“Cursed be the man who…”  — Devarim 27:15

Ki Savo has a lot of curses. Like… A LOT. Pages upon pages. And the baal koreh (Torah reader) is going to try to speed through them all as quickly as possible. But what is a curse? Does Judaism really believe a person can be cursed? If you break a mirror, see a black cat cross your path, or you back over an old Gypsy woman’s mailbox should you be concerned? But the biggest question of all, why does Hashem want to levy so much calamity on His beloved people? 

First off, let’s look at the language. Biblical Hebrew uses several different words for curses, each with its own shade of meaning. There is arur (root aleph-reish-reish), describing someone or something as accursed; kelalah (root koof-lamed-lamed), a curse or state of misfortune; and ekov (root koof-vet-vet), the word Bilaam uses for the act of cursing. “How can I curse (ekov) whom God has not cursed?” These words overlap in meaning, rather than representing three completely separate technical categories, but the distinctions are worth keeping in mind.

The Or HaChaim elaborates on the spiritual nature of curses in his commentary on parshas Balak. Addressing the line of the wicked prophet Bilaam hired to curse the Israelites, he says, “How can I curse? God has not cursed; and how can I anger? Hashem is not angry.” (Bamidbar 23:8) Bilaam expresses his inability to bring curse on a people that are inherently blessed. It seems you can’t curse someone who isn’t cursed. But then what was the point of King Balak summoning him? The Or HaChaim says that if a person has done evil, then Heavenly justice will dispense misfortune. Likewise, “if according to God’s judgment he has done nothing to deserve having the misfortune befall him, then his curse shall bounce back on the head of the one uttering the curse.” So if you’ve done something wrong, you’re going to get misfortune sooner or later, and if you’re clean, no one’s curse can touch you. 

But who is blameless? Who hasn’t done something wrong? We all have. And certainly some more than others. Why aren’t we seeing the wicked suffer curses and calamities regularly? So the Or HaChaim elucidates further. “Hashem, blessed be He, delays His anger towards those who transgress His Will. Whether for the righteous who unusually sin or the wicked who want to sin. ‘Slow to anger’ is one of His Thirteen Attributes of Mercy… This attribute is active at all times except at a certain moment each day when Hashem is angry.” According to the Sages, there is a moment in the day when Hashem lets His Anger appear (so to speak) and one can cause the sins of another to bypass Hashem’s Mercy. This is how Bilaam was trying to curse the Israelites.

Moving away from angry magicians uttering curses, why are misfortunes and disasters considered to be a curse at all? Clearly this parsha claims that sins bring about bad luck and eventually calamity. But those unfortunate events can be large in scope, affecting whole populations, i.e. an earthquake. And it’s rarely the truly wicked who suffer, but often the poor and already disadvantaged. Why would a loving God punish through curses? 

The Or HaChaim delves into the mystical perspective to explain (I’ve added some of my own insights into the explanation, so this isn’t 100% the Or HaChaim). Blessing, goodness, and order flow into the physical world through layers of spiritual realms that emanate from Hashem—the “Heavenly element,” so to speak. Perhaps you can picture it like a sprawling spiritual Tree of Life with branches and roots. This isn’t the Or HaChaim’s literal diagram, but it helps visualize his idea: each mitzvah is connected to a particular spiritual root, and when a person sins, the damage reaches the Heavenly element associated with that mitzvah. This creates a sort of corruption of impurity which feeds off of that part of the spiritual structure as well as the part of the person’s soul connected to it.

Note: Kabbalistic thought believes that each of the 613 mitzvahs corresponds to a part of a person’s body and soul.  

So from the sin, the person is infected with a sort of impurity and the flow of goodness into the world is disrupted and is even hijacked by the elements of impurity. “This situation endures as long as the person has either not repented or has not received punishment for their sin.” But when Hashem is the “nosay avon,”  forgiver of sin, one of the other 13 Attributes of Mercy, the literal translation is “bearer of sin” because Hashem holds back the consequences of this flow disruption. 

Now this is all metaphor and an oversimplification of that metaphor at that. But essentially the idea, I think, is that the default nature of the world is one of judgment.  If you do something wrong, there should be consequences. There shouldn’t be a delay or a slap on the wrist. So Hashem made a system that reflects that. You do good, blessing comes into the world. You do bad and that creates something that has to be processed or expressed in some way (impurity/corruption). It’s just the system. But that’s not how it actually works. Rashi comments that “Initially it arose in [God’s] thought to create the world with the attribute of Din [strict justice]. He saw that the world could not endure, so He gave precedence to the attribute of Rachamim [mercy] and joined it with the attribute of Din.”

Mercy delays negative consequences, provides the opportunity for teshuvah to dispel the consequences, and doesn’t dispense the full consequences. But sooner or later that negativity must be expressed if it isn’t dealt with. That can either be in this world where the pain is temporary or in the next world where the consequences are permanent. This is how such pain can actually be a good thing while the continuing prosperity of the wicked may doom them for eternity. As a side note: the Jewish people are all connected, so it is possible for one Jew to suffer for the sins of another. But that’s an idea for a separate post. 

So, theoretically, the curses of some angry Agatha could cause a person much distress, but that is only possible if the person has brought the wickedness on themselves first. The staggering curses listed in Ki Savo can then be read not simply as Hashem threatening to inflict suffering, but as a warning about what happens when we damage the very spiritual system through which blessing enters the world. The Jewish people have been entrusted with a profound ability to elevate, and complete that world and turning away from that mission has consequences. People who work with nuclear power have a tremendous tool to benefit mankind. But if they’re not careful, they can unleash widespread havoc. The Jewish people aren’t just playing with fire, we’re the keepers of Aish HaTorah, the fire of Torah.