“For it is no minor (or trifling, or empty) thing for you — and if it seems that way, it is your fault” we read in the Jerusalem Talmud (Peah 1:1). At the conclusion of Moses’ great song or speech to the Israelite people that is Parashat Ha’azinu, we read that:

Deuteronomy 32:44-47 Moses came, together with Hosea son of Nun, and recited ALL the words of this poem in the hearing of the people. And when Moses finished reciting ALL these words to Israel, he said to them: Take to heart ALL the words with which I have warned you this day. Enjoin them upon your children, that they may observe faithfully ALL the terms of this Teaching. For this is not a trifling thing for you: it is your very life.

Why the emphasis on “all” — four times in three verses? To remind us that each and every word is significant. There is so much to be gleaned from our sacred text. “Turn it and turn it again, for all is in it; see through it; grow old and worn in it; do not budge from it” Rabbi Ben Bag Bag says in Pirkei Avot (5:22). 

As we prepare to conclude the cycle of reading Torah on Simchat Torah, and as we prepare to immediately begin again, I invite you to think about how to make this a year of greater learning. With our Torah study group, in Beit Midrash sessions at Temple, through personal study or chevruta discussion. Open yourself to words of Torah, and Torah becomes open to you. It is our very life as Jews and I am excited to begin a new year of study together!

P’tirat Moshe, a fascinating midrash, reconciles a textual discrepancy regarding the death of Moses. While this week’s Torah portion makes Moses sound old: “I am now one hundred and twenty years old and can no longer be active;” in just two week’s time we read “his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated.” Which is it? Was he ready for his leadership to end or not?

In the words of Midrash:

“The Holy One said to Gabriel: “Go forth and bring the soul of Moses.” Gabriel replied: “He who is equal in important to sixty myriads—how can I bear to watch him dying?” 

Then the Holy One said to Michael: “Go and bring the soul of Moses.” Michael replied: “I was his teacher, and he my pupil. How can I bear to watch him dying?”

Then the Holy One said to Samael: “Go and fetch the soul of Moses.” Now, the angel Samael, chief of all satanic spirits, had long been awaiting the soul of Moses. He immediately clothed himself with anger, girded on his sword, wrapped himself in ruthlessness, and went forth to encounter Moses. Samael found him seated and writing the Ineffable Name in a scroll. The radiance of his appearance was like the radiance of the sun’s visage; indeed, Moses looked like an angel of the Lord of hosts. 

Samael was so frightened and went back and reported to the Almighty. The Holy One commanded once more: Go, bring the soul of Moses. Samael straightaway drew his sword from its sheath and stood over Moses. At that Moses became angry at him, took the rod upon which God’s Ineffable Name was graven, and struck Samael with all his might, until Samael fled from him. With God’s Ineffable Name in his hand, Moses pursued Samael until he overtook him, plucked a radiant beam from between his own eyes, and blinded the eyes of Samael.” 

Though Moses was far from ready to die, at least according to Midrash, the time had come for him to pass on the mantle of leadership. He charged his successor Joshua with the words Chazak V’ematz, be strong and courageous, before God Godself came to collect his soul. 

Parashat Nitzavim, which we read both this week and on Yom Kippur morning, is most famous for two different passages. The idea that Torah is not in the heavens, thus unobtainable, but as close as the air we breathe is found in Nitzavim, as is the idea that all of us were gathered at Sinai for revelation: both our ancient ancestors and every subsequent generation. There is a third major concept found in the text as well to which I want to call your attention. 

“Adonai your God will return with your exiles and have mercy upon you.”

Rashi recognizes that this texts reads differently than it should. 

Had it meant to convey that God would be responsible for returning the Jewish people from exile, it would have read “v’heishiv.” Instead it implies that God went with us into exile. 

Geographically, this is an important concept for a people long removed from their homeland: God’s presence can thus be felt no matter where we are in the world. 

Spiritually, this is a key concept as we approach Rosh Hashanah. We are not yet the people we need to become, having repeatedly missed the mark during the previous year. That doesn’t mean that God’s presence is further removed from us, however, only that we need to reorient ourselves to perceive God in our midst.

“Remember us unto life, O King who delights in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, O God of life”….for you are stuck with us until we do.

Sacrifices? Again? Didn’t we already finish the book of Leviticus? Before you let your eyes glaze over, let me show you why this passage in Ki Tavo is one of the most interesting you will ever see.

Deuteronomy 26:2-5

“You shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land…put it in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God will choose to establish His name. …The priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. You shall then recite as follows: My father was a wandering Aramean…”

Great. Pick your produce, put it in a basket, bring it to the Temple in Jerusalem — which they couldn’t actually say directly to maintain the narrative fiction that the Temple didn’t exist yet — and then recite this specific formula. Fine. But what if you couldn’t read?

The Mishnah, the rabbinic document of about the year 200, has a creative solution to this problem. They say:

Mishnah Bikkurim 3:7

Beforetime all that could recite [the prescribed words] recited them, and all that could not recite them repeated [after the priest]; but when these refrained from bringing [their first fruits] it was ordained that both they that could recite them and they that could not should repeat the words [after the priest].

Those who could recite the formula recited the formula, those who couldn’t repeated those words after the priest. Except now we have singled out those who are unlearned…and they simply ceased to come. The priests quickly changed their tune, ordaining that EVERYONE would recite the formula after them, lest anyone feel shame. 

