Parashat Ki Tavo: The Many Interpretations of "Arami Oved Avi"

(1) When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, (2) you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where the LORD your God will choose to establish His name. (3) You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, “I acknowledge this day before the LORD your God that I have entered the land that the LORD swore to our fathers to assign us.” (4) The priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of the LORD your God. (5) You shall then recite as follows before the LORD your God: “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. (6) The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. (7) 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. (8) The LORD freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. (9) He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (10) Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O LORD, have given me.” You shall leave it before the LORD your God and bow low before the LORD your God. (11) And you shall enjoy, together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst, all the bounty that the LORD your God has bestowed upon you and your household.

ארמי אבד אבי A SYRIAN DESTROYED MY FATHER — He mentions the loving kindness of the Omnipresent saying, ארמי אבד אבי, a Syrian destroyed my father, which means: “Laban wished to exterminate the whole nation” (cf. the Haggadah for Passover) when he pursued Jacob. Because he intended to do it the Omnipresent accounted it unto him as though he had actually done it (and therefore the expression אבד which refers to the past is used), for as far as the nations of the world are concerned the Holy One, blessed be He, accounts unto them intention as an actual deed (cf. Sifrei Devarim 301:3; Onkelos).

וירד מצרימה AND HE WENT DOWN INTO EGYPT — But there were others, too, “who came against us to destroy us” (cf. the Passover Haggadah), for afterwards Jacob went down into Egypt with his children and these were enslaved there).

A WANDERING ARAMEAN. The word oved (wandering) is an intransitive verb. If Aramean referred to Laban then Scripture should have read mavid or me’abbed. Furthermore, what reason would Scripture have had for stating, Laban sought to destroy my father and he went down to Egypt? Laban did not cause Jacob to descend to Egypt. It thus appears to me that the term Aramean refers to Jacob. Scripture, as it were, reads, when my father was in Aram he was “perishing.” That is, he was poor, he had no money. Similarly oved (perish) in Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish (Prov. 31:6). Let him drink, and forget his poverty (Prov. 31:7) is proof. The meaning of our phrase thus is, a perishing Aramean was my father. Its import is, I did not inherit the land from my father, for my father was poor when he came to Aram. He was also a stranger in Egypt. He was few in number. He then became a large nation. You O Lord took us out of slavery and gave us a good land. Let the one who disputes not argue, “How could Jacob be called an Aramean?” Look, we find the same with Ithra the Ishmaelite who, as Scripture clearly states, was an Israelite.

ארמי אובד אבי, my father, i.e. Yaakov, who was for a while a wandering lost person without a home of his own, was not at the time able to establish a nation deserving or fit to inherit this land.

ארמי אובד אבי, “my forefather used to be a wandering Aramean;” this verse has been abbreviated. In full, it should have read: “Yaakov my forefather was a wandering Aramean.” While he was serving Lavan in Aram he was no better than a wandering Aramean, he had no house or land of his own; he was not even a resident in that country.”

The word אבי, "my father," may also be a reference to the soul seeing all the efforts of Satan are aimed at corrupting and destroying the holy soul in man. The soul is called "father" in the Zohar volume one page 76. It is Satan who tries to prevent man from carrying out his duty to serve his Maker. This is not all Satan was responsible for, but וירד מצרים, "he descended to Egypt," i.e. to the place where the evil urge is at home, the epitome of physicality, the place where the soul is under the greatest amount of pressure to yield to Satan. This is the mystical dimension of Isaiah 65,25: ונחש עפר לחמו, "and the serpent feeds on dust." This is a simile for Satan subsisting on all the material pleasures of this world, enjoying them for their own sakes, something which is an abomination to G'd. Literally, the very fact that man's body is narrow, מצר (same as מצרים) accounts for the fact that the evil urge within us is so close to our soul that we can hardly avoid touching. The four basic raw materials which G'd employed to create this physical universe have all become predominantly secular and even defiled through man's original sin so that G'd had to decree mortality on His creatures. [The author, in common with all other Kabbalists, has explained that death is part of the rehabilitative process for the spirit which will ultimately redeem man. Ed.]. This perversion of the basic raw materials man is made of is the reason people respond so readily to the seductive tactics of Satan. The body itself is called מצרים, "Egypt," (confined), because it exerts constant pressure on man through the pleasures man lusts after.