Keri or the Lack of Simchah: The Root Cause of the Curses
"Why are the Jews a cursed people?" Ask around, and you'll hear very different answers. Many Christians believe that the Jews are cursed because they reject their messiah and bear responsibility for his death. With Muslims, the explanation is more nuanced. Jewish suffering is the result of their faithlessness to the covenant coupled with their rejection of and opposition to their prophets. According to many others, Jews are viewed as cursed not for theological reasons at all, but because of suspicion, resentment, and conspiracy thinking toward a people that refused to disappear or assimilate.
But the premise of that question is fundamentally flawed. Although Tanakh describes B'nei Yisrael, at times, as becoming a curse in the eyes of the nations, it never defines the Jewish People as inherently or permanently cursed. There are curses, yes. And Tanakh absolutely speaks about curses falling on Yisrael. But they are not who we are; they are what happens to us under specific conditions.
So let's ask the truly relevant – albeit pointed – question: What does the Torah say are the actual reasons for the curses that have befallen the Jewish People?
If we read the structure of the curses in Parashat Bechukotai carefully, we see that the core issue is not isolated transgressions, but a process: not listening, not doing, rejecting, despising, and ultimately breaking covenant. The curses emerge at the point where the relationship between B'nei Yisrael and Ha-Kadosh, baruch Hu becomes completely eroded. Put another way, the reason curses come, chas v'shalom, is not simply because we sin, but rather that we shift into a state of קֶרִי [keri].
The first time we read about this state of קֶרִי is in Vayikra 26:21: וְאִם־תֵּלְכוּ עִמִּי קֶרִי וְלֹא תֹאבוּ לִשְׁמֹעַ לִי וְיָסַפְתִּי עֲלֵיכֶם מַכָּה שֶׁבַע כְּחַטֹּאתֵיכֶם (And if you will walk with Me keri, and you are unwilling to listen to Me, then I will add upon you a beating – seven – according to your sins). What exactly does keri mean?
Rashi outlines three escalating layers that trace how keri takes hold and deepens. He opens with the first layer: רַבּוֹתֵינוּ אָמְרוּ עֲרַאי, בְּמִקְרֶה, שֶׁאֵינוֹ אֶלָּא לִפְרָקִים, כֵּן תֵּלְכוּ עֲרַאי בְּמִצְווֹת (Our Rabbis said, arai, b'mikreh, that it is only lifrakim, thus you will walk arai in the mitzvot). Arai means temporary, casual or incidental – not permanent; b'mikreh means by chance or happenstance, without design or intention; and lifrakim indicates at intervals, from time to time. When we put them together, Rashi is telling us that keri describes: (1) a relationship that has lost its stability, characterized as casual or incidental, not fixed; (2) events (or the relationship itself) that are treated as just happening by chance, not directed by Hashem, depriving life of intimacy and meaning; and (3) a relationship that has lost its continuity and only exists from time to time.
We could examine our relationship with Hashem in this light by asking ourselves a few simple questions. Do I relate to avodat Hashem as something that just comes up or that interrupts my day, or as something that defines my day? When I miss a tefillah or learning, does it feel like something essential was lost, or just something I didn't get around to doing? Is my connection with Hashem dependent on mood, time, or circumstance? Do I experience mitzvot as the center of my life, or as just one activity among many?
Let's examine Rashi's second level: וּמְנַחֵם פֵּרֵשׁ לְשׁוֹן מְנִיעָה (And Menachem [ben Saruk] explains it as an expression of withholding). Whereas the first layer of keri describes an external pattern, what one can observe – sometimes keeping the mitzvot, sometimes not keeping them – Rashi's second level describes the inner posture of an individual. It describes someone who is not really committed and so holds back and refrains from becoming fully engaged or fully committed to the covenant – detachment, bordering on aloofness. Again, ask yourself some questions. Am I preventing closeness with Hashem? Are there areas in my avodah where I deliberately avoid going deeper? Do I keep things superficial so I don't have to confront change? When I feel called to grow, do I quietly step back rather than step forward? Do I give Hashem part of myself while holding other parts back? Yes, they're deep questions – and perhaps uncomfortable – but considering what's at stake, they are necessary.
Rashi concludes with his third level of keri: וְקָרוֹב לָשׁוֹן זֶה לְתַרְגּוּמוֹ שֶׁל אֻנְקְלוֹס, לְשׁוֹן קֹשִׁי, שֶׁמַּקְשִׁין לִבָּם לִמָּנַע מֵהִתְקָרֵב אֵלַי (And this expression [of holding back] is close to the Targum Onkelos, an expression of hardness, that they harden their hearts to hold back from bringing themselves close to Me). At this level, the issue is not just that one is holding back, but that one cannot easily be moved anymore. This level is no longer behaviour; it's a state of existence. We become unresponsive – like a hard rock. Immovable. Without feeling. Cold. So ask yourself: Do I feel unmoved even when I know something should affect me? Do I actually try not to be moved?When I hear something true in Torah or mussar, does it penetrate or do I dismiss it? Has my avodat Hashem become annoying or maybe even irritating?
