Deuteronomy

דברים

Devarim - Deuteronomy 1:1— 3:22

LOOKING AHEAD

Each year as we come to the opening reading of the Book of Deuteronomy, as we do this Shabbat, I feel mixed emotions. During these warm days of mid and late summer, I have a sense of passing and loss together with feelings of appreciation and expectation.

Deuteronomy, in Hebrew, “Devarim,” is the fifth and final book of the Torah. Unlike the first four books, which carry us on a journey from creation to the days of our patriarchs and matriarchs, through the exciting events of the Exodus from Egypt and our ancestors’ adventures in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land, Deuteronomy marks the end of a hard journey with all the joy and sorrow that entails.

Deuteronomy presents Moses’ final messages to the people he led from slavery to freedom and guided for forty long years. Moses, who is approaching death, recalls the events of our people’s wandering in the desert and reviews the laws and precepts that are to guide them as they live without his leadership in the Land of Israel. He admonishes our people to be loyal to our God and to our laws and customs after they cross over the Jordan River and take possession of the land that he will never enter.

As I read Deuteronomy, I feel for Moses. On the one hand, I think about how worried Moses must have been as he prepared his people for their new life, how sad he must have felt to leave them, how disappointed he must have been to know that he would never enter the Promised Land, and how brave he was to face them and share his thoughts. On the other hand, I think about his sense of accomplishment and satisfaction at coming all the way and building a new nation with a new mission.

Our ancestors, the people Moses addressed at the end of his life, were truly Moses’ children. He had guided their parents and grandparents, the people he led out of Egypt, and had watched the maturation of this first generation born in freedom. He knew their strengths and weaknesses. He knew that their souls, unlike their parents’ souls, were not burdened by the experience of slavery but he also knew that they, unlike their parents, had not been tested by struggle.

This was the generation fed on manna, the miraculous food of the years of wandering, and guided day and night by the divine presence. Moses knew that soon they would grow up in a new land, with new leaders, and he would be with them only in memory.

I think also of Moses’ audience, our ancestors. How frightened they must have been to learn that they would have to face the future without their inspired leader. They knew that their lives were about to change radically but could not imagine what that might mean. One chapter of their lives was coming to an end and it was their privilege and responsibility to write the next chapter. With the sense of accomplishment at coming so far and the feeling of excitement as they considered the next steps, I can only imagine how hard it must have been to concentrate on Moses’ instructions and admonitions.

On a personal level, the beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy reminds me that this is a special time of the year. The summer is half over and, at according to the Jewish calendar, the year is coming to an end. Now is the time for me to begin my preparations for the new year but I still have the chance to celebrate the joys of the season. The Book of Deuteronomy will guide me on my spiritual journey from the mid-summer commemoration of Tisha be-Av through fall celebrations of the High Holidays and Sukkot. As Moses asked the Israelites at the end of their journey to look back and review all they had experienced and to prepare for their new life in the land of Israel, Deuteronomy will provide me this summer, as it has always done, with the occasion to review the past year and begin my spiritual preparations for the next.

As we all study the Book of Deuteronomy during the course of the next two and a half months, we will have the opportunity to review the epic history of our people, to study the practices that define Jewish life, to consider the moral and ethical teachings of our tradition and to imagine our future as individuals and as a people. We will be able to share Moses’ concerns and feelings as he prepares his children, our ancestors, for their future. If we listen carefully, we will be like Joshua, Moses’ successor, encouraged and strengthened by Moses’ words. We can savor what is left of the summer and look ahead with renewed strength to the coming new year.

Va-Etchanan – Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11

GOD’S LOVE OF ISRAEL

The Jewish spiritual tradition is like a symphony full of diverse themes and motifs. From time to time, one or another comes forward. Sometimes the various themes blend in pleasing harmonies and at times they clash in thrilling and challenging dissonances. The beats and rhythms change. One movement follows another. Themes appear, recede, only to reappear again.

One of the most abiding themes of Jewish faith is the love between God and Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. God loves Am Yisrael unconditionally and the Jewish people reply to that love by striving to fulfill their loving God’s wishes. God’s love for us is unearned and undeserved. Our love of God is our joyful and thankful response.

God’s love underlies the intimate bond God had with Abraham and the promises of progeny, prosperity and property God made to the Patriarchs. God’s love motivates the Brit, the Covenant, of Sinai. Our Torah, the sacred scroll whose words anchor Jewish life, belief and practice, is a lasting monument to that love.

God’s love of Am Yisrael forms the spiritual framework within which the Jewish people live. We live Jewish lives following the patterns and practices of the Jewish tradition, not in order to earn God’s love but as a loving answer to God’s loving call. As we strive to make the values and insights of our people real in our lives, our efforts manifest God’s love.

This theme animates much of our worship. It plays a central role in our mystic tradition. It is the non-rational foundation of our legal and moral teachings. The desire to experience, to explain, and to express God’s love of us and our love of God underlies the remarkable spiritual creativity of our mystics, philosophers, poets and saints.

The relationship between God and Israel is complex so our spiritual love song is not an easy melody. Real love is never simple, so the music of our soul captures the ups and downs of our spiritual partnership. We may question, but our loving God is true. We may be fickle, but God is faithful. We may wander, but God calls us home. If we lose our way, God’s Torah can guide us back. If we err, we may be punished but God will never forget us nor leave us alone. God always loves as an affectionate parent, a patient teacher, a loyal spouse, and a trustworthy ruler.

We, the Jewish people, have sung this Jewish love theme many times in many places with many voices, but the basic melody is ancient. We hear it expressed in Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of our Torah.

Deuteronomy presents Moses’s valedictory addresses to our ancestors just prior to his death and their entry into the Promised Land. It is the book of God’s love and God’s law. The wisdom, insight, understanding and direction contained within demonstrate God’s abiding concern and affection for us. They set us apart as a nation. They offer us a unique destiny. If we listen to them carefully and accept them seriously, we will be rewarded. But if we ignore them; we ignore them at our own risk. They are our source of life and vitality. By hearkening to them, we come close to God and in that closeness we find life (Deuteronomy 4:4).

In Deuteronomy this all seems very simple. We know why we love God — God rescued us from Egypt, sustained us in the wilderness and brought us to the borders of the Promised Land. We respond to God’s care and compassion by loving God back.

The Deuteronomic call for us to love God appears in its best known form in this week’s Torah portion, Va-Ethanan, — “You shall love the Eternal Your God with all your heart, soul and might.”(Deuteronomy 6:4) Throughout the portion, Moses exhorts our Israelite ancestors to show loving loyalty to God by following God’s directives, by rejecting idolatry, and by fearlessly embarking on the next stage in their journey — gaining possession of the Promised Land.

We know why we love God, but why God loves us remains a mystery. Despite all the laws, rules, regulations, ordinances and judgments that fill the Book of Deuteronomy — all the many discrete acts and practices that we as loyal and loving Jews do — Deuteronomy teaches us that God’s love is unconditional. We do not earn God’s love. For some unknown reason, God just loves us for being us, as Moses explains near the end of the weekly portion:

For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal, your God. Of all the peoples of the earth, the Eternal, your God, chose you to be His treasured people. It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that the Eternal set His heart on you and chose you — indeed, you are the smallest of people; but it was because the Eternal loved you and kept the oath He made to your ancestors, that the Eternal freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8)

We are God’s betrothed. We are God’s special treasure. But we are not mighty, numerous, or even particularly virtuous. We are who we are and still God loves us. More amazingly, God is willing to enter into a covenant with us and be part of our lives.

These are the contours of this powerful love theme as it plays in our Jewish spiritual life. It is not always an easy song to play and it has many variations. It is inspiring and challenging. It is deep and mysterious. It provides us with a multi-faceted vocabulary to describe the most powerful and most intimate of human experiences.

Composers and musicians do not believe in themes. Themes are not a matter of faith. Themes, musical motifs, and melodies are concepts not to be proven but to be played.

So it is with spiritual artists as well. They do not see statements of religious faith as dogma to be affirmed or rejected but as themes to explore, as spiritual notes, phrases, and motifs to be twisted and turned, broken and combined to expand our spiritual vision and religious life. The theme of the love between God and Israel has proven to be one of the most fruitful of all our people’s spiritual treasures and it still inspires the best in our hearts and souls.

MOSES'S PEP TALK

The Book of Deuteronomy, in general, and the Torah Portion Va-Ethanan, in particular, can be read as a Pep Talk. Moses, the soon-to-be retiring coach is prepping his team, the Israelites, for their next season. Their training in the wilderness is coming to an end and shortly they will begin their next adventure – finding a home in Canaan, the land promised to their ancestors.

The Israelites are rookies. Although they were victorious in a few wars as they approached the Promised Land, they also took a few passes. They are still untested in battle and have little experience as settled people. Moses does his best to remind them of the game plan, warn them about the obstacles, and provide them with basic instructions. Above all, Moses wishes to inspire them. He repeatedly reminds them of the special relationship between God and the people of Israel, telling them they have a distinct identity, purpose, mission, expectations, and responsibilities. He knows the difficulties before them and encourages them through warnings, threats, and promises to stay true to the task.

Moses’ reassurance that there is a special relationship between God and Israel plays an important role in his pep talk but it is neither an objective fact nor an exclusive claim. Moses speaks to and for his people. He uses it to encourage them and to help define their mission. It is for internal consumption. It is not self-evident. It is something our ancestors need to make manifest in their personal and communal lives.

As part of our unique spiritual heritage, we can think about and evaluate how our ancestors' understanding of their special relationship with God, the election of the people of Israel, functioned and continued to function throughout Jewish history. Was it successful? Does it remain helpful? How can we use it in ways that are contiguous with our past and appropriate for our present as we engage with our spiritual and cultural heritage?

Many find the expression “chosen people” difficult. When I was a young person we often had discussions in youth group or a summer camp of what the term meant. What does it mean to be chosen? For what are we chosen? Maybe "choosing people" is better than "chosen people"? If the Jewish people are chosen, what about all other people?

Many of us may have received a mug with the phrase “World’s Greatest Mom” or “Dad”. This statement is not objectively true, but it, hopefully, reflects a subjective truth that the relationship we have with our children is warm, nurturing, loving, and supportive. Every time we drink from the mug these values are reinforced. The expression reminds us of our commitment to pursue that goal – to be the greatest for our children.

Choseness, as an objective truth, is problematic. Other nations have misused their sense of divinely ordained destiny to justify expansionism, imperialism, missionary zeal, and xenophobia. Moses tempers this threat by associating election with holiness, humility, and a commitment to a value system (Deut. 7:6-11). Choseness or at least the benefits it can bestow become conditional. It is up to us to maintain the relationship.

Parashat Va-Ethanan is a pep-talk to Israelites as they prepare to enter into the Promised Land. We, however, read it on the Shabbat after the Fast Tisha B’Av, which concludes a period commemorating the great tragedies that befell the Jewish people, particularly the loss of the Temple, and exile. Moses employs the idea of election to give strength and purpose to a generation that survived the trials of the wilderness. Does”choseness” still work today to overcome our sense of weakness evoked by our history and our current challenges? Does it offer the message of serenity, hope, strength, courage, and love we need today? Does it help us to proceed with the sense of honesty and humility or does it present an undeserved sense of self-righteousness and pride? Is it a spiritual tool from our toolbox that we can use today, or should we keep it in the box and use another?

REMEMBER AND OBSERVE

In its literary setting the Book of Deuteronomy presents the final orations of Moses to the generation that came of age in the Wilderness some forty years after the Exodus from Egypt as they were encamped on the plains of Moab, across from Jericho, about to enter into Canaan. Standing before him were those who were children at the time of the Exodus as well as those born during the wandering through the desert. It was a generation that knew first-hand the challenges of freedom. While the obstacles their parents overcame were in the past, they had met their own challenges to their faith in God, their loyalty to the covenant and the devotion to each other. They were the witnesses and the survivors. (Deuteronomy 4:4)

As Moses prepares them for the next step in their pilgrimage, he implores them to observe faithfully the rules and regulations God gave them for life as a free people in their new homeland. He instructs them that if they do so, all will acknowledge their wisdom and discernment because not even the greatest of nations have such well-considered laws and rules as Israel’s. (4:6-8)

Then Moses shifts his focus. He tells the tired and tried Israelites that they are not only to be faithful to the covenant, but they need to take special care to transmit the memory the great moments of their past to future generations. Loyalty to God and God’s covenant entails more than faithful practice. Cherishing and transmitting the memory Israel’s spiritual triumphs, particularly the encounter with God at Sinai, is essential.

This message is of upmost importance this time in the Jewish year. The Torah portion Va-Ethanan always occurs on the Shabbat after the Fast of Tisha B’Av, the climax of a three week period of mourning that commemorates the great tragedies that befell the Jewish people. It is the healthy antidote to the inevitable feelings of victimhood evoked by the story of our people’s sufferings. It is the message of serenity, hope, strength, courage and love that counteracts the anger, frustration, weakness, fear and resentment that emerge at this season.

