For almost a decade, I served as a congregational rabbi in New Jersey. In many ways it was meaningful – helping people through hard times, speaking and teaching. But by my mid-thirties, I felt a gnawing frustration. Something was missing. Pulpit life can feel suffocatingly small: community drama over petty politics, congregants enraged over trivialities, arguments about whether the service was too long or whether a woman could serve as synagogue president. I began asking myself, “Is this what I will dedicate my life to? The Jewish people’s pants are falling down, and we’re worried about fixing our tie!”
The smallness of it all pressed down on me until I felt trapped and unsatisfied. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook once wrote: “For a moment, I’m breaking free from the suffocating emptiness of the petty pursuits that stir and consume the masses.” His words captured exactly what I was living.
Life is filled with distractions that reduce us, endless details that devour our energy and attention. The question is: how do we keep our eye on the bigger picture and rise above the pettiness that consumes so much of our time?
God gives us an answer in the commandment of bikkurim – “first fruits.” The Bible commands a farmer to take the first fruits of his land to Jerusalem and present them at the Temple. There, the farmer makes a declaration that retells the entire story of our people: he begins by recalling Jacob, saying, “An Aramean (Laban) sought to destroy my father.” He then describes the slavery in Egypt, “And the Egyptians mistreated us,” and moves to the Exodus, “And the Lord brought us out of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 26:5-9).
Finally, he points to the present moment, standing in the land itself, saying:
Why such a demand? Why make a farmer drag his figs and grapes across the land to Jerusalem, only to recite a history lesson? Why not simply thank God at home?
Farming is full of details – planting, pruning, watering. Neglect them and the crop is lost. Yet living in that constant cycle of tasks and details can make us forget the meaning of our labor. Life risks becoming an endless checklist, repetitive and detached from purpose.
Bikkurim interrupts that cycle. Rabbi Reuven Sasson explains that this commandment forces the farmer to see his fig as the last link in a chain that began with Jacob, passed through Egypt, endured in the wilderness, and flourished in the Promised Land. The fruit is not just fruit – it is history, covenant, destiny. The declaration reframes life, teaching us that our toil is not isolated but part of God’s unfolding plan.
Rabbi Kook expands this idea: “All of nature and every creature, all of history and each person with his deeds, must be seen in a single vision – one great book with many chapters. Then the light of truth, which stirs repentance, breaks in swiftly.” Without this perspective, we shrink into ourselves – our status, honor, pleasures, and fears. We may even keep commandments, but if our world remains narrow, we live for ourselves, not for God. And living for ourselves, even under the cloak of religion, is the root of sin.
When we broaden our vision, when we see ourselves as a continuation of Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the Sages, the builders and defenders of Israel, then our lives are no longer small. Our days are not an isolated blip but a chapter in a book written by God. That awareness transforms our sense of worth. Suddenly, life is too valuable to waste on petty quarrels, too precious to be consumed by self-indulgence. We belong to something immense, eternal, holy.
If we live narrowly, everything becomes measured against ourselves. Did others honor me? Did I win this argument? Did I get what I wanted? That smallness breeds resentment, jealousy, and sin. But when we see our lives as links in a greater story, we are liberated. We stand among those “whose hearts God has touched” (I Samuel 10:26), joining those who “came to help the Lord among the mighty” (Judges 5:23). Our mission is greater than our egos. We are driven not by pride but by responsibility. Our purpose is rooted in redemption itself.
This shift does not erase individuality; it magnifies it. Every small act becomes charged with cosmic weight. Plowing a field, raising children, keeping Shabbat – all become part of God’s plan to establish His kingdom on earth. Through that perspective, the details of life gain dignity instead of suffocation. They are no longer petty chores but tools for holiness.
The Sages teach that greatness does not come from inflating ourselves, but from attaching ourselves to God’s mission. True strength is not measured by our ability to dominate a moment but by our ability to see beyond the moment. Greatness comes when we measure our lives not against the shifting anxieties of today, but against the unbroken story that stretches from Abraham through every generation until the final redemption. In that perspective, even the smallest act takes on eternal meaning.
This is the discipline of bikkurim. To carry a basket of fruit to Jerusalem is to proclaim: My figs are not mine alone. They belong to the covenant. They belong to Israel’s destiny. They belong to God. In that moment, the farmer is no longer just a farmer. He is part of the greatest story ever told.
This is the bigger picture I longed for when I served as a rabbi in America – the vision of Jerusalem, of the Temple, of the first fruits. A vision that pulls us out of suffocating narrowness and demands we see our lives as chapters in God’s book. Yet even while we must inevitably deal with the details, the arguments, the frustrations, and the countless small matters of daily life, we must build bikkurim moments into our lives—moments when we lift our heads, step back, and see the great story that our small acts are part of. Without those moments, the details consume us. With them, the details gain dignity and meaning.
May the day come soon when we again ascend to Jerusalem with our first fruits, standing before God not as isolated individuals but as members of His people, carrying the weight of history and the hope of redemption. Until that day, let us not drown in the smallness around us. Let us create our own first-fruit moments, again and again, until our lives are not defined by trivialities but by the greatness of serving the King of kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.
