Rhetoric & ritual – Ki Tavo
Crowds built up on the way to the Temple with the first fruits. Many of the Shirei HaMa’alot were sung during the pilgrimage. It was an exciting, colourful spectacle, its pomp unequalled by any other observance.
It may be from this ritual that we derive the congregational principle, b’rov am hadrat Melech, “The King is acclaimed in great crowds” (Prov. 14:28).
