Boras Si Pir Ni Tondi Traditional Rice-Based Practice and Human Well-Being among the Toba Batak Community

Abstract

This article examines the Boras Si Pir Ni Tondi tradition in Toba Batak culture as a source of local wisdom for post-disaster trauma recovery. This study begins with a concrete event: in December 2025, the leaders of the Huria Kristen Batak Protestant Church (HKBP) gave Boras Si Pir Ni Tondi to victims of a flash flood disaster as a manifestation of the identity of a "cultural church." Using a contextual theological approach, specifically Stephen Bevans' anthropological model and the Old Testament theology of blessing, this article argues that this tradition is not merely a residuum of pre-Christian culture, but rather a theologically valid inculturative medium for communicating blessing, soul healing, and divine solidarity to humans bearing the burden of trauma. Methodologically, this article uses a qualitative literature review that compares the literature on Batak cultural anthropology, Old Testament hermeneutics, and contextual theology.