Parashat Va'Etchanan
Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11
With apologies, I didn't realize until this afternoon that no one had signed up to write this week's d'var Torah. This week's portion is very complicated so last minute volunteers were unlikely, but I'd written about it before. In other words, what follows isn't really new material, but I think it's a pretty decent representation of Parashat Va'Etchanan.
Also, in part due to the last minute nature of this, I'm probably not going to be around to moderate. So usual rules/norms/customs apply. Shabbat shalom!
Elders of Zion is a general Jewish interest group, open to anyone who wants to learn about Jews and Judaism. The group was created in order to facilitate such a space. Discussion of and questions about Jewish religion, ethnicity, history, culture, language, cuisine, music, literature, and identity are encouraged. Please keep this purpose in mind when commenting in our diaries. Antisemitism, diary hijacking, and I/P pie fights will not be tolerated and will be troll rated. For more information, see the inaugural diary.
This is one of the busiest portions of the entire Torah. We have Moses' plea (and God's refusal) to be allowed to continue with the Israelites into Canaan; the designation of three Cities of Refuge on the eastern side of the Jordan River; the Ten Commandments; the Shma, perhaps the central creed of the Jewish people; a reminder to remember always our enslavement in