In the relationship
On the first day you loved. In the fifth week, the fifth year, the thirtieth year, it is still love, but it is no longer what it was, and you stop noticing.
About this page. This is an editorial synthesis based on the complete English captions and the reviewed Portuguese translation of Michael Berg's class for the Shabbat of Ki Tavo. It is not a full transcript.
The basket that hides a letter
The portion of Ki Tavo opens with the mitzvah of Bikurim, the first fruits. You go down to your field in Israel, see the first fig, the first date to ripen that year, tie a string around it, and carry it to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, inside a basket called a tene.
Michael Berg begins with a reading from one of the great kabalists, the Baal Ha-Turim, who notices something strange. The word tene, basket, carries the numerical value 60, the exact gematria of the letter Samech. And the letter Samech, alone among the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, never once appears in the whole story of the Bikurim. The Baal Ha-Turim promises that, with the Creator's help, we will understand why. But he does not explain it there.
The letter that is a circle
To follow that thread, Michael Berg turns to the Midrash on the Creation. The first time the letter Samech appears in the Torah, the Midrash teaches in the name of Rabi Chanina Bar Idi, is exactly the moment Eve is created, when the first couple becomes conscious. And it is with this letter that the force called Satan is born. All the pain and darkness of this world begin there.
The kabalists explain why. Of the whole ancient alphabet, Samech is the only round letter. And a circle has a property no other geometric shape has. Drawing a square or a triangle, you decide with every line where it goes next. A perfect circle, no. The first curve you trace already determines exactly the whole rest of the circle. Nothing new can enter it.
The circle means this: I started here, I must end here again, and then here once more, over and over.Michael Berg · Ki Tavo class
The circle of Satan
This is the world most of us live in. You go back to the same restaurant and love how they make the chicken, you eat it today and you will eat it tomorrow, maybe a little different, but basically the same. One day follows the next. Today is sunny, tomorrow it might rain, but underneath, life keeps turning inside the same circle.
And the most dangerous part is that it does not feel bad. You like your chicken, you like your day, you enjoy the sunshine. It is good. That is exactly why it is Satan's deadly trap: it does not hurt.
With the children
You remember the first instant you saw them. Then they grow, and without noticing you stop connecting to that first love.
In prayer
You make the same connection as always, a little better, a little worse, but you already know what the next step will be, and the one after.
In Torah study
You hear the reading the way you heard it last week, and you will hear it again next week. It is not nothing, but it is not the point.
A door at every instant
Against the circle, the Torah opens with a single word: Beresheet, "in the beginning." Resheet means beginning, something new, and that is why, the kabalists teach, the word barely appears in any other portion, yet returns again and again in this week's.
King Solomon gives the practical key, in Proverbs: Ashrei Adam Shomeia Li, Lishkod al Daltotai Yom Yom, blessed is the one who listens to my voice, watching at my doors every day. Michael Berg explains: it is not about standing physically at a door. It is realizing that, at every instant, two Shabbats are possible, two prayers, two conversations with the person you love. One continues the circle. The other is a portal to a completely new experience, one the Creator has already prepared, waiting for you to choose it.
Stop. Do not consume the moment. Know that there is a door ready for you now, and another in the next second, and another after that.Michael Berg · Ki Tavo class
A practice for resheet
Think of the farmer and the first fig. He does not eat it. He carries it for five weeks to Jerusalem, because that fig carries inside it the energy of the new, and the new is the most precious and the hardest thing to find in this world. This week's practice is the same choice, in miniature, every day.
- Stop before you begin. Before prayer, before looking at your spouse, before hearing the Torah reading, one second of pause, instead of going straight into autopilot.
- Ask which door this is. Am I repeating last Shabbat, or am I standing at a door that has never existed before?
- Return to the source. What would it feel like to experience this for the first time, the first day you loved this person, the first instant you held your child?
- Do not eat the first fig. Choose not to consume the moment without noticing. Offer it, keep it, carry it somewhere higher.
- Repeat three times a day. We stop to pray in the morning, afternoon, and evening for exactly this reason, to get that chance three times: is today a continuation of yesterday, or is today the first day that ever existed?