Moses understands that the foundation for Israelite people to remain dedicated to the covenant – its rules, regulations, teachings and instructions – is a positive self-image. Israel needs to know that on a spiritual level, they have a unique relationship with God, and on an historical level, they have overcome the forces of nations and nature. They are not the poor people enslaved by Pharaoh. They are Israel, the people whose march to freedom marked God’s triumph over the forces of oppression. They are Israel, the people who stood at the foot of Sinai and experienced the Divine Presence. They are Israel, the people who survived the desert, defeated their enemies, and have the courage to enter a new and unknown land.

Yet, Moses tempers these feelings knowing that arrogance is a dangerous as self-pity. Israel’s success is not Israel’s own doing. It arises out of Israel’s engagement with God and dedication to the high principles inherent in the covenant. As we see in the Book of Deuteronomy, Israel is to mark its loyalty to God through proper worship and its loyalty to the covenant by building a social system based on mutual love and support.

Moses’ exhortation that we cherish the memory of our people’s triumphal history has enduring value. The obstacles that face every generation can lead us into despair, resentment and self-pity. In frustration, we turn in anger at our foes, our friends, and ourselves. Self-doubt, fear, and consequential, hasty, ill-considered action weaken us.

Our challenges are real, but it is equally real that we are Israel, the people who succeed in the struggle with beings human and divine. Moses’ words still speak to us today – our future is ensured if we adhere to our spiritual tradition grounded in love and respect for God and humanity and if we remember the spiritual triumphs of our past.

LOVING THE LOVING GOD

What is the essence of the Torah, the living word of the living God? To Rabbi Akiba, the great sage and martyr of the 2nd century, the answer was “ahava / love.” He drew on two verses from the Torah to support his belief. The first was “You shall love the Eternal, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5), which comes from this week’s Torah portion Va’etchnan and the second was “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) from the Torah portion Kedoshim.

But what is ahava / love and how does one command it? This is a particularly sharp question for us today because in the modern world we understand love primarily as an emotion or a feeling, an interior state of mind. This view of love, however, is much narrower than the biblical understanding. While not denying what we today would call the emotional aspects of love, our ancestors saw ahava / love primarily as term that described a relationship such as our brit / covenant with God. For them love did not reside in the emotive of center of the soul but appeared in words and deeds that expressed the relationship and demonstrated loyalty to the other partner.

In contemporary Jewish culture, the clearest contrast between the modern and traditional view of love appears in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. In the moving duet, “Do You Love Me” Tevya, trying to understand his daughters’ modern ideas, asks Golde, his loyal wife, if she loves him. Golde, unable to comprehend love as an emotive state, finds it difficult to answer her husband’s question. All that she can do is remind him of the myriad of things that she has done for him over all their long years of marriage that demonstrate her abiding commitment to him and their family which to her means love.

The verse from Deuteronomy that instructs us to love God with all our heart, soul and might underscore the biblical understanding that ahava / love is more than an emotive state. Without a doubt there is an emotive aspect to God. We are to love God with our soul, our nefesh, our life force first created when God breathed the spirit into the primordial human (Genesis 2:8). But love also has a cognitive component and an action imperative. We are to love God also with our heart, the intellectual center in biblical anatomy, and with our might, our material gifts.

Biblically, we define ourselves not by our interior feelings but by our relationships to those around us. What we say and what we do can express the state of our souls. However, if we have no interior feelings, our souls can be trained by the way we interact with others, for better or for worse.

So how do we love God and love humanity at the same time? Our sages taught that we express of our love of God by acting in ways that manifest God’s love of us – by doing justice, by pursuing peace, caring for the less fortunate, by cherishing those dear to us, by building communities, by healing the sick, by honoring our past and by dreaming for our future. We love God by making God beloved by others. (Sifre Deut. 32)

Similarly we express our love for humanity by helping them express their own love of God. According to the tales of creation they, like us, were created in God’s image, and they, like us, have a soul waken by God’s living breath. By cherishing each other and by working together to make this world a better place for all, we witness our love of God and of humanity and express the essence of the Torah.

There is a great deal to do and much more in the Torah. This is a starting point and, as Hillel taught, “the rest is commentary, go study.”

DISCOVERING GOD IN OUR STORIES

Our God is the God who lives in the memory of our people. Our Torah is the repository of our people’s earliest memories. Their memories are preserved in its stories. We encounter their God by studying their stories and we make their God ours by adding our stories to theirs.

We give meaning to the random events of our lives through story-telling. We choose what to stress and what to ignore. We decide what is significant and what is insignificant. Each time we retell the story, it is a little different. With each retelling, our lives gain coherence and meaning.

Our Torah consists of stories told and retold. In them, God is one of the characters. From what God says and does, we see the various ways in which those who told the stories experienced God. Each story offers us a different perspective. Reading and responding to these stories gives us a dynamic vision of God.

Stories build on each other. Each time we retell one, we not only recreate our past but revise all previous versions. We know this intuitively. Every year at the Passover Seder we retell the story of the Exodus. The outline remains the same yet the story changes as we share it with different people at different points in our lives.

The Book of Devarim, (in English, Deuteronomy) is a retelling of Israel's story. As the last book of the Torah, Devarim is the lens through which we read Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. It is a memory book. It presents Moses' final reflections on the events fundamental to our Jewish identity. From a literary and spiritual viewpoint, Deuteronomy is both a summary statement on the past and the start of a new conversation. In retelling the story of the Exodus and Wandering, Moses gives us new perspectives on our people's story and way of life.

The idea of retelling is built into the word “Deuteronomy”. Literally, Deuteronomy means “The Second Torah”. However, it is better understood as “the Repetition” or “the Retelling” of Torah.” The name comes from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of our Bible prepared by Jews living in ancient Alexandria. It translates an alternative name for Devarim, “Mishnah Torah.” But Deuteronomy is more than a mere repetition. It provides new insights into Israel's history and the rules and regulations governing Israelite life.

Deuteronomy’s Moses uses the literary model of a covenant to describe the relationship between God and Israel as one grounded in mutual love and loyalty. Deuteronomy’s God is, like Israel, bound to the covenant. Although the Israelites might stray, the covenant is unbreakable.

The Torah portion Va-Etchanan shows how the process of retelling our story enlarges our vision of ourselves and our faith. In Va-Etchanan, Moses retells the account of the revelation at Sinai and restates the Decalogue. Moses condenses the story into a few verses and removes it from his summary of Israel’s adventures. Moses sets it aside as a separate unit using it to teach that Israel’s God is beyond physical representation (Deut. 4:9-20) and that the Sinai Covenant is a perpetual agreement (Deut. 5:1-5, 22-33). In Deuteronomy, the events at Sinai take on a timeless quality.

Deuteronomy's Decalogue is essentially the same as one in Exodus but modified to stress the nation-forming experience of escaping slavery. But, it is re-contextualized. In Exodus, the Covenant Code, a block of legal material, immediately follows the Decalogue. In Deuteronomy, Moses uses the Decalogue as an introduction to what has become for us the grounding statement of Jewish faith – the Sh’ma and the VeAhavta – the declaration of God’s oneness followed by the directive to ground our relationship with God in love. In Deuteronomy the focus of the Sinai experience shifts from that of rules and regulations to that of loving relationships.

We are blessed that Jewish religious tradition encourages us to retell, review and renew our people's stories. With each retelling, we add new meaning to our personal and collective lives. This dynamism finds its fullest expression in the fundamental spiritual insight of our monotheistic faith that our understanding of and relationship with the Divine unfolds as we reflect on our past by retelling our stories.

Eikev - Deuteronomy 7:12-11:15

MOSES THE THEOLOGIAN

This week I am reviewing the proofs for my soon-to-appear new book, I Am: A Journey in Jewish Faith. If one were to describe it, it would be a theology that is a book about God.

Theology is a weighty term for many people, but it is a rather simple process. We all do it. Theology is talking about God. It is the attempt to articulate in a reasonable way those formative life experiences that connect us to that which is beyond us and to that which gives meaning and purpose to our lives. It is pausing for a moment or more to reflect upon our lives and to find a way to express our insights in words.

Theology helps us develop a way to talk about our ultimate commitments. A working theology is our latest, but not last, word about God and about us. A good theology needs to be flexible enough to handle life’s changing circumstances and strong enough to keep us from being swept away.

Theology takes different forms. Many are familiar with lengthy, dense tractates, which, in the style of philosophy, explicate analytically the fundamentals of religious faith and their significance in the believer’s life.

But there are other ways to do theology. Our sages enjoyed telling stories about God. Poets use words to turn our hearts to God. Halakhah, Jewish law, attempts to express beliefs about God in activities of daily human life. Most theology, however, is done when we talk seriously about what we believe and do not believe about God.

Our theologies grow out of the events and circumstances of our lives. All that has formed us – our culture, our spiritual heritage, our mother tongue, where and when we live – provides us with the tools we need to talk about God.

For Jews, theology, God talk, is an ancient practice. The Book of Deuteronomy, in Hebrew, Devarim, “Words”, presents the advice Moses offers to our ancestors just prior to their entrance into the Promised Land. Moses’ insights are buttressed by theological statements.

One of these appears in the Torah portion Eikev where Moses contends that Israel needs to keep the covenant because “the Eternal your God is God supreme and Lord supreme, the great, mighty and awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing – You, too, must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10: 17-19)

Here Moses’ understanding of God rests on his experience of God. Moses perceived God’s saving and protecting power in Egypt, at the Red Sea and through the years of wandering, The God Moses knew was not only powerful but used that power to care for those who are powerless. Human rank, privilege and power had no influence on Moses’ God. His God’s heart turned to those who lack such things, and, for Moses, we, as people who have taken on that image of God as our own had to do likewise. We, who were the powerless strangers whom God saved from Egyptian bondage needed to befriend the powerless in our midst, especially strangers.

Moses’ words are clearly not all of Jewish theology but are a good starting place for us to articulate our own theology as Jews. They are grounded in experience, full of awe and contain a clear action directive.

Over the centuries Jews have developed any number of theologies responding to the defeats and triumphs of the Jewish people and the ups and downs of their personal lives. Our tradition models for us many ways to talk about God. Some may move us and some might leave us cold. Some may seem incredible while others may reflect our own insights. Whether they work for us or not, they provide the tools we can use to construct a theology that works for us.

By doing theology we seek the truth about ourselves in relationship with our highest values. If our theology is like Moses’ theology – grounded in the events of our lives, filled with wonder and pushing us to reach beyond ourselves – then we, too, are good theologians.

REWARDS AND BLESSINGS

The heart of our worship service is our declaration of love and loyalty to the one and unique God — the prayer we know as the Shema. The first six words (Deuteronomy 6:4) are deeply imbedded in every Jews’ soul — “Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One!” These six words form the basic Hebrew prayer vocabulary shared by all Jews and expresses the sacred ties that bind us together.

But the Shema is longer than those six words. The opening declaration is followed first by a response proclaiming the glory of the God’s dominion and then by three long paragraphs from the Torah underscoring our binding relationship to God through what we say, do and feel.

The first of these paragraphs, Deuteronomy 6:5-9, the prayer that begins with the word “Ve’ahavta”, expresses our promise to love God with all our intellectual, emotional and physical abilities and our commitment to demonstrate this love in our daily lives. Within this paragraph are the roots of our custom of placing a meuzzah on our door posts and our tradition of wearing tefillin during worship and the foundation of our people’s commitment to values education.

The third of the these paragraphs, Numbers 15:37-41, describes the custom of placing fringes on the corners of our garments to serve as a reminder of the mitzvot, the discrete deeds that express our understanding of God’s will as transmitted to us through our sacred heritage. In ancient days when we dressed in draped rectangular garments, we wore the fringes all the time. Today, since we wear tailor garments, most of us honor this mitzvah by wearing a talit during worship

The second paragraph, Deuteronomy 11:13-21, which appears in this week’s Torah portion, is the longest of the three and is the most challenging. While it repeats many of the same ideas of the first paragraph, it introduces a system of material rewards and punishments that depend on our loyalty to God and the mitzvot. It claims that if we follow the mitzvot, the rain will fall on time, the land will be productive, our flocks and fields will be fruitful and we will dwell in security. If not, we will lose all our blessings.

In services at the Jewish Geriatric Home, with a congregation of people who have tried to live their lives according to the high principles of Jewish faith and are now suffering the infirmities of old age, the dissonance between what this prayer says and real life experience is often powerful. At worship, I often smooth over this discrepancy by introducing the prayer by saying that the Torah underscores the blessings of loyalty to the Jewish tradition by describing them as tangible, physical rewards, while we know that the deeper and more enduring blessings are the spiritual ones. While such a response strikes a chord in the hearts of the congregation, it begs the question why the Torah presents the blessings of loyalty to God and mitzvot is such a graphic manner.

In Judaism, as in other religious systems, the concept of “reward and punishment” plays an important role in the construction of our world-view. The belief empowers us by making us responsible for the choices that we make in life. It underscores our commitment to freedom of will and action. Yet, it is a difficult doctrine because it brings up the question of theodicy, “God’s Justice” — “why is it that in this world we see the good suffer while the wicked receive rewards?”

