by Rabbi Russ Resnik

NOTICE: "PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR"  (from Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)

Our parasha opens with a command to retell a particular story, which is the shared story of God's people. When you enter the land and gather your first harvest, Moses tells the people, present a basket of first fruits to the priest as an offering to the Lord, and tell a story, which begins with an unforgettable combination of three Hebrew words: Arami Oved Avi:

"My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation.  The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The LORD freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O LORD, have given me." (26:5-10 NJPS)

Telling this story brings the individual not just into the land of Israel, but into the community of Israel. The community comprises those who share the story, who have a common father, the wandering Aramean, and who remember him and recount the tale of his wanderings to explain how it is that they have come to be where they are in the present day.

At first reading, it may appear that offering the first fruits and telling the story was a one-time event, something that happened only when the first generation entered the land of promise. Jewish tradition, however, adopted it as an ongoing practice. Throughout the time when the temple was still standing, farmers in Israel would bring their first fruits to the temple and recite the story of God's mighty deliverance from Egypt, concluding, "Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O LORD, have given me." Commentator Jeffrey Tigay notes,

[T]he ceremony is not a one-time occurrence but is to be recited throughout the generations (as implied by the reference to "the priest who shall be in charge at that time" (v. 3). Indeed, the fact that the ceremony takes place at the chosen sanctuary, which would only be established several generations after Israel entered the land, means that it could not be performed by the generation that first entered the land. In other words, it is the farmer of later generations who acknowledges that he personally benefits from God's gift of the land made long before his own lifetime. This acknowledgment is similar to the exhortation in the . . . Passover Haggadah that "in every generation one must view oneself as if he [personally] came out of Egypt."

(The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy)

Jewish families have retold this story of deliverance around the Passover table, every year in every generation, even long after we've been exiled from the land and have no first fruits to bring with it. This is the same story of deliverance that Yeshua enters and reenacts in his life, death, and resurrection during Passover, and then assigns to us to retell repeatedly.

"The LORD freed us . . . by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents and brought us to this place . . ."

In the Messianic Jewish community we hear and retell the Yeshua story within the Passover story that we hear and retell along with the whole Jewish people. We do not choose between these two stories, but tell them as one story, which has shaped our individual lives and our community to this day.

We are not in the season of Passover, however, but in the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the period of teshuvah or return to God. As we read this passage during the season of return it calls us to return to the shared story: the Yeshua story in the midst of the deliverance-from-Egypt story.

The shared story makes us a sacred community. I use this term in contrast with what Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman calls market community, or the consumerist congregation. In sacred community the congregation not a means to an end, a collection of programs and benefits, but a collection of friends bound together by their shared story. This is part of my vision for the UMJC and our congregations: We are not just an organization to get things done, or to provide benefits and programs for each other, but a sacred community, held together by our shared Passover/Yeshua story. Rabbi Hoffman writes,

The everyday is what we use as means to ends. The sacred exists as its own end.  Sacred community . . . is devoted to certain tasks, but these can be realized only in a sacred ambience, not in a market community where people weigh value by the list of limited liability deliverables that they think their dues are buying. (Rethinking Synagogues, A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life, p. 140)

We are community because we all share the same story, which tells how we came to be here at all. And the story shared in sacred community gives God all the credit:

The LORD heard our plea;
The LORD freed us from Egypt;
The LORD brought us to this place . . .
Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O LORD, have given me.

We enter the story, but it is all about God, not us. Our sharing in it enhances the reputation of the God of Israel. During this season of return, we need to return to this story, and ask how well we are retelling the story about God and how he is glorified in our lives.

A final point: The shared story has a visible enactment. The farmer carries real grain, real olives, real grapes in his basket and presents them as proof of God's deliverance. Yeshua shares real matzah and wine at his final Passover and says "Do this in remembrance of me." Here is a question for the season of return: How about you and your story? Can you ask yourself: How am I acting the story today? What visible, tangible deed can I do this day that will reenact the shared story?

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Russ Resnik, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it