Jewish tradition is not — and has not been — an inflexible, rigid system of law but rather a blueprint for living a more moral, uplifted, God-like life. It has and continues to respond to the realities of our contemporary situation, accepting us for who we are while pushing us towards who we must become. 

We read in Deuteronomy: “Adonai, your God, goes along in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you. Therefore your camp shall be holy so that God should not see anything unseemly among you.” (23:15)

While I take a more universalist approach, believing in a God who is concerned about the fate and welfare of all of humanity, I love the idea of God’s presence in our midst. This isn’t a new conception in Torah, for we also read:

“Let them make for Me a sanctuary that I might dwell among them.” (Exodus 25:8)

Nor is it a new conception in rabbinic thought, as we read in the writings of Joseph Soloveitchik:

“Halakhic man declares: the higher longs and pines for the lower…

and he possesses the tools to make it so.”

The idea isn’t new, but we still have yet to embrace it in practice. Too often we, I, act in ways convenient or self-interested but far removed from our highest values. Too often I worry God would have cause to look upon our actions, mistreatment of others, our world as unseemly. 

The high holy days give us a chance to press reset, to try again. To embrace this week’s Torah portion in the modern day, we would do well to follow the teaching of Danny Siegel:

“If you always assume the person sitting next to you

is the Messiah waiting for some simple human kindness —

You will soon come to weigh your words and watch your hands.

And if the person chooses not to be revealed in your time —

It will not matter.”

Miss Torah Study this morning? Get caught up in two minutes or less and join us next Saturday morning in the WRJ room at 9:00am.

Deuteronomy Chapter 20 contains many of the laws related to how war should be waged by the ancient Israelites. Taken on their surface, these rules give us moderns pause — could our ancestors have been so cruel and callous about the taking of human life?

Our history of interpretation — and the reality of being a historical people without sovereignty for much of Jewish history — removes the fangs from our ancient text.

As but one example, in Deuteronomy we read: In the towns of the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites you shall not let a soul remain alive.

Maimonides clarifies that you have to extend an offer of peace before every war, even to these peoples…and that the command was time limited: we are now so intermarried with these nations as to nullify this decree.

Even better, though, is his notion of a three-sided siege.

“When siege is laid to a city for the purpose of capture, it may not be surrounded on all four sides but only on three in order to give an opportunity for escape to whose who would flee to save their lives.”

By suggesting a law so absurd by military standards as to be almost humorous, Maimonides telegraphs his intention to protect life during war wherever possible. Neither cruel nor callous is his, and our, interpretation of Torah. 

Miss Torah Study this morning? Get caught up in two minutes or less and join us next Shabbat morning in the WRJ Room at 9:00am.

“V’achalta v’savata u’veirachta et Adonai Elohecha…you will eat and be satisfied and bless Adonai your God” we read in this week’s Torah portion…flipping the conventional script upon its head. Soloveitchik teaches that prayer is the act of insubstantial person, lacking the wherewithal to subsist, appearing before God upon whom existence depends. Yet here it is suggested that true blessing is only offered from a position of fulfillment and comfort.

Talmud futher debates this point. In the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 31a, it is taught from Hanna’s prayer that an inebriated person is forbidden to pray. Yet in the Jerusalem Talmud, Terumot 1:4, we learn the opposite: one who is drunk can and must recite birkat hamazon, the blessing after meals.

It is a lesson we are to learn throughout this week’s portion, Eikev. Manna, the sustenance our ancestors at in the desert, is described as a test. Why? It is easy to cry out to God from the depths of our distress, to focus on our highest values when they are all we have. But when our needs have been met? When our material abundance has increased? When we believe life is going well? Acting in a God-like fashion, living by the commandments, becomes considerably more difficult in times of perceived prosperity.

“V’achalta v’savata u’veirachta et Adonai Elohecha…you will eat and be satisfied and bless Adonai your God” a reminder of who we need to be in times of plenty as well as times of scarcity.

Miss Torah Study this morning? Get caught up in two minutes or less and join us next Shabbat morning in the WRJ room at 9:00am.

Shamor V’zachor B’dibur Echad — Two commandments — Shamor, to observe; and Zachor, to remember; spoken in one word. Or so the author of L’cha Dodi, Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz, wants us to believe in order to homogenize a discrepancy in our text.

In the book of Exodus, we read that we are supposed to Zachor Shabbat, to remember it. When Moses recaps the commandments in this week’s Torah portion, we are supposed to Shamor Shabbat, to observe it. The sages of our tradition derive from this two separate ways of recognizing Shabbat — one joyous: reciting the blessings, and one either freeing or restrictive: refraining from work.

The difference between these texts, however, runs a bit deeper. Both Exodus and Deuteronomy provide us with the reason we should observe these commandments, and they too are different. In Exodus, Shabbat is a remembrance of God’s creative actions; in Deuteronomy it calls attention to our Exodus from Egypt. Remember / Observe, Creation / Exodus…why the differences in Torah?

Humans are both thinking and feeling beings. Sometimes an appeal to our cognition — you are part of something larger than yourself — works, and sometimes an appeal to emotion is more compelling— with an outstretched arm you were brought to safety. Sometimes we need the structure of rules to guide our actions, and sometimes we can rely of the joy of ritual. Remember / Observe, Creation / Exodus because we are each different and can yet are embraced by our age old tradition.