The logic of faith is not an yes or no, either or form of logic. It is a logic of balance in which one must hold in harmony a series of mutually exclusive beliefs. In spiritual discourse different doctrines are introduced to teach different life lessons. Our charge is not to resolve contradictions.. Rather, we need to ask why does a sacred text choose to emphasize one value over another in any specific instance. We need to ask what life lessons can we discover from this verse, this chapter, or this story.

In the context of this week’s Torah portion the description of rewards and punishments is not part of a discourse on God’s Justice but grows out of a discussion of God’s Grace. The Torah includes it to remind us that although we are not responsible for the blessings that we have received — the greatest blessing being the possession of the good land which God, the master of all lands, promised to our ancestors — we need to be thankful for them.

In the Deuteronomic world-view this means expressing our love and loyalty to God through appropriate ritual acts and demonstrating our appreciation for our blessings by blessing others less fortunate than ourselves. We directed to worship only the God of Heaven and Earth and to remember the good God did for us by redeeming us from Egypt, protecting us through the forty years of wandering in the desert and by giving us the land by generously sharing our blessings -- by caring for the poor, the homeless, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. Fundamentally, this means that our dedication to the Torah and its values is not to win God’s favor but to express our thanks for God’s grace.

The Shema is a prayer that articulates our loving loyalty to God and our sacred tradition as an expression of our appreciation for the blessings we have received — the liberation from Egypt, the gift of Torah, and the promise of redemption for all creation. The problematic second paragraph serves to remind us that when we lose our sense of gratitude to God, we lose our ability to receive rewards from the blessings God has given us. Gratitude, generosity, love and loyalty are truly the spiritual blessings without which our material blessings would be worthless. These are the blessings that help us live rich lives both in times of plenty and in times of want. They are the blessings that bind us together as a people with our God.

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"IF I WERE A RICH MAN ..." / "EAT, DRINK AND BE THANKFUL!"

How often have we expressed this wish? As successful as we may be, there always seems to be something more that we want. For most of us, those who need to work hard to pay the rent or mortgage, save for retirement, and need to pay college tuition, even the promise of a few more dollars is welcome. We fight for a raise, watch the stock market go up or down, and buy a lottery ticket or two. We dream about what a little extra money could do. It really would be nice to be rich, or as my great-grandmother said, "Rich or poor, it's good to have money."

But on the whole, we are doing ok. Although there are still far too many Jewish people caught in poverty, in general Jews today in the United States, Israel and throughout the world are far more financially secure than Jews have been for centuries. If we are not living the life styles of the rich and famous, most Jews are in the broad middle class and live comfortable lives. For most of us, the grueling poverty of the ghettos of the Old World and the tenements of the New World are part of our family memories and not our everyday reality.

As Americans, we live in a rich and powerful country and fortunately have been able to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by American culture. We have worked hard, created a wonderful life for ourselves and our families, and built strong communal institutions. But we must not deceive ourselves. We are not self-made. What we have rests on a foundation built by the hard labor of the generations that came before us. Although they may not have been able to pull themselves out of material poverty, they bequeathed to us a rich value system, grounded in Torah, that stressed hard work, education, communal responsibility and social consciousness. These values guided our grandparents, our parents and us on the road to material comfort. Our ancestors, though poor themselves, would not begrudge our successes so long as we do not forget their life priorities.

They would not have wanted us to be poor. Poverty is not a value in Jewish culture. Jews want all people to share in the material blessings life can offer. While being poor is no disgrace, we recognize the challenges poverty presents to an individual's spiritual, physical and emotional welfare. Support of the poor, concern for the disadvantaged and aid to the dispossessed are basic Jewish priorities.

This week's Torah portion reminds us that God's greatness is manifest in God's care for the vulnerable members of society -- the orphan, the widow, the stranger and the poor. We are to emulate God in our care for them and always remember that once we, too, were strangers in a strange land (Deuteronomy 10:17-22).

This week's reading, however, does not focus on concern for the poor but rather on the dangers of prosperity. Its deepest worry is that our material successes will turn our hearts from the cultural and spiritual resources that made them possible in the first place. Its greatest fear is that we will forget the formative experiences of our people's past and mistakenly believe that we deserve all the credit for our own prosperity.

In our portion, Moses describes the riches of the Promised Land to the generation of Jews nurtured in the wilderness. He pictures for them a land that is rich and fertile, blessed with many streams and springs and a wide variety of flourishing food crops, and abundant in natural resources. Moses tells our ancestors as they are leaving the poverty of the wilderness that their new home is truly a land in which they shall not lack anything (8:7-9).

Then Moses warns them not to be taken in by their new-found prosperity. They are to remember that the land and its richness are a gift from God. The greatest danger they face in this new land is their own pride in thinking that their own power and strength created their wealth (8:17). As the reading continues, Moses reminds them of their unworthiness for such a gift. He recalls the various occasions during the forty years of wandering when they were disloyal to God. Moses encourages them to be faithful to God and God's teachings because these are the real source of their strength. He warns them that just as God took the Promised Land from the Canaanites because of the Canaanites' wickedness, God can take the land from the Israelites if they, too, prove unworthy.

In spite of this danger, Moses still encourages them to take advantage of the blessings life offers. At the end of his description of the bounty of the Land of Israel, Moses tells our ancestors to enjoy what the land gives them. They are to eat their fill, but then they are to turn their thoughts to God and thankfully acknowledge God's gift of their good land (8:10). They are specifically directed to bless God for the land and its bounty after successfully struggling to settle it. It is most important that when they have achieved a level of financial security, they are to acknowledge God lest they become prideful and ungrateful.

Our people have long known that prosperity is a blessing but we have also understood that it presents us with a spiritual challenge and a social responsibility. As the Torah teaches us this week, we did not earn most of the good we have in this world. It was given to us as a gift by God and made accessible to us through Torah-based traditional Jewish values passed down to us by our ancestors. We are to enjoy our gifts but we also have to thank the One who gave them by emulating him in sharing our blessings with others less fortunate than ourselves. As Moses told our ancestors, "You shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the Eternal, your God, for the good land which God has given you (8:10).

R’eih - Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

DREAMS AND REALITY

Few things are more painful than to inform a needy person that there is nothing that can be done to help them. After reviewing their predicament and providing counseling, advice, suggestions, referrals, and, all too often, stop gap assistance, there comes a time when it is clear that there is no way out. The circumstances change. It might be housing for a disabled adult, or medical care for a senior, or a way to avoid deportation for an alien. Whatever it is, I dread the moment when I have to say that not only am I unable to help, but there is no aid available.

What happens next has become all too predicable. Whatever hope my clients held on to evaporates. A curtain of disappointment and despair falls upon them. They thank me, often profusely, for all my efforts. Sometimes, we cry together.

Then comes the unanswerable question. “Rabbi, why in this country, the greatest country on earth, . . .” or “Rabbi, why in this wealthy Jewish community . . . why can’t someone find a home for my sick son, or provide this therapy for my sister, or find a place for my family, or give me enough money for both food and medicine?”

I sit there frustrated, often in pain, sometimes in shame because I know the answer and I bear some of the responsibility. The people facing me are stuck because of the choices we have made and the priorities we have set as citizens of our country and as members of our community. Rarely, is it that we, as a people, are unaware of the problem. Sometimes, we just lack the funds. Other times, we do want to take on the additional expense. All too often, we lack the vision or the courage to make our vision real. But the question still gnaws on me. Why is it that we allow poverty to cloud our potential greatness as a nation?

This week’s Torah portion, R’eih, presents us with the relationship between our dream – that all our people can share in our nation’s blessings – and our reality – that poverty persists, in spite of our best efforts, and there are many we do not help. The Torah portion begins a passage discussing the need to provide loans to the poor with the vision statement “There shall be no needy among you – since the Eternal, your God, will bless the land. . . .” (Deuteronomy 15:4). It concludes the section, however, not with the hope that following the directives to lend to the poor will eliminate poverty. Rather, somewhat sadly, it seems, the Torah informs us that poverty will continue: “. . . there will never cease to be needy ones in your land . . . ” (Deuteronomy 15:11).

It seems, that even at our best, when we follow the instructions of the Torah, we will be confronted with need and poverty. No one anti-poverty program, not even the Torah’s, will be ultimately successful. But for the Torah that is no excuse to abandon our dreams and despair. There will always be people less fortunate the most, but in a society blessed by God there will always be new visions, new policies and new programs to spread the blessings.

I hate saying, “I’m sorry. There is nothing more we can do.” I feel helpless and useless. My heart breaks. I know that I have pronounced a sentence that condemns both the needy and my communities. Yet we are the lucky ones. We will get another chance. The Torah tells us that we can do better, and that the persistence of poverty is a challenge and a goad. “There will never cease to be needy ones in your land,” the Torah tells us, “which is why I (the Eternal God) command you: open your hand to the poor and needy in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:11). Our response to the impossible case with the unanswerable question is not to give up but to try harder – to stretch our hands deeper in and further out. Our blessing is our ability to respond creatively and effectively to the challenges changing circumstances present us. We can, if we choose, do better next time.

But my heart is still troubled. I will have another chance. Will there be a next time for my client?

ITS POLITICS AND NOT RELIGION

Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, is a political document. In the narrative sequence of Torah, Deuteronomy contains Moses’ instructions to the Israelites before they cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land to establish a Jewish polity in what will be thereafter known as Eretz Yisrael, the Land of the People of Israel. Moses’ teaching, the Torah, will serve as Israel’s constitution, and God will be Israel’s legitimate sovereign.

Modern Biblical scholarship reinforces this insight. The structure of the Book of Deuteronomy follows that of treaties between powerful kings and their vassals from the Ancient Near East. Above all, the sovereign demands loyalty from his vassals in light of the good he has already done for them and the blessing he will bestow upon them for their continuing fidelity.

Thus, loyalty to God as Israel ruler is a primary demand in Deuteronomy.

Reading Deuteronomy as a political document both helps us understand difficult passages and presents new challenges. For contemporary readers dedicated to the principle of religious freedom the demand in Parashat Re’eh for the strictest punishment for Israelite individuals and communities who chose to worship gods other than the God of Israel is problematic. However, the issue here is not one of religious freedom, but of national loyalty. In the biblical context, an Israelite who worshipped a foreign god was not a heretic, one who pursues an alternative religious path, but a traitor, a person who betrays the sovereign and undermines the constitution. In contemporary American terms, the biblical expression of “worshipping” or “serving” other gods is offering allegiance and working for foreign powers and or concerns whose interests are opposed to those of the people of the United States and our constitution. The severe punishments demanded by Deuteronomy are congruent with the harsh punishments we give to spies, terrorists, and traitors – long prison sentences and/or capital punishment.

Yet, underlying problems still exist. Until modern times, religious conformity and political loyalty went hand-in-hand. Concepts such as tolerance and freedom of conscience took centuries to develop in Western civilization. Setting the proper relationship between religious and political institutions remains difficult not only in our country but in other modern democracies. It is even more problematic in those communities where religious identity long served to cement cultural and ethnic ties. In countries such as Israel and Turkey there are serious discussions concerning the relationship of state institutions with the various manifestations of the peoples’ historic religious commitments. The challenge to find an appropriate balance is greater in those nations who are beginning the process of modernization and, hopefully, democratization. In the modern world, however, the conflict more often is not between one religious system and another, but it is rather between religious traditionalists and secularists, or within the religious community itself as adherents struggle to balance contemporary thought and knowledge with ancient traditions.

For a diaspora community, such as the American Jewish community in which religious identity still plays a central role in our community structures and in our own self-definition, the boundaries set by faith and those set by ethnic identity and cultural heritage are closely intertwined. It seems impossible to separate the social and communal aspects of American Jewish life from our people’s religious heritage and its multifaceted contemporary expression. We regularly confront the challenge to separate legitimate criticism, discussion, and debate from positions, which seem to betray or undercut the Jewish community at home and throughout the world.

Within the Torah reading’s draconian strictures, we can find guidance. Paying obeisance to foreign deities was a clear rejection of our people’s covenant with God and the loyalty to God and the community that covenant demanded. People who did so placed themselves not only outside the community, but in opposition to it. The Bible, however, presents a lively discussion concerning what it means to be loyal to God, to the Israelite nation and to the covenant.

In contemporary terms, this means that our Jewish community is open to all those whose commitment to Jewish peoplehood appears in their wish to participate in Jewish life, building and strengthening their connection to our people’s social, educational cultural and spiritual institutions. Only those who choose to leave are out.

BRINGING OUR GIFTS TO GOD

We are rapidly approaching the month of Elul. In the Jewish calendar, Elul is a month of spiritual preparation for the Fall holidays of Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (the Feast of Booths). It is the beginning of our season of repentance. We review the past year by evaluating all that we have done and considering all that we have experienced, and prepare to present ourselves before God.

Yet, what are we to bring to God in this holy season?