We see, therefore, that Rashi is not presenting three separate, independent definitions of keri, but a developmental path – three stages of a single, continual progression. First, the relationship is not anchored. It's casual or incidental. Second, it is quietly resisted. And finally, it becomes internally blocked. Each stage is qualitatively different from the previous – and if we examine ourselves honestly, we should be able to feel that shift, from instability to avoidance to inner closure.
Understanding keri as a spectrum describing an unhealthy relationship with Hashem helps explain its reciprocal nature. What do we mean? More than once in this parashah, Hashem says that if we treat Him with keri, then He'll treat us with keri. For example, Hashem says (Vayikra 26:23-24): וְאִם־בְּאֵלֶּה לֹא תִוָּסְרוּ לִי וַהֲלַכְתֶּם עִמִּי קֶרִי: וְהָלַכְתִּי אַף־אֲנִי עִמָּכֶם בְּקֶרִי (And if, with these, you will not be admonished by Me, and you walk with me keri, then I will walk, even I, with you, in keri). Put another way, if we continue to relate to Him in keri, He will mirror that back to us and allow us to experience exactly what it feels like to be on the receiving end of keri. Although that's sharp, it is true, and we shouldn't turn away from it because it's not pretty. If we treat our relationship with Hashem in a casual manner, then tit-for-tat, that is exactly what we will experience from Hashem. If we see everything that happens to us as happenstance, as a set of unrelated events without hashgachah pratit at all, then Hashem will allow us to see the world exactly like that. And if we hold back and refrain from fully committing with Hashem, chas v'shalom, we will see Hashem responding to us middah k'neged middah in that way. Not that Hashem actually treats us that way, chas v'shalom – for Malachi 3:6 says:כִּי אֲנִי יְיָ לֹא שָׁנִיתִי (for I am Hashem; I do not change) – but rather our perception will be so distorted – so twisted – that we will perceive His behaviour toward us in exactly that manner. When the relationship is treated as incidental, reality itself begins to feel arbitrary, hostile, and unstable.
As we wrote earlier, the fundamental cause of the curses is not sin in its narrow sense. It's more subtle than that. It's the collapse of orientation. The moment we cease to see life as covenantal and begin to experience it as happenstance – we have already entered into keri. Once that shift happens, the entire system destabilizes, and the curses are the unfolding of that disconnection. Put simply, the parashah begins to show us that the curses are not punishments for isolated failures, but the natural outcome of a relationship between Am Yisrael and Hashem that is no longer actively being lived, but rather experienced as incidental.
But this raises a deeper question. If keri is the cause of the curses, why does Moshe attribute the curses to something else entirely in Parashat Ki Tavo? He says (Devarim 28:47): תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר לֹא־עָבַדְתָּ אֶת־יְיָ אֱלֹקֶיךָ בְּשִׂמְחָה וּבְטוּב לֵבָב מֵרֹב כֹּל (Because you did not serve Hashem, your G‑d, with simchah and with goodness of heart, from an abundance of everything). So which is it – keri or the lack of simchah?
Moshe is not contradicting what was said in Parashat Bechukotai, but identifying the root that precedes it. The covenant remains, the mitzvot are still being performed – yet the inner life has lost its vitality. These are not two reasons, but two stages of the same process: in Bechukotai, we stop walking with Hashem; in Ki Tavo, we are still walking, but no longer want to be. We see then a progression: a person can still be within the covenant – still "walking" with Hashem – but without simchah. Nothing appears broken externally; internally, though, the relationship has already weakened, and keri becomes almost inevitable. What was once covenant becomes coincidence.
Now we can begin to understand the depth of why R' Nachman of Breslov emphasized the importance of simchah. He taught (Likutei Moharan 5:2): וּמִי שֶׁעוֹשֶׂה הַמִּצְוָה בְּשִׂמְחָה מֵהַמִּצְוָה בְּעַצְמָהּ נִמְצָא כְּשֶׁנִּכְנָס בְּהַשִּׂמְחָה שֶׁבַּמִּצְוָה הוּא נִכְנָס בְּשִׂמְחַת הַקָּדוֹשׁ־בָּרוּךְ־הוּא שֶׁמְּשַמֵּחַ בְּמַעֲשָׂיו (And someone who performs the mitzvah with simchah from the mitzvah itself, it follows that when he enters into the simchah of the mitzvah, he enters into the simchah of Ha-Kadosh, baruch Hu Who is sameach in His actions). In other words, Hashem embedded simchah into His mitzvot – for He and His Torah are the essence of simchah – and therefore, it's impossible to fulfill a mitzvah properly without it. Without simchah, the act may be performed, but the mitzvah itself is not fully realized. This is why he teaches (Likutei Moharan, Tinyana 24): מִצְוָה גְּדוֹלָה לִהְיוֹת בְּשִׂמְחָה תָּמִיד (It is a great mitzvah to be in a state of simchah always). Now you know why.
Moshe Rabbeinu states that without simchah, the relationship between B'nei Yisrael and Hashem our G‑d collapses. R' Nachman's insight follows: simchah is not optional – it is a covenantal necessity precisely because everything depends on it. Simchah is not one mitzvah among many – it is the condition that keeps all mitzvot alive.
