Today is May 2, 2024 /
Today is May 2, 2024 /
Building Community Since 1954
A Progressive Conservative Synagogue Serving Central Florida
(407) 647-3055 | manager@tiflorida.org
50 S. Moss Rd., Winter Springs, FL 32708
The word curse has a bad reputation. We use it now mostly to describe swear words or foul language. If we think about it more than that, we conjure up images of cackling witches laying down curses upon superstitious peasants. So when Moses launches into his list of curses in this Parashah of Ki Tavo, it may seem out of place in the Torah.
Curses are the opposite of blessings and, like blessings, are not randomly bestowed at the whim of an individual or God. Curses are the specific outcomes of immorality and behavior that follows the rejection of Torah. In many cases we simply miss out on the benefits of living through Torah; we miss the blessings. Curses come when the behavior is so corrosive that it prevents us and our community from functioning at all. They are not lightning bolts from heaven but the painful result of our actions. This is not to say that all suffering comes as a curse for misdeeds, but some deeds carry the seeds of our own suffering within them.
The list in chapter 27, for example, lays out an assortment of transgressions that lead to curses. Moses constructs this list carefully. He does not include murder, theft or many obvious crimes. The list is focused on crimes that only the perpetrators know about, secret sins. Moses is driving home that the repercussions of such crimes will curse the one who did them even if no one else knows.
We read the texts of curses in an undertone. We need to be reminded, but as Torah was given for a blessing, we do not emphasize them. Do not take them as fire and brimstone but as warning signs for our own protection.