Many of us will bring our troubles to God looking for comfort or consolation. Every year has its problems and this past year has been no different. War, disease, natural disaster, and economic uncertainty have touched our Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel and throughout the world and have challenged us, as American, at home and abroad. We have been personally touched by loss, pain and disappointment. Some of us have lost loved one. Others have been challenged by injury and disease. Some have suffered the end of a marriage, the breakup of a friendship, and the loss of a job. Once again, most, if not all, of our dreams have not come true. Life never seems easy and we turn to God for strength.

Others of us bring our fears and worries to God. The future is always in doubt. We are frightened for our families, our nation, our people, our world and ourselves. We often feel that currents we cannot control are dragging us along to places we do not care to visit. Even life’s moments of joy and celebration cause us to worry. Will my child be happy in her marriage? Will I find meaning in my retirement? Will my son succeed in his new job? Will I do well in college?

Life always seems uncertain and we turn to God for assurance.

Yet others of us bring their dreams and desires to God. We always seem to want more than what we already have. We may dream of wealth, honor, fame or prestige. We may see ourselves winning the lottery or being chosen the American Idol. We envision the security wealth may offer us and the good deeds we could do if we only had the time and the resources. Life can always be better and we turn to God for rewards.

We bring many things with us as we approach God in prayer and worship — our troubles, our fears, and our disappointments. The time we spend in prayer may provide us some comfort, some security and some joy, but we often leave disappointed. We poured out our hearts in prayer but when we exit our synagogues, we discover that our world is still the same as it was when we came in.

Perhaps, we have brought the wrong gifts with us.

The Torah portion Re’eh concludes with a short ritual calendar (Deuteronomy 16), which describes the three pilgrimage festivals — Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot. The Torah reminds us that three times a year we were to assemble “in the place that the Eternal will choose” and present our offerings to God. In those ancient days, when our worship included sacrifice, the Torah instructed us to bring our own gift to the Eternal One according to the blessing that the Eternal our God has bestowed upon each of us. (Deut. 16:17) No matter what our circumstances might have been, we were to seek our blessings and return a bit of them to God.

Each holiday tells a different story and bears a different message. The theme that binds all these holidays, however, is that of thanksgiving. We are directed to examine our lives in our present context and discern our blessings and bring them before God.

Although sacrifice has not been part of our worship for almost two thousand years, we still approach God in prayer. Our sages of old building on the wisdom of our biblical prophets understood that Avodah Shebelev, prayer (literally service of the heart) not only replaced the Avodat Korban, the system of sacrifices in Temple, but was preferable to it. The offering from our hearts reflects who we are and who we want to be far better than the sacrifice given by our hands. Now as we approach the Fall holidays, the most sacred season in Jewish life today, the words of Parashat Re’eh challenge us to measure our blessings and present them to God in prayer.

At times it is easy to count our blessings. More often than not we have been able to enjoy the good things of life. When life is going reasonable well, bringing our blessings to God often involves no more than a slight change in perspective. We learn to be grateful for our true wealth, that is having all that we need and some of what we want.

There are times, however, in every life, when our troubles, our fears, and our disappointments are our reality and it is hard to find blessings in darkness. Even here we have gifts of thanksgiving to offer. In loss, we find the blessing of memory. With troubles, we discover the blessing of courage. Through fear, we encounter the blessing of hope. Confronting disappointment, we encounter the blessing of endurance. Facing challenges, we uncover the blessing of meaning.

If these are the blessings life has bestowed upon us, these are blessing we need to bring to God. Our gifts are the blessings so painfully gained as we lived with our troubles, fears, and regrets. The time we spend in prayer now not only gives us some comfort, some security, and some joy, but also a new outlook and a new way of thinking. When we leave our synagogues, we will not leave disappointed. Our situation may be just the same as it was when we entered, but this time our world has changed, because we presented the acceptable gift.

There is much in life that is we did not make. Most of what we have or lack we have not earned. The good and the bad we face are often not of our choosing. But it is up to us to discover our blessings, to measure and count them and with a sense of thanksgiving, present them to God.

FAITH AND MIRACLES

True and False Prophets

Next week’s Torah portion, Re’eh, addresses the challenge of how to identify false or mistaken prophets and teachers — people who tempt us to forsake our heritage with the promise of a new and different source for life’s meaning. This is not an easy challenge. We have a deep desire to discover meaning and purpose in our lives. In religious terms, we often describe this longing as the desire to understand God’s will and follow God’s ways.

But such wisdom is not easy to come by. Discovering life’s meaning and learning how to live a godly life can be a slow process. As Jews, we know that the path towards tzedek and shalom, righteousness and peace, is a life-long journey. Thankfully we have been blessed with good teachers to guide us along the way. Our Torah and traditions are invaluable aids on our journey. Still, we all must work diligently as we use their insights and wisdom to uncover meaning, purpose and direction in our lives.

How fascinating it would be to follow someone who comes before us claiming to have the key to knowledge and meaning. Who of us would not be tempted into following that promised short-cut? Throughout our history, people who, through pride, malice, ignorance, or confusion, presented themselves as sages, prophets, and messiahs have misled many of us. They often achieved a frightening level of popularity because their message eased our people’s hearts in times of stress, pain and need.

In the Torah portion Re’eh, the Torah advises us not to be misled by false prophets, even if they can perform signs and wonders in the name of new gods with which we have no previous experience. The Torah warns us that they will exhort us to turn away from the God we know and follow these new deities. It informs us that these false prophets will test our loyalty to our God by tempting us with misleading promises and spiritually empty miracles (Deuteronomy 13:2-6).

This warning comes to us as part of Moses’ final series of addresses to our ancestors just before they cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land. Standing just outside of the Land of Israel, Moses alerted our ancestors to the spiritual dangers presented by religious figures who would attempt to lead them away from the monotheistic faith in the One God who redeemed them from bondage in Egypt, to the worship of the Canaanite deities. These false prophets would try to entice them away from their faith, which challenges its followers to create a better world, to a faith that is based in an acceptance of the world as it is.

Unlike Israelite faith, which was expressed by ritual and ethical actions derived from the covenant between the Liberating God and the people God liberated, Canaanite religion grew out of the routines of agricultural and village life of ancient Canaan. The Canaanites ascribed divine powers and personalities to the forces of nature that defined their lives. Through myth and ritual, they felt these powers guiding them through the seasons of the year and the seasons of their lives. It was a faith that had great spiritual attraction because it enabled its followers to experience the power of the natural world, with its never ending circle of birth and death, growth and decay, marked by the passing of the seasons in their daily lives.

In their celebration of our created world, our ancestors implicitly recognized the power of Canaanite religion. Our lives are touched by the natural world in which we live. A deep understanding of nature gives one the ability to make reasonable predictions about the course of future events. Thus, the Torah did not deny that false or misguided prophets could produce signs and wonders, the ancient equivalent of modern analytic tools, to predict future events. However, it expresses the belief that such demonstrations of technical skill have no intrinsic spiritual significance.

In modern times, we are not tempted by nature worship with its simple promise of manipulating the natural world for our benefit. We are, however, often seduced by our knowledge of the natural world. Our growing understanding of the basic sciences, our expanding technology and our increasing comprehension of social and economic forces make us feel secure and puts our lives in the world’s context. In this way, we may not be as different from the Canaanites as we might think.

Our biblical ancestors acknowledged the reality of miracles, in much the same way as we accept the usefulness of science and technology. However, Jewish faith is not based on either magical signs or scientific wonders. Its root lie in the experience of the God who liberated us from Egypt. Thus, the true test of a prophet, sage, or religious leader is not his or her ability to work miracles. Rather, it is his or her ability to help us uncover the life-changing truths already embedded in our tradition.

The true prophet’s role is to help us find lasting meaning in the spiritual adventures of our people from the first journeys of Abraham and Sarah until today. Our prophets, sages and teachers are not here to introduce us to new gods but to help us better understand the God whom we have already come to know through the traditions of our people. They are to encourage us in our pursuit of tzedek and shalom, justice and peace, and to strengthen our resolve to walk in God’s ways.

The false prophet wants us to believe that the present world whose twists and turns he can predict with a surprising level of accuracy contains all that we need for our happiness. The true prophet, while not denying or denigrating our ability to work wonders, reminds us that there is something beyond the tangible world that we need to gain spiritual fulfillment. Thus, the true prophet inspires us to pursue the vision of a better world already glimpsed by our ancestors as they made the arduous journey from slavery to freedom. We are tested whenever we choose which of the two prophets will be our guide.

Shoftim – Deuteronomy 16:18 - 21:9

“MELECH HA-OLAM” — SOVEREIGN OF ALL

We seldom realize it but each time we pronounce a blessing, we are making a political statement. Imbedded in the formula that introduces every blessing are the words which declare that our Eternal God is melech ha-olam, Sovereign of the Universe. Every time we express our gratitude for the opportunities and experiences life offers us, we also affirm our loyalty to God as our sovereign and acknowledge our citizenship in the Divine One’s dominion. In Hebrew this is called kabbalat ol malchut shamayim, “accepting the yoke of the kingdom of heaven.”

This basic Jewish concept appears as one of the central themes of our worship. Our tradition understands our recitation of the Shema as way to witness our acceptance of God’s rule over our lives. When we bring our worship to a conclusion with the Aleinu prayer, we thank God for our unique destiny and bow before God’s sovereign power and finish the prayer the hope that in the future all nations will join together acknowledging God as the Ruler of All. Earthly dominion will pass away and we will recognize that we are all God’s subjects.

The understanding that God is the only true sovereign forms the base for biblical and later Jewish political thought. Since sovereignty rests in God, the power and authority of human kings and governments are merely contingent. Human government is not an end in itself. That would be idolatry, the worship of a human creation. Human rule exists as a means to enhance human life. We measure the legitimacy of any human regime by a high moral standard — the manner in which it promotes the welfare of all God’s children, particularly the most vulnerable in society; the poor, the homeless, and the stranger.

The Bible’s appreciation of earthly kings and kingship is at best ambiguous. On the one hand, our tradition honors David and his descendants despite their foibles. The Bible understands how the establishment of the monarchy brought to an end the chaos at the end of the period of the judges. On the other hand, foreign rulers, such as pharaoh, often appear as tyrants opposed to God’s will. Often Israelite rulers do not fare much better. The historical books of the Bible — Samuel, Kings and Chronicles — present a highly critical picture of the monarchy in the two ancient Jewish kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The great political dramas of these books frequently center on struggle between the representatives of royal authority and those loyal to the laws, customs and traditions of Israel.

This equivocal attitude toward political authority in general and kingship in particular appears in this week’s Torah portion which is, for the most part, concerned with the establishment of Israel’s judicial, political and religious offices to enforce God’s covenant — priests, prophets, judges and kings. In this week’s portion, Moses describes various regulations concerning the priesthood (Deuteronomy 18:1-8) and presents criteria for determining legitimate prophets (18:14-22) and while he mandates the appointment of various judges and other magistrates to administer justice (16:18-20), he presents the establishment of a monarchy as optional ( 17:14-20). In the eyes of the Torah, kingship is different from the other three offices whose authority grows out of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. Prophets serve as God’s mouth piece and priests regulate and conduct the worship of God. Even judges and magistrates have no independent authority. Their role is to ensure that disputes between Israelites, God’s people, are resolved peacefully and justly. They are to follow the divine directive: tzedek, tzedek tidrof, — Justice, justice shall you pursue! (Deuteronomy 16:20)

Unlike the offices of prophets, priests and magistrates, the office of kingship appears in the Torah as a foreign import. The Torah does not mandate a certain political system. This week we learn that if the Israelites desire a king to rule them just as the other nations have kings ruling them, they are free to select one (17:14). They need to make sure, however, that their king remains subject to God and God’s covenant and be a loyal member of the nation he serves (17:15).

They must remember that the institution of monarchy presents a risk. With the enhanced efficiency of centralized rule, there may also be a loss of freedom. They need to be aware of a monarch’s tendency to self- aggrandizement. Kings build large armies, sacrifice the well being of citizens for their own grandeur, enhance their own prestige and amass great fortunes at the people’s expense (17:16-17). The Israelites need to find ways to control the potential excesses of a monarchy.

To limit the ruler’s power, the Torah presents what we might describe as a constitutional monarchy. The king is to be subject to the covenant and is required to study his own copy of the law so that he remains obedient to it (17:18-19). Just as Israel’s possession of the Land of Israel depends on their loyalty to God’s covenant, an Israelite king’s possession of the throne depends on his devotion to God’s law (17:20).

Ultimately, the Torah recognizes only one true ruler — God. All human leaders, kings, prophets, judges and priests, even Moses, himself, are limited in insight, understanding, and wisdom. Even the best rulers are tempted by the perquisites of their office and many fall to the temptations of authority. In the biblical context, it is the function of the other offices to remind the ruler of his place as a servant of God and the people. In the end, however, it is the responsibility of every individual, not only the king, to take the royal task to give power to truth and make God’s heavenly dominion a reality here on earth and, more importantly, to take the prophetic role of speaking truth to power and remind us all that we are to be subjects of the Sovereign God.

