First Fruits

This week’s Torah portion, read all over the world, is from one of the last chapters of Deuteronomy. As soon as I say that I know most people will tune out. There is nothing that puts Jews to sleep faster than the mention of a chapter and a verse. I’m not offended; it just goes with the territory. We have lost our taste for close-focus study and I am as guilty as anyone of failed rabbinic leadership.

But stick with me for just a couple of paragraphs. The section we’ll be reading is all about first fruits. When the Israelites enter the promised land, they’re supposed to load some of the harvest into wicker baskets and bring it to the priest in the central sanctuary. Already, I’m liking the sound of this command. No animal sacrifices; no carcasses on the altar. Just the traditional array of seven signpost fruits and grains that signify all of the land’s abundance. It’s a vegetarian dream of light-footprint ritual. No animals were harmed in the fulfillment of this rite.

And there’s nothing triumphal about the style of the sacrifice. That’s the second thing I like about this part of Deuteronomy. In the midst of a generally hierarchical liturgy, the worshipper is supposed to raise his voice. That puts him on par with the hereditary priest.

But he is supposed to declare that he is the child of a refugee. “My father,” he intones
“was a fugitive Aramean.” In other words, he is not a native of the land, but someone who once crossed a border and must always be cognizant of that inconvenient fact. The border is porous, slushy, and indefinite. To pretend that we were there at the beginning of time is to misconstrue the design of the universe. We are all travelers, visitors, sojourners in space. This is the very opposite of “autochthonous” origin, so beloved of religious ethno-nationalists. If I could speak one phrase to my monstrous co-religionist Stephen Miller, it would be “Our fathers were wandering Arameans.”

But the next part of the text is still more important. The Israelite worshipper is supposed to sit down to eat, not in some cocoon of privilege, not with Jeff Bezos in a palazzo in Venice, but with the ger, the stranger, of the Biblical narrative, who lives in the very midst of the Israelite people. Deuteronomy can’t quite decide what it wants, to slaughter the Perizzites or to feed them lunch. But here it speaks in the language of generosity. The experience of suffering invoked in the first-fruits ritual has to unfold in a practical gesture of inclusion. If it remains just a memory, the tradition is unfulfilled.

Next time you hear someone describe deportation as a positive, have them open up to Deuteronomy 26. It’s the best test I know of moral enlightenment.