueprint for life, Torah and
Mitzvos; the readiness to become beacons of
spiritual light to all of humanity.
What Connects Us?
The famed 9th century Babylonian sage
Rabbi Saadya Gaon was confronted with this
question: Lacking a sovereign state and a
national identity, scattered around the earth,
what defines us as a people? What binds the
Jew of Morocco with the Jew of Spain? The
Jew of Iraq with the Jew of France? What
makes them part of a single nation?
In his great philosophical work, he would
write:
Our nation is not a nation only because of its
Torah.
His answer was this: The Jew in Morocco and
Spain do not share the same land, culture,
national identity, language, government, and
social climate. What makes them, then, one
people? How can they be seen as part of one
nation? Is it that they are both despised in
their countries? No! It is that they both
cherish, breathe, and live the same Torah.
“Today you have become a people.”
Shared Destiny
We often talk of the fact that all Jews are
united by the fact that anti-Semites hate us all.
Mengele sent every type of Jew to the gas
chambers.
This is true, but it’s missing something. This
definition alone is the one that Pharaoh gave
us. In his mind we were “Am Bnei Yisroel,” a
nation in the sense that our blood is less red,
our honor less valued, our freedom can be
snatched. Discrimination against us is
justified.
80 years ago, we experienced the same fate.
Jews from Berlin and Warsaw shared the
same fate. Chassidim, Litvaks, Ashkenazim,
Sephardim, Jews from Bulgaria, Greece,
Ukraine, Italy—all shared the same destiny.
Left-wing communists and right-wing
Zionists, reformers and Orthodox Jews, were

all decimated with the same passion.
Comes Moshe and tells the Jewish people,
“Hayom hazeh nehayata laam, today you
have become a nation!” We must discover a
deeper, eternal vision that can unite us. You
can’t inspire your children to remain proud
Jews if their only understanding of Jewish
identity is the dangers we endure. Why would
you want to be part of such a people? Besides,
when you are living in a country that treats all
its citizens with equal dignity, what keeps you
Jewish then?
This question we must answer today: Who
will define us as Jews? Pharaoh or Moshe?
Titus or Reb Akiva? The Crusaders or Rashi?
Richard Wagner or the Vilna Gaon? Julius
Streicher or the Lubavitcher Rebbe? Jewish
children studying Torah or the mullahs of
Iran?
Will we be bound only by a covenant of fate,
when we face a common enemy, or will we be
bound by shared dreams and ideals? Can we
be defined not by what happened to us but by
what we commit ourselves toward? Not by a
covenant of fate but by a bond of faith?
The anti-Semite can’t create the Jew; the Jew
must create the Jew.
Say It Louder!
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, founding chief Rabbi
of Efrat, Israel, related this personal
experience from his youth in Brooklyn, NY:
“I had never been to this particular shul
before, this renovated hospital turned into a
synagogue about two miles from where I
grew up in Brooklyn. Nor had I ever prayed
with Hassidim. But the Klausenberger Rebbe,
Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam (1905-
1994), was particularly well-known as a
saintly Chassidic master who had re-settled
those of his Hassidim who had survived the
Holocaust in and around the Beth Moses
Hospital, in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of
Brooklyn. And so, one summer morning in
1952 on the Shabbat of Ki Tavo I set out from
my home on Hart Street to the world of black
gabardines and round fur hats, eager for the
opportunity to be in the presence of a truly
holy man and to experience a Hassidic prayer
service.
“Now the Torah reading of Ki Tavo is
punctuated by 53 verses which catalogue the
punishments in store for Israel when they
forsake G-d’s teaching: “If you don’t obey the
Lord your G-d and all His commandments

and statutes, then these curses shall come
upon you… G-d will smite you with
consumption and with a fever and with an
inflammation and with an extreme burning
and with the sword… G-d will turn your rain
into dust, and it will come from the skies to
destroy you… And your corpses shall be meat
for all the birds of the sky and for beasts of the
earth. G-d will smite you with madness and
blindness and a confusion of the heart. G-d
will bring a nation from afar against you, from
the end of the earth, swooping down like an
eagle, a nation whose language you don’t
understand. A haughty arrogant nation which
has no respect for the old nor mercy for the
young.” (Devarim 28:15- 50).
It’s easy to understand why Jewish custom
mandates that these verses be read in a low
voice. The Tochacha (“Warning”) is not
something we’re very eager to hear, but if we
have to hear it as part of the Torah cycle, then
the hushed words, without the usual dramatic
chant, are shocking enough.
“I arrived at the huge study hall even before
the morning service had begun – and although
I was the only pre-bar mitzvah boy in the
congregation not wearing a black gabardine, I
felt swept up by the intensity of the people
praying, swaying and shouting as though they
suspected that the Almighty might not bend
His ear, as it were, to a quieter service of the
heart.
“Then came the Torah reading. In accordance
with the custom, the Torah reader began to
chant the Warnings in a whisper. And
unexpectedly, almost inaudibly but
unmistakably, the Yiddish word ‘hecher’
(‘louder’) came from the direction of the
lectern upon which the Klausenberger Rebbe
was leaning at the eastern wall of the
synagogue.
“The Torah reader stopped reading for a few
moments; the congregants looked up from
their Bibles in questioning and even mildly
shocked silence. Could they have heard their
Rebbe correctly? Was he ordering the Torah
reader to go against time-honored custom and
chant the tochacha out loud?
“The Torah reader continued to read in a
whisper, apparently concluding that he had
not heard what he thought he heard. And then
the Klausenberger Rebbe banged on his
lectern, turned to face the stunned
congregation, and cried out in Yiddish, with a
pained expression on his face and fire blazing
in his eyes: ‘I said louder! Read these verses
out loud! We have nothing to fear, we’ve
already experienced the curses. Let the Master
of the Universe hear them. Let Him know that
the curses have already befallen us, and let
Him know that it’s time for Him to send the
blessings!’

“The Klausenberger Rebbe turned back to the
wall, and the Torah reader continued slowly
chanting the cantillation out loud. I was
trembling, with tears cruising down my
cheeks, my body bathed in sweat. I had heard
that the rebbe lost his wife and 11 children in
the Holocaust… His words seared into my
heart.
“I could hardly concentrate on the conclusion
of the Torah reading. “It’s time for Him to
send the blessings!”
“After the Service ended, the Rebbe rose to
speak. His words were again short and to the
point, but this time his eyes were warm with
love, leaving an indelible expression on my
mind and soul.
“’My beloved brothers and sisters,’ he said,
‘Pack up your belongings. We must make one
more move – hopefully the last one. G-d
promises that the blessings which must follow
the curses will now come.”
He then spoke of the blessing of Eretz Yisroel,
the eternal homeland of the Jewish people.
Some years later, he established Kiryat Sanz
– Klausenberg in Netanya where the
Klausenberg Rebbe built a large community,
and the acclaimed Laniado Medical Center.
We cannot be a nation that dwells on the
“curses” that have befallen us. Of course, we

must remember our past, and fight with
unwavering clarity and passion against every
enemy that wishes to bring curses to our
people, Heaven forbid. We must never ever
forget that Iran and all fundamentalist
Jihadists do not distinguish between the most

right-wing Chassidic Jew and the most left-
wing liberal Jew. They want them both cursed

and hunted down. We must thus unite as true
brothers and stand up for our people, for
Israel, for our homeland, for justice and peace.
But our curses must never define us. Our
blessings must inspire us and catapult us into
action.
Indeed, “it is time He sends the blessings!” It
is time He sends the greatest and most vital
blessings, the blessing of Moshiach and our
true and complete redemption, now!