THE PRIEST ANOINTED FOR WAR

Although the Bible often presents a vision of a world filled with violence, our Israelite ancestors do not seem to be a particularly war-like society. As a small people, living in an area of limited resources, surrounded by unruly neighbors and situated in the crossroads between the conflicting imperial dreams of the rulers of Egypt and Mesopotamia, war and the fear of war was always present. Rarely, if ever, does war emerge as a goal in itself. War appears as a sad but necessary activity that no one, even the victors, leave unharmed and unchanged. The chaos of battle clashes with the hope for shalom – wholeness and peace.

War was one of the unpleasant realities of life. Sometimes it was forbidden, other times necessary, and, occasionally, even sanctioned, but it was never a good. Our ancestors’ vision of a successful life was not a triumphal parade, but rather the opportunity to dwell securely in one’s garden. (Micah 4:4) Lacking the material resources to defend themselves successfully, they found comfort in the image of God as the protecting Divine Warrior.

It is not the case that our ancestors were not pugnacious. At times, they fought among themselves and with their neighbors. However, war was not a good. It was something in which kings might get involved for no one else’s benefit. (Deuteronomy 17:16) Our great prophets who bequeathed us such beautiful images of a world transformed by peace, often struggled against the military adventurism of the then political leadership, arguing strongly that, at best, it was immoral and impious and, at worse, that it was incredibly ill considered policy.

Our ancestors understood that war took people to the shattered fringes of human experience and no one returned whole. The warrior king, David, did not receive permission to build the Beit HaMiqdash, the Holy Temple because he was a man of war. The task remained for his son, Solomon, who ruled over Israel during a period of peace. Even divinely sanctioned military action altered people. The Israelites who returned from the massacre of the Midianites needed to undergo ritual purification. (Numbers 31:19)

The laws of war, found in the center of Parashat Shoftim, reflect the life-altering nature of conflict. Ancient Israelite warriors needed spiritual encouragement and reassurance before they went off to battle. They received this support from a specially appointed kohein, .priest, described in latter rabbinic literature as “the Priest Anointed for War”. Prior to battle he would address the warriors with the words “Shema Yisrael – Hear, O Israel! You are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your courage falter. Do not be in fear, or in panic, or in dread of them. For it is the Eternal your God who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to save you.” (Deuteronomy 20: 3-4)

As envisioned by the sages of the Talmud, this special priest possessed great honor and status, second only, perhaps, to the High Priest. However, it appears that this was a unique position. (Nazir 47b) Yet, his role seems to have been restricted to this prayerful reinforcement of their spirits. His intimate relationship with the warriors permitted him to care for the anonymous dead found on any battlefield. Yet this care rendered him unfit for sacrificial service. Battle would change him as it would all who encounter it, and he, too, would need healing.

War, however, is unpredictable and the priest anointed for war was not a seer. Lost battles fill biblical history, and some victories came at a terrible cost. While the biblical narrative retrospectively often uses Israel’s apparent disobedience of God’s directives as a way to explain defeat, it is hard to believe that our ancestors entered battle without the hope for success. The appointment of the Priest Anointed for War reflected their sense of loyalty to Israel’s traditions and a sense of trust in God who had delivered them in the past.

The Priest Anointed for War did not offer sacrifices or conduct elaborate rituals. His authority rested in the simple words he uttered. His charisma, however, came from his willingness to be with his people, hoping for the best, fearing the worse and being willing to undergo the inevitable changes that awaits all of them – win or lose.

The biblical laws of war and their Talmudic elaborations are an attempt to provide some order to the chaotic explosion of human violence in battle. As terrible as defeat and death can be, the greatest danger we as individuals and as a community face in moments of conflict is the utter shattering of our souls – losing our sense of meaning, purpose, direction and self. The concluding words of the priest’s statement that God marches with us to “save” us may express the hope for victory but, on a deeper level, is the promise that though we may be changed in significant ways, we will not be lost no matter how the course of the battle turns. This is the hope the Priest Anointed for War offered to the warriors of Israel.

THE TRUE PROPHET

Our world has always been hard to comprehend. Our lives are filled with doubt and ambiguity. We seek order and understanding. We strive to make sense of our past, understand our present, and predict our future.

Uncertainty has always been a challenge. Only the tools and institutions we employ to deal with it have changed. The only constant is that our goal always remains beyond our reach. Despite our best efforts, the same questions persist: How reliable is the analysis? How trustworthy is the analyst? And what are we to do with this understanding?

Of the basic social/political/spiritual institutions that structured our ancestors' lives in the biblical period – king, priest, prophet, and sage - the task of understanding the present and foreseeing the future fell to the prophet. By the time Deuteronomy was promulgated in the 7th century BCE, prophets (niviim) were no longer seen mainly as charismatic, miracle workers who could foresee the future and uncover secrets. These roles continued but were supplanted by a new understanding of the prophet as one who mediates God’s message to Israel in light of current conditions.

The prophet analyzed events based on his or her understanding of Israel’s faith and traditions and informed others of what the prophet considered to be the best expression of God's will, often speaking in God's name. In this way, biblical prophets were analogous to contemporary social commentators and op-ed writers. Prophets, guided by their understanding of our tradition, helped make sense of the world and suggested ways to address the challenges faced by their community.

But even in biblical times there was no uniform understanding of our sacred heritage. Different individuals stressed different aspects in their attempts to provide understanding and wisdom. Looking backwards, we can recognize those prophets whose words best addressed the needs of their times and remained a source of inspiration for our people and many others. But in their days, was it so clear which prophet was correct?

In Parashat Shoftim, Deuteronomy attempts to answer this question. To begin it dismisses all forms of fortune telling as gentile practices that Israelites do not need because of Israel's relationship with God (Deuteronomy 18:9-14). Israel's future is not dependent on fate, but it is in Israel's own hands. We do not need knowledge of future events. We need to adhere to God's covenant to assure our future success. Therefore, we are to listen to the future prophet, who, like Moshe Rabbenu (Moses, our Teacher), will instruct us. (18:15-19)

But how do we recognize a trustworthy prophet when they all claim to speak in God’s name? (18:20-21) Deuteronomy only provides a hazy answer. That will only be known in retrospect. If the prophet’s word comes to pass, then the prophet was authentic.

However, our prophets, like Moses himself, were not fortunetellers. They did not predict events as much as they would teach, encourage, describe, and warn. God's word, as it is available to us through Torah, teaches values of peace, love, justice, and holiness and how to employ them. The words of true prophets are coherent with God’s word when they promote these values in our personal and communal lives. Teachings that support discord and destruction are false.

Today, we no longer have prophets, but we have many who attempt to inform and influence us, to guide us in understanding our world, and how we are to act within it. Many will claim to be drawing on our shared value system, but if their analysis does not promote shalom, they are our equivalent of false prophets. Therefore, listen carefully and consider wisely.

Ki Teitzei – Deuteronomy 16:18- 21.9

TO DEFEND AND PROTECT

While the first step in reading the Bible is to try to access the basic, in Hebrew – p’shat , meaning of the text, this is often the most difficult. Not only are the Biblical texts so old and remote, our vision is clouded by centuries of interpretation which hope to derive spiritual and practical guidance from this ancient anthology, in Hebrew – derash. Throughout Western Culture, many have often seen in the Bible, a mirror of the social, economic and political realities of their world. The timelessness of the Bible as spiritual literature easily invokes anachronistic readings.

Much of the bare bones legislation found in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teizei, deals with issues that focus on family and marital law. While the legal pronouncements appear clear, we lack the cultural context to appreciate how these laws functioned in the lives of our ancestors.

Still, I believe that it is possible to sense some of the underlying societal assumptions and cultural concerns underlying these laws. While the legislative solutions proposed by them may not be applicable in our our times, the issues they sought to resolve still confound us and the underlying assumptions are still worthy of our attention.

Deuteronomy 22:23 – 28 discusses the rape of a betrothed woman. In one regard, this is a very narrow law. It addresses the ambiguous status of a woman who is legally bound to her husband-to-be but not married and part of his household. She is, neither a fully independent actor like a widow or divorcee, nor is she fully part of her family of origin. The laws state that if she is assaulted in an urban area and calls out, only the man is liable for capital punishment, but if she does not call out, both she and the man who assaulted her are liable. However, if the rape occurred in the field, only the man is liable, because there would be no one to rescue her whether or not she called out.

While the circumstances of this case as well as later interpretation demand a serious analysis of the status of women in the Biblical period and later, there are two basic assumptions that are still resonate today. The first is that one defends oneself even though one might still be overcome and the second is that one is aids of one’s neighbor when she or he may be in danger.

In a fundamental way, all people have to be empowered to defend themselves and protect others. As a society, we need to ensure that girls and boys, women and men have a strong enough sense of self-worth that they are willing to stand up for themselves and we need to give them the tools to do so. Above all, they need to know that there will be someone to respond to their call. To take the plight of the oppressed seriously, we, as a community, need to develop a sense of mutual responsibility. To paraphrase the “Golden Rule”, we need to be willing to stand up for others so that others might stand up for us.

In many cases of abuse, oppression, and exploitation in general, and in the case of sexual assault in particular, for the victim the contrast between city and field is not one of location. They are not different physical places but rather different social and spiritual perceptions. She is in “the .city” wherever she can be sure that people are there to hear her cries and take her situation seriously. She is in the “the field” wherever and whenever she feels alone. It is our responsibility to make sure that she is never out there alone.

In an uncanny way, a law, which seems to deal with a very specific set of circumstances dealing with guilt and liability of individuals, rests on a basic understanding that it is the responsibility of the community to provide mutual support and assistance to the vulnerable. People need to be empowered to stand-up for themselves and that can only happen when they knew that the friends and neighbors, their community and society, is there to support them.

HONEST WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

Once, during the holy season of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Hasidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, paused in his devotions and looking at his disciples with sad, tear‑laden eyes, remarked, “What a funny world it is that we live in these days. There was a time, you know, when Jews would be scrupulously honest in the market place and be the most outrageous liars in the synagogue. These days, however, everything is reversed. The Jews are surprisingly honest in synagogue, but in the streets and market places, I’m ashamed to tell you.”

“But rabbi,” his followers asked, “why are you so distressed. How can it be bad if Jews are telling the truth is synagogue?”

“I’ll tell you why I’m distressed,” answered Levi Yitzhak, “In days gone by, Jews were known for their honest dealings. They took the words of Torah seriously. Their ‘yes’ was always a ‘yes’ and their ‘no’ was always a ‘no’. They had honest weights and fair measures. Yet, on the Days of Awe they would fervently recite the confessional prayers declaring that they had lied, cheated, swindled and deal dishonestly. This was a lie. Everyone knew that truth and faithfulness were the lamps lighting their way.

“But these days, the reverse takes place. In the streets and in the market place, the world of commerce and social interaction, they lie and cheat, but when they come to synagogue, they, sadly, profess the truth.” (Adapted from, Martin Buber, Tales of the Hassidim, Early Masters, p. 230)

The Days of Awe are rapidly approaching. We are now in the month of Elul, the month of repentance that precedes Rosh Hashanah. Soon we will be in synagogue for the High Holidays and we might ask ourselves if Levi Yitzhak’s words refer to us. Where do we tell the truth and where do we lie?

We know that we can live the truth of our faith in our daily lives. We are able to bear witness to our commitment to God and our heritage by the way we interact with each other and our world. All our pious devotions, our concerns with ritual details, our deep identification with the Jewish people and tradition, our profound journeys of spiritual self-discovery mean very little if we do not conducted ourselves in the spirit of truth and honesty.

These are important values for all aspects of our lives but they are central to our working lives. We all work hard. We spend so much of our time making a living. We put in many hours, sometimes too many hours, at our jobs and professions. A very good part of our day is spent at work. Though we may wish to be someplace else and long for more time with family and friends, our working hours can be spiritually precious. They provide us with many opportunities to express our deepest values.

Among the various rules and regulations found in this week’s Torah portion, Kee Tetze, are a few laws addressed to our business lives. These principles form the foundation for a Jewish business ethic that centers on the values of fairness, honestly, truthfulness and justice. In Kee Tetze, we are directed us to treat our employees fairly. We must not withhold their pay. (Deut. 24: 14-15). Here we learn that the Torah forbids usury. We must not exploit one stricken by poverty by demanding interest (Deut. 23 20-21). The weekly portion instructs us to take care of the property of neighbors. We must return their lost animals and objects and aid their beasts of burden when they fall (Deut. 22:1-4). Above all we read that the Torah requires us to be truthful. We are required to have true weights and measures because honesty lies at the heart of a strong and healthy community (Deut. 25: 13-15). Finally, in Kee Tetze we discover that the Torah underscores its demand for honesty in business by reserving strongest word of condemnation -- toeivah -- “abomination” -- to describe those who ignore these laws and deal dishonestly (Deut. 25:16).

In only a few weeks we will be back in synagogue for the High Holidays. How would each of us respond to Rabbi Levi Yitzhak’s demand that these laws form the center of our Jewish lives? Who knows? But within our people’s folk tradition there is a story of at least one man who tried to be honest in both the market place and the synagogue.

It was a dark, cloudy, Selichot evening, the Saturday night prior to Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the last week of the month of Elul. Not a star could be seen. On this cold and heavy early fall night, the entire village was gathered in the synagogue for the penitential prayers. The plaintive voice of the cantor and the soul bending exhortations of the rabbi so moved the worshipers, that one by one they came up trembling and confessed their sins. This one admitted to missing the morning worship. That one confessed to eating forbidden foods. Another confessed to smoking on the Sabbath. And so on throughout the congregation. The darken heavens captured their darkened spirits.

Finally, Joseph, the grocer, came forward, humble and ashamed. He felt over burdened by his sense of sinfulness. He felt that each sin his friends and neighbors confessed could be his own. With a broken spirit, he shuffled up to the front of the synagogue and sighed, “Dear God, please forgive me for neglecting my studies, for avoiding your house, for my lazy observance. I was so busy with making a way for myself and my family. I did not always keep the Sabbath or follow the dietary laws, but please remember, that I always made payroll and that I kept my scales honest and my measures exact. At that moment, the clouds parted and the late night stars twinkled through the synagogue’s windows and all returned home with a new sense of resolve. That night, at least, and, hopefully, for many more, truth and faithfulness lit Joseph’s path.

IT JUST ISN'T SO!

September 1, 2001

There comes a point in the life of all faithful Jews when we face the fact that what the Torah says, just isn't so. This does not occur when we see the differences between the ancient understanding of the origins and structures of the physical world and contemporary scientific knowledge. The Torah is not a science textbook, but uses the knowledge of its time to illustrate the various ways in which God, the Creator, interacts with creation. Nor does it happen when we first note the differences between the Torah's use of history and modern academic historical work and journalistic reporting. The Torah's concern is not objective reporting but rather is interested in using historical events to describe the evolving relationship between God and God's people, Israel.

The fundamental challenge takes place when we discover that the way in which the Torah orders its world does not correspond to the way in which we experience our world, In the world described by the Torah those loyal to the Covenant and strive to fulfill its holy directives are promised success, security and long years. But in our world, those promises are rarely, if ever kept. What we see in our live-a-day world is that all too often the saintly receive no rewards, people of faith fail to obtain material gifts, and the blessings of health, happiness, prosperity and longevity are not guaranteed to any human being no matter how righteous that soul may be. Theologians describe this challenge to faith as the question of theodicy, God's justice.

The Bible takes up the issue of theodicy in the Book of Job, There Job, a righteous man, suffers the loss of wealth, family and health His friends come to comfort him but when they hear him declaring that he does not deserve what has befallen him, they accuse him of impiety, Despite his protestations of innocence, they insist that he must have been a great sinner to deserve such great punishments. Job's conversation with his friends ends when God appears before Job in the midst of mighty whirlwind and blows away Job's friends' claims to be able to control the God of All Creation by their simple moral calculus. In the presence of God's greatness, Job accepts his fate, both the evil he had already experienced and the blessing with which the book concludes.

The classic discussion of theodicy in rabbinic literature grows from a passage from this weeks Torah portion, Ki Teitzei. The rabbis of old used the occasion of the tragic death of a young boy who had fallen from a tree while collecting eggs in accordance with the Torah's directive to chase the mother bird away before taking the eggs (Deuteronomy 22:6-7) as the critical event in Elisha ben Abuya's, one of their colleague's, rejection of traditional faith, After witnessing the accidental death of the child, Elisha ben Abuyah uttered the powerful cry of despair "There is no justice, there is no judge." Despite the Torah's promise of length of days to all who follow this commandment, the child came to an early death (Kiddushin 39b).

There is no answer to the question of theodicy but there are responses hove we respond, gives meaning and purpose to our faith. We way respond like Elisha ben Abuyah and deny purpose and direction in this world and, out of despair, embrace the apparent chaos of existence. We may also choose to respond like Job's "friends" and deny our experiences and reject the reality of what we know in favor of a mistaken piety. We can also respond like Job and submit before the vastness of the God of All Creation.

But as faithful Jews we have another choice besides apostasy, blindness and submission. It is action - the deeds of love and kindness we perform when we read the words of Torah as a prophetic vision of what the world might be tomorrow rather than a description what the world is today. In a perilous, unfair world, we can hear the Torah directing us to make the world safer, fairer, kinder and more just? We need to ask ourselves, "How can we ensure that the Torah's promises are true? '' We respond to promises of the Torah by binding Job's wounds, by consoling the child's bereaved family by standing with those who suffer and by learning to give and to accept comfort, We are to turn theory into reality.

In time all the material blessings promised by Torah will fade. What is good and lasting in the Torah are the words themselves and the actions they demand.

God's justice may be hard to see but the Torah-based responses to pain, suffering, cruelty and in-justice are easy to read. The faithful Jew meets the challenge of theodicy not by despair, blindness or humble submission, but by responding to the injustice we see with deeds of love and kindness and by giving thanks for the blessings we have already experienced.

'"SAFETY FIRST! — MY FAVORITE MITZVAH

September 13, 2008

Living a Jewish life means doing Jewish things. Traditionally, the Jewish things we can do are called mitzvot. These mitzvot (the plural of mitzvah — “good deed” or “directive”) are discrete, practical expressions of our people’s spiritual encounters from the days of the Bible until today. The Torah provides us with the first expression of these directives, and Jews, throughout our history, have employed these fundamental instructions to express in a tangible way our people’s deepest beliefs and commitments.

All the mitzvot in the Torah are significant and if we take the time and effort to study them seriously and carefully, they will all reveal their inner meaning. Some mitzvot, however, seem immediately relevant. Others deeply imbedded in a time and place far distant from our own remain hard to understand. Some speak to us directly. Others we observe out of a sense of obligation to our past, to our tradition and/or to our God. Others, we ignore and, hopefully, take strive to understand why we do so.

Mitzvot are important. The ones we do strengthen our connection to our Jewish heritage but no one can do all of them. According to the traditional account, there are 613 discrete mitzvot in the Torah that form the foundation of Jewish life and practice. This number does not include the elaborations and expansions on the biblical material as Jewish life has unfolded over the past twenty-five hundred years nor our new insights and understandings as we respond to our ever-changing world. Therefore it is not surprising that we all have our favorite set.

We may love lighting Chanukah candles or celebrating the Passover Seder. Caring for the environment, supporting Israel, fighting poverty, keeping Shabbat, studying Torah, and speaking Hebrew may be among those that touch our Jewish souls. Some mitzvot may appeal to our moral or aesthetic sensibilities. Others may intrigue us by the way the Torah states them and our sages explain them. We all have our favorites — these are the ones that touch our souls and enhance our lives.

One of my favorite mitzvot appears in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei. I love it because it enables me to feel Jewish, to feel connected to our past, to our people, and to the community in which I live. In addition, it is so easy to follow and provides great reward. It is, stated colloquially, “Safety First!”

That obviously is not the language of the Torah. The Torah presents this wide-ranging mitzvah as a very specific directive. “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it.” (Deuteronomy 22:8)

This was useful advice. In biblical times our ancestors used the roofs of their houses as living space. During the long, hot summer days, the roof provided an open space to work and to gather. At night, sleeping under the stars on the roof was preferable to sleeping in the dark, poorly ventilated rooms downstairs. With all the activity on the roof, a parapet or balustrade around its circumference was a necessary safety feature. Halakhah, the Jewish legal tradition based on rabbinic insights into our scriptural tradition, specifies that the balustrade needs to be at least ten handbreadths, about thirty inches, high and strong enough to support a person resting on it.

What is intriguing about this passage is how the rabbis of old use it to teach safety and responsibility. First, they divide it into two separate mitzvot. One, a positive, “do it”, mitzvah, is the installation of the parapet. The other, a negative, “don’t do it”, mitzvah, is to not make one’s self liable for damages due to negligence, i.e. “bloodguilt.” In the first case, the sages discuss other safety procedures such as covering open trenches and pits (Sifrei 229). In the second case, they explore other examples of negligence, such as keeping vicious dogs or using broken ladders (Baba Kama 15b, 46a). In both cases, they stress the need to take care of one’s self and of others.

The great medieval philosopher and legal scholar Moses Maimonides continues the exploration of the mitzvah of “Safety First!” in the Mishnah Torah, his exposition of Jewish law. He stresses that the insights of the rabbis of the Talmudic period apply to all dangerous circumstances. He reinforces the positive mitzvah of taking proper safety measures (Deuteronomy 22:8) with citation from Parashat Va-Etchanan, which he reads as “Take care to protect your life” (Deuteronomy 4:9) and provides many additional examples. (See Maimonides Hilkot Rotseach 11)

“Safety First!” — what a wonderful mitzvah! Following the lead of our sages and teachers, we fulfill it every time we take the proper precautions. We become “observant” Jews whenever we buckle our seatbelts, change the batteries in our smoke detectors, wear safety glasses, inspect our cars, or just take good care of others and ourselves.

For Jews, being aware, being alert, and being careful is not just good advice, it is a mitzvah, a spiritually grounded way of living that connects us to our people, our world and our God. “Safety First!” is a religious obligation that provides a daily expression of our belief that we are responsible for others and ourselves.

Ki Tavo – Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8

THE POOR TITHE

Underlying the ritual concerns of the Book of Deuteronomy is the conviction that the poor, the vulnerable, the homeless – all those on the edges of the community – are as much part of God’s household as the priests who serve in God’s house. Those who dwell on the margins of society have a home in God’s heart. Therefore, support for those who have little or none is central to the ritual life of those who have been blessed with material success. It is a “religious obligation” to care for the poor as much as the offering of sacrifices, the recitation of prayers, and the celebration of the festivals.

Care for the dispossessed – in Deuteronomy’s language “the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the Levite” – has an individual and a communal dimension. As individuals, we have a direct responsibility to care for the poor. During the festivals, Deuteronomy mandates that our ancestors were to share their family’s celebration with the Levites, strangers, orphans and widows. (16; 11, 14) We are forbidden to taking advantage of a person’s vulnerability (24:14-15,17-18). We are directed to leave portions of our fields, orchards and vineyards for the poor (24:19-22). We have to offer loans to the poor even when we knew that the loan would be absolved at the coming year of release. (15:9)

Beyond that, there is a communal responsibility. According to Deuteronomy, God has provided us with a land that has all the resources required to provide for everyone’s needs. If there are needy among us, it is not that God has not given us the resources, but that we have not used them justly. The presence of the poor challenges, accuses, and condemns us as greedy, selfish, hoarders of what belongs all. (15:4-11)

Our ancient Israelite ancestors saw themselves as members of a covenantal community bound to each other and their God through a shared history and a mutually binding covenant. Modern distinctions between “church and state” and “spiritual and secular”, had little meaning to them. Sovereignty rested in God. The covenant was the constitution. Paying one’s taxes, “tithes”, was more than a sign of good citizenship. It was a sacred obligation.

Therefore, Deuteronomy presents the institutional support of the poor as a holy act. Every three years, our ancestors were to dedicate the annual tithe to support the needs of the poor. The tithe was not sent to the central sanctuary, as it was the other two years, but was kept locally to support the needy. (14:28-29)

Despite the fact that our ancestors kept the poor tithe at home and did not send it to the central sanctuary where it would have been subject to the rules and regulations that preserved the purity of the temple, they considered the poor tithe to sanctified. Like the presentation of the First Fruits (26:1-11), the presentation of the poor tithe was accompanied by a confessional prayer (26:12-16). When they presented the tithe our ancestors described their donation as being “consecrated” and declared that they preserved its purity – they did not eat in while in mourning or in a state of impurity and did not give any of it as an offering to the dead.

Though the tithe was kept at home, it belonged to God to be used by members of God’s household, the poor. It had to be free of any other spiritual ties. The confession ended with the prayer that as our ancestors fulfilled their obligation by caring for God’s poor, God would look down from God’s heavenly abode and bless the land and people of Israel.

Care for those on the margins of society lies at the heart of our people’s covenantal tradition. While we are all encouraged as individuals to aid those in need, the fundamental obligation rests on the community. Our national success depends not on the generosity of our individual hearts, but by the success of our shared institutions. We deviate from the expectations of the covenant to the extent to which we tolerate the deprivations of the poor.

The exaltation of the individual in contemporary social and political thought challenges our Jewish sense of sacred community. While we, as Jews, have benefited greatly by modern concepts of the self-determination, human rights, our traditional commitments provide a needed counterweight to the exaltation of the individual self. As Jews, we understand that we, as individuals, can only experience holiness if we live in a community dedicated to the holy task of caring for all individuals – the rich and the poor, the lucky and the misfortunate, the successful and the failed, the blessed and the cursed. Providing for the fundamental needs of all in our community – food, clothing, shelter, security and health cannot be left to the kindness of individual. It is a sacred task of the covenanted community and a holy obligation on each of its members.

"MAKING SENSE OF OUR LIVES"

September 4, 2004

The Book of Deuteronomy captures a special moment in our people’s epic history. Our ancestors’ long journey is over. Forty years, a generation, has passed since they left Egypt. A new Israelite nation, one born and raised in the wilderness, stands posed to cross the Jordan and enter the land promised to the patriarchs and matriarchs, the Land of Israel.

Moses, sensing that his life of service to God and Israel is soon to end, addresses the people he led for so many years. In the three long discourses which make up the bulk of the book, Moses helps our ancestors make sense of their experiences. Moses recalls the miraculous escape from Egyptian bondage. He renews the promises and obligations of Sinai. He reviews their adventures in the wilderness. He admonishes them to be loyal to each other, to God, and to the covenant that binds them together. But, most importantly, Moses presents our ancestors and us with a framework within which our people can discover the meaning of those difficult, yet thrilling, years.

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Ki Tavo, concludes with the opening words of Moses’ third and final address. It is a rhetorical masterpiece. Moses, speaking for God, presents enduring images of God’s protective care for our people during the past forty years in the wilderness. It was a time during which, as Moses pictures, their clothes and shoes did not wear our out nor did they need bread or wine. God, Moses explains, sustained them as they wandered through the desert and brought them to the borders of the Promised Land.

Now, their journey is now. Our people, long accustomed to the easy life in Egypt had to learn how to live in a wilderness where bare necessities were hard to obtain. They fought battles with powerful foes. They confronted difficult social and political challenges as they forged a nation from a group of slaves. We can easily imagine them asking the questions “Was all this suffering worth it?’ “What does all mean?” “Was my life important?” “Where do we go from here?”

Moses captures their perplexity when he tells our people, “Now it is time to make sense of all that has happened.” Until now, he informs them, “The Eternal has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.” But now is the time to put everything in perspective; to make sense of a lifetime filled with suffering, struggle, hard work, and, now, finally, a moment of peace. This is a holy moment. Now that the years of wandering have come to an end, this is the time, he tells them, to see the hand of God working in the events of their lives.

This is the truth of the story. Seeing the deeper meaning in our lives is often hard as we go on day by day. The simple challenges of waking up, going to work or to school, doing our household chores, providing for the needs of our loved ones, fill our days and take all our strength. Living day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year is not an easy job.

Throughout our lives we continue to grow and change. We never end where we began. People come and go into our lives. We have the privilege to touch others with love and affection. We make mistakes and gain new insights. Sadly, although we do so much, we do not have the time or the strength to see where we have been and what we have accomplished.

Life is a journey through an unknown wilderness. Each day is a challenge, each evening, a minor victory. Moses’ words remind us that we, like our ancestors, are often unable to know where we are going or where have been until we are finally there.

Lastly, Moses teaches us that “there” is the end but merely a pause on our life’s pilgrimage. Moses knows that his people, our ancestors, will soon leave him and cross the Jordan to begin a new stage in their journey. Moses understands that “there” is a turning point, a major shift in the direction of our lives. What has gone before can be a source of wisdom and strength, if we just take the time to open our eyes and look back. We made it so far. We did not wear out. We did not starve. We had the physical and spiritual resources to get to this point. We were not alone. We had access to a deeper power within us and around us that gave us the strength we needed. Making it to this point is the victory.

However, Moses knows that the role he and his generation played in the continuing journey of Israel is soon to end. New leaders will arise. The children and grandchildren of the people he led out from Egypt and guided in the wilderness will build a new life in a new land. He has brought our people to a turning point in their travels and at this stop in our people’s history, he opens our eyes and ears and shows us the meaning he discovered in our shared experiences. It is at this moment when Moses proves himself to be our greatest teacher by giving meaning and purpose to the life and history of our ancestors. He framed their experience so that they and all generations that followed could see the hand of God in the events of their lives. He made sense out of a confusing past and an uncertain future and gave our people an abiding vision of a meaningful and purpose full life.

BARUCH HA-SHEM - BLESSED IS THE ETERNAL GOD!

September 5, 2009

The polite and pious Jewish response to the question “How are you?” is “Baruch HaShem” — “Blessed is the Eternal God.” After that, one can fill in the details — good, bad or indifferent. Many, sadly, have forgotten this custom and others treat it like a rote formality. Yet taken seriously, this little custom can change our view on life. Being able to find blessing in our small bit of creation and respond to that discovery by blessing creation’s source is an incredibly empowering spiritual activity.

To understand the energy embedded in these words, we need to go beyond the conceptual restraints we place on ourselves by asking questions such as “Who are we to bless the source of all blessings?” and “What does it mean to bless that source when our blessings seem so far away?” These are real questions and deserve real answers, but the soul changing impact of blessing God for all that we encounter goes beyond the rational.

Life can be very difficult. It is a rare moment when everything seems to be working smoothly in our little worlds with our families, our jobs, our neighbors, and our selves. The greater world in which we live always seems to be in chaos. In any case, nothing in our lives remains static. We live in a world of constant change.

The listing of blessings promised to us if we are truly attentive to God’s voice and observant of God’s directives in the Torah portion Ki Tavo ends with the enigmatic line “Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings?” (Deuteronomy 28:7) Unlike the other blessings in this series, which promise material rewards, the final one is more open ended. It assures us that when we move from one place in our lives to another, we will experience blessing.

The transitions we facing in our lives may be as simple as leaving for and returning from work or school. They could be major life cycle events such as bar or bat mitzvah, leaving for collage, marriage, or retirement. They could be leaving on vacation or to the hospital and coming home again hopefully restored but doubtlessly changed. They could also be the ultimate events in our lives — our coming into and going out of this world. Each change, each shift, each encounter can be full of blessings, if we are truly attentive.

Therefore the two simple words “Baruch HaShem – Blessed is the Eternal God” are reminders for us to treat each encounter as a moment of coming and going in which if we look for a blessing, we will find it.

We are always coming and going. We never stay still. Even old friends and family members are different each time we see them. The brief piety “Baruch HaShem” teaches us to appreciate the uniqueness of each moment, each person and each place and by blessing God for this moment of transition, we find ourselves blessed.

Nitzavim – Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20

STANDING BEFORE GOD TODAY

It is possible to look at the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Torah, as our people’s first systematic collection of reflections on the meaning and significance of our Torah. Deuteronomy appears as Moses’ final speeches to the Israelites just before his death and their entrance into the promised land. In these speeches Moses reviews and interprets for the generation that came of age in the wilderness our people’s experiences over the past forty years — the exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Sinai and the challenges of life as a nomadic nation in the wilderness. He encourages them to remain loyal to the Covenant and obedient to its laws and customs, and he discusses with them the challenges to their faith and traditions that they will face as they cease their wandering and begin settled life in the Land of Israel.

The Book of Deuteronomy is, thus, the first Jewish attempt to answer the question of how are we, the Jewish people, going to be able to maintain and promote our religious heritage and cultural traditions in a new situation. Throughout our history as we, as a people, have wandered through the world and have faced changing political, economic and social conditions, we have come back to this issue time and time again. With courage and insight we have met the challenges and have built a resilient religious civilization.

Our success as a people grows out of our abiding commitment to our Covenant with God, our understanding that we are connected to all Jews over time and space because we share a common history and destiny grounded in the experience of our people at Sinai. The sense that the Sinai Covenant is a perpetual covenant, however, is first articulated not at Sinai but in the fields of Moab on the far side of the Jordan River as the Jews are preparing to enter the Land of Israel. There, in what appears to be part of a ceremonial renewal of the Sinai Covenant, Moses begins his third and final speech by informing the Jews of that time that the Covenant that they are reconfirming is not for them alone but also “with those who are not with us here today.” (Deuteronomy 29:14)

Moses’ speech makes it very clear that all Jews, everywhere, are part of the covenanted community of Israel. Membership in this covenant is not restricted to the leadership of our people, (the elders and officials) but is open to all — to men, women and children, to native-born Israelites and those who choose to dwell with us — irrespective of gender, status or class. (Deuteronomy 29:9-11) All Jews are responsible for renewing and promoting Jewish life within this covenantal context. We are as much a participant in the Covenant as were our ancestors who stood at Sinai.

Moses underscores this principle by reminding the Israelites of his day that they are entering into the Covenant as he is speaking to them. He informs them, “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 29:9) The Covenant between God and Israel is not an historical memory but a living reality for all Jews. Moses is not reminding the people about something that happened a generation ago at the foot of Mount Sinai. He is telling them that they enter into the Covenant whenever they open their hearts and minds to the wisdom of the Jewish people’s sacred heritage. When does this happen? It happens today, “this day,” not then but right now.

It is not coincidental that we read Moses’ third speech in next week’s Torah portion, the double portion, Nitzavim — Vayelekh, on the Shabbat prior to Rosh HaShanah. As we prepare to gather “all of us before the Lord, our God” to celebrate the New Year, Moses’ admonition to our ancestors has a powerful resonance. As we are preparing to cross the river of time into the New Year, we, like the Israelites of old, renew our dedication to our Covenant and commit ourselves to making its ideals a real, living part of our lives.

THE EXTRAS

I love Hebrew, particularly Modern Hebrew, although I make no claims about being a fluent Hebrew speaker. I, like many of us, try to keep my Hebrew alive, but, honestly, it is a struggle. However, I have found a enjoyable web-site, ulpan.com, that teaches a Hebrew word daily, Sunday through Thursday, and on Friday posts Israeli song. The website belongs to Ulpan La Inyan and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Hebrew.

Yesterday’s word was interesting. Ami Steinberger, the founder and CEO, talked about his experience growing up in LA where film production is the main industry, Ami dreamed of being wanted to be part of the industry as either a director or actor, but the closest he got was the opportunity to stand in line to be called up as an extra in a movie.

The modern Hebrew word for extras, as in a film or play or opera, is nitzavim. The word comes from and Biblical Hebrew root – nun, tzade, beit – and it means “to take one’s stand, to stand, to be stationed.” A related word is matzeivah “a monument” or a “gravestone” or matzav “situation”. What makes this word important for us this week, however, is that it is also the word from which our weekly Torah portion takes it’s name – Netzavim.

The portion begins with Moses addressing the Israelite nation, our ancestors, while they are encamped on the plains of Moab, across the Jordan River from Jericho. Moses begins his speech saying:

אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם

“You who stand this day, all of you before your God, HaShem.”

And then he lists the cast of characters.

רָאשֵׁיכֶ֣ם שִׁבְטֵיכֶ֗ם זִקְנֵיכֶם֙ וְשֹׁ֣טְרֵיכֶ֔ם כֹּ֖ל אִ֥ישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ טַפְּכֶ֣ם נְשֵׁיכֶ֔ם וְגֵ֣רְךָ֔ אֲשֶׁ֖ר בְּקֶ֣רֶב מַחֲנֶ֑יךָ

מֵחֹטֵ֣ב עֵצֶ֔יךָ עַ֖ד שֹׁאֵ֥ב מֵימֶֽיךָ׃

your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, every householder in Israel,

your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp,

from woodchopper to waterdrawer.

And tells them that they are gathered to renew the covenant between God and Israel.

Moses continues by saying that he is not only directing his words to those present at that moment but to those who are not with his that day. Implying, as our tradition tells us, that in some way all the generations of Israel were with him both at Sinai and on the Plains of Moab. Moses calls all of us, the Jewish people over time, nitzavim meaning in Biblical Hebrew “those present”. However, when we understand the word in its contemporary usage, we, the Jewish people, can hear Moses describing us as the We, the Jewish people, were all present, or, looking at the word נצבין – nitzavim in its contemporary usage, we were, are and will be all “extras” in the great drama of the Jewish people.

So what does it mean to be an “extra”. If we were on a movie set it means that, we get to dress up, put on make-up, have lunch, stand around a lot, and then mingle in ways that give depth to the story. As an extra we are neither the leads nor an individual playing a supportive role but we are still central to the story. We provide context, we provide depth, we provide background, and we center the events of the play in a real world.

So here, perhaps, Moses addresses us as the נצבין – nitzavim – those who stand up, those who are there, those who are present – in the drama of the Jewish people. At first glance, we the נצבין – nitzavim may look like the extras. We do not appear to have the leading roles. As we read the story of the Exodus and the Wandering, we meet lots of people, most of whom are nameless, who were nitzavim like ourselves. Of course we might catch a name or two and we try to count them from time to time but mostly they are just there – they are children of Israel, a large seemingly anonymous crowd.

The apparent heroes of the story are HaShem and Moses, with Aaron and Miriam playing supportive roles. There are a number of villains as well, but most of our ancestors were the נצבין – nitzavim, those people we refer to strangely in English as the “extras”. As individuals, they each had a very small role to play. For some just showing up was what was required. As a group, however, the story, our story, was about them and for them. If they were not there, there would not be a story.

The heritage of Israel and the future of the Jewish people rest on us, the nitzavim, all those over time who were, are and will be present at Sinai, in the Plains of Moab and wherever our people dwell. Deuteronomy’s Moses knew this. So in his last oration to our ancestors he calls on us to remember that all that he did, we did too; all the he saw, we saw too; and that the covenant, the sacred promises that bind us together and connect us to God was made not with him, but with us, the nitzavim – those who choose to stand up and be present.

Perhaps in a movie we might be seen as “extras” but the epic story of the Jewish people is all about the nitzavim.

SAYING SOMETHING NICE FOR A CHANGE

We Jews are a very demanding people. We demand the best in ourselves and expect others to do their best. I am sure that our delight in setting high standards for ourselves and our community is in part a survival skill our people developed over the centuries. We had to seek excellence from ourselves, our leaders, and our communities so that we could successfully shield ourselves in an often hostile world. We needed skilled leaders and a caring concerned community for our own protection. We needed to perfect intellectual skills to compete in an unfriendly world.

This heritage has served us well. As a people, our history is not one of mere survival but of triumph. In the contemporary world, we Jews, as a group have been extraordinarily successful.

But our deep seated desire for perfection has a negative side as well. On the whole, we are very demanding consumers. We all relate to the story of the child who brought home a test with the score of 98 only to hear his or her parent say, That’s nice, but what about the other 2 points.

On a more serious level, our demand for perfection has made us very self-critical. We often present our faults more clearly than we present our virtues. Self-satisfaction, self-complacency is dangerous for anyone, and particularly dangerous for a small people dwelling more or less alone in this wide world.

In ancient times, our prophets did us a service, holding us to the strict demands of our covenant; scolding us when we failed to care for the less-fortunate; challenging us when we traded our cultural and religious heritage for alien ones.

In the Talmudic and medieval periods, our rabbis and teachers did us a service when they held us to high standards of personal and community morality.

In modern times, Jewish religious and social reformers did us a service when they confronted us with our failure to live up to the standards we set for ourselves.

But all too often, many of us began to hear only the criticism. We could not see the love out of which these people spoke. We lost sight of all the good we did and all the goodness we had.

This week’s haftara, the prophetic portion, that parallels the reading from the Torah, provides us with a refreshing surprise. It reveals for us the other side of our critical nature. It tells us that it is good to say something nice for a change.

The prophet Isaiah of the Exile addressing himself to the Jews living in Babylon, modern Iraq, shortly after the destruction of the first Temple in 586 B.C.E. said...

For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent.

For the sake of Jerusalem, I will not be still.

Till her victory emerge resplendent

And her triumph like a flaming torch.

One can imagine his audience thinking after hearing this introduction thinking, “Now it’s time for another round of criticism. We know that we have not been the best Jews. We know that we have been attracted by the wealth of Babylon. We know that we have fallen in love with Babylonian culture. But doesn’t he know that we are trying. Doesn’t he know that we are still Jews.

But the Isaiah of the Exile does not scold them. He does not criticize them. He does not reproach them. He gives them good news. He reminds them of God’s continuing and intimate love for them. He tells them that they will have a great future. He reassures them in their time of need.

Isaiah says that it is great and it will be great to be a member of the Jewish people. We have done great things and we will de great things. There is a better world coming for us and all peoples and that we can be part of the world.

The prophet Isaiah let the Jews in ancient Babylon share in his love of them and the whole people of Israel.

We are now coming to the period of greatest self-criticism. We will be holding ourselves up to judgement. Throughout the Jewish world, Jews will be subjecting themselves, their communities, the state of Israel and the world Jewish community to a strict evaluation. We have set a rigorous standard for ourselves and we should be proud of that.

But, especially in this time of strict introspection, we should not forget our successes, our good, our positive points. It is as important for to hear them and to rejoice in them as it is for us to review our failings,

We have built large communities. We have erected beautiful synagogues. More Jews are studying Judaism on an advanced level than in any previous period in our history. The State of Israel has been extraordinarily successful in spite of terrible obstacles. The Jews in North America are building a diaspora community whose Jewish resources are beyond compare. In Western Europe, Jewish communities are restoring themselves after the darkness of the Nazi period.

There is no doubt that we are imperfect. I am positive that I could easily recite a lengthy list of areas in which we Jews as individuals and as a community could improve.

But it is equally important for us to remember that we are building from strength not weakness. We can hope for more only because we have gone so far.

Isaiah knew that For Zion’s sake, he could not be silent. For Jerusalem’s sake, he could not be still. He knew that although we all stand in need of improvement, we also need to know that we have done well, that we are loved and that we have hope.

As individuals and as a community, we need positive reinforcement and we have earned it. We need to hear something nice for a change as well.

MEMORABLE WORDS

This Shabbat we read Parashat Nitzavim. We are near the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim. The literary setting places us with our ancestors, the ancient Israelites, camped on the far bank of the Jordan River across from Jericho at the end of the 40 years of wandering in the Wilderness. With them, we listen to the conclusion of Moses’ words of instruction and reflection to the people he has led for a generation before they depart for the Land of Promise and he departs to the future promised to all.

In this short Torah portion, which we read every year just before Rosh Hashanah, we review the basic themes of the Book of Deuteronomy – the importance of remaining loyal to God as our sovereign, our ability to live full Jewish lives, our responsibility for the choices we make, and the abiding nature of God’s love for us as individuals and as a community.

Now, just days away from the New Year, we, like our ancestors to whom Moses’ words were first addressed, are beginning a new adventure. They were about to start life again in a new land – unknown but full of promise – and we are about to start life again in a new year – likewise unknown but likewise full of promise. We share both challenges and blessings – the challenge to stay true to ourselves and our values – the blessing of having Torah – the inherited wisdom gained from our interactions with the human and divine.

As we read the Torah portion, a number of verses stand out.

[29:9] אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם רָאשֵׁיכֶם שִׁבְטֵיכֶם זִקְנֵיכֶם וְשֹׁטְרֵיכֶם כֹּל אִישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל׃ [10] טַפְּכֶם נְשֵׁיכֶם וְגֵרְךָ אֲשֶׁר בְּקֶרֶב מַחֲנֶיךָ מֵחֹטֵב עֵצֶיךָ עַד שֹׁאֵב מֵימֶיךָ׃ [11] לְעָבְרְךָ בִּבְרִית יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ וּבְאָלָתוֹ אֲשֶׁר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כֹּרֵת עִמְּךָ הַיּוֹם׃

[Deut. 29:9] You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God—your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, [10] your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer— [11] to enter into the covenant of the Eternal your God, which the Eternal your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions;

Full participation in the life of the Jewish people is offered to all. Status, class, gender, age are irrelevant.

[30:13]וְלֹא אִתְּכֶם לְבַדְּכֶם אָנֹכִי כֹּרֵת אֶת־הַבְּרִית הַזֹּאת וְאֶת־הָאָלָה הַזֹּאת׃ [14] כִּי אֶת־אֲשֶׁר יֶשְׁנוֹ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ עֹמֵד הַיּוֹם לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ וְאֵת אֲשֶׁר אֵינֶנּוּ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ הַיּוֹם׃

[Deut. 30:13] I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, [14] but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the LORD our God and with those who are not with us here this day

Each of us, whether or not we were present at Sinai or camped on the fields or Moab, can be part of the covenant which commits Jews to each other and to God.

[30:11] כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם לֹא־נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּךָ וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא׃ [12] לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה־לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה׃ [13] וְלֹא־מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲבָר־לָנוּ אֶל־עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה׃ [14] כִּי־קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ׃ (ס)

[Deut. 30:11] Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. [12] It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” [13] Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” [14] No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.

The responsibility to live out our lives according to our inherited value system is in our hands. It is not in heaven as if it were something that belongs to God or across the sea in the hands of a people distant from us culturally and geographically. It belongs to us and we are to cultivate it.

[30:19] הַעִידֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶךָ׃

II call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you: life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life — if you and your offspring would live!

Through our engagement with the teachings and practices of the Jewish people, we have the opportunity to find meaning and purpose in our lives. It is our choice whether or not we engage with our people and our heritage. The life choices we make determine the quality of the life we live. And the choice is ours, so we need to choose carefully.

These words first addressed to our ancestors at the beginning of a new stage in their journey to an unknown and unknowable future, still ring true today as we prepare to enter into a New Year full of potential blessings and curses. The advice to cherish our past, uphold our values and choose wisely transcends time and space. It is not in heaven nor across the sea but in our hands and hearts.

L’Shanah Tovah!

Parashat Vayyelech - Deuteronomy 31:1-30

"YOU SHOULD LIVE TO BE 120!"

Every Shabbat morning during services at the Jewish Geriatric Home, our residents, our volunteers, our guests and I pause to offer thanksgiving for the joyous events in our lives. There is always a simcha or two for us to celebrate — a birthday or an anniversary, a grandchild’s engagement, a great grandchild’s Bris — always a happy occurrence.

One Shabbat morning about a year ago, I announced that a well-loved resident was celebrating a milestone birthday in the coming week and I wished that she live to the proverbial age of 120 years. At that moment, a friend of hers raised her voice and corrected me. The friend said firmly, “No, Rabbi, you should wish her 120 years and three months.”

“Why the extra three months?” I replied, quite perplexed.

“Why the extra three months!?” the friend responded, sounding surprised at my ignorance. “Rabbi,” she declared, “Why should she spoil her last birthday? Don’t you want her to enjoy her party?”

So I wished our birthday celebrant the blessings of one hundred and twenty years and three months of life with happiness and health.

One hundred and twenty years is a long time to live. Only one or two people may have achieved such an age in modern times and some scientists believe that our physical bodies are unable to hold up much longer than that. What, then, is the source of the Jewish tradition of wishing a person 120 years of healthy and happiness?

One of the sources for this wish comes from this week’s Torah portion, Vayyelech. In it, Moses announces to the Jewish people that he has lived one hundred and twenty years and has come to the end of his life. As he approaches his death, he shares with them some of his insights into their future and warns them of the temptations that await them in the Land of Canaan. He reiterates his support of his chosen successor, Joshua, and exhorts him and the Israelites to be brave and strong as they continue their adventures in their new home. By praying that our elderly have the opportunity to reach Moses’ life span, we are reminding them that we cherish them as we cherish Moses. Even in old age, they, like Moses, remain our teachers, our leaders and our fountains of inspiration.

What is especially meaningful to me is the honesty with which Moses describes his condition as he approaches the end of his life. “I am one hundred and twenty years old,” Moses says, “and I can no longer come and go.” (Deuteronomy 31:2) Although there are other descriptions in the Torah of Moses’ physical condition in his extreme old age that portray him as much more lively (Deut. 34:7), here Moses refers directly to his impairments due to old age. As a person who spends so much of his time with our senior seniors in the Jewish Geriatric Home and in senior residences throughout the tri-county region, the image brought forth by Moses’ words sticks in my mind.

I think about the respect our ancestors showed Moses in his final days. I am humbled at the wisdom he shared with them as his life was coming to an end. I am astonished at the courage with which he faced his death. And I gain a deeper respect for the people I serve each time I consider this passage.

Like Moses, many of our most elderly are homebound. Only with great difficulty can they leave their homes, apartments and residence facilities. Many of them can barely move at all.

Although physically impaired, Moses was lucky. His mind was intact and he could still teach and instruct his people by his powerful words. Many of the elderly with whom I interact are not as fortunate as Moses. The ravages of disease and the gradual breakdown of the mind and body by whatever cause during old age have robbed them of their ability to share thoughts and ideas. Their intellectual agility has left them just as their physical strength has deserted them.

But the fact that a person’s ability to express herself verbally is impaired does not mean she cannot inspire and teach. One does not need to be a Moses to transmit a powerful message.

Everyone has something to share — an experience, an insight, a memory, a feeling, an attitude to life, even a sense of being. If we don’t seem to get a person’s message, we should not assume that the person is not communicating with us. The problem may be with our receivers. We may need to tune our eyes, ears, hearts and minds to the person’s unique frequency.

Although it takes a while for children to learn to speak, no one doubts the ability of an infant to share happiness and love with those close. Doting parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles can hear a baby’s words even before the baby learns to pronounce them. We are not surprised at our ability to read our children’s hearts and comprehend their messages to us.

It is the same with our impaired elderly, who at the end of their long lives can neither come nor go. They, too, can share their message of love and hope with us if we would only try to listen.

We have the tools to help them along. Sometimes all we need to do is set the appropriate mood, perhaps by sharing an old memory. Pictures of familiar faces and places open their hearts and ours. At this time of the year, High Holy Day celebrations are important. The sights and sounds of the High Holy Days evoke powerful feelings and deep-seated longings and hopes. The aromas from the Holy Day kitchen or even a taste of honey cake can open up lines of communication with the elderly, enabling us to receive their blessings.

Even though our seniors may not be able to put forth an elaborate plan of living as Moses does for us in the Book of Deuteronomy, their message to us at the end of their days captures the essence of his words. They want us to be menschen, human beings full of love and concern for all those with whom we share our world, including them. They want us to cherish the traditions they have bequeathed to us. They want us to be good, to do good and receive the blessings of goodness.

Now as we enter the New Year with its promise of life renewed, I hear each and every one of them encouraging us to move forward in our life journey with the same words Moses used when he encouraged our ancestors to press forward into the Land of Promise. They join him in blessing us with the words chazak ve-ematz, “be strong and be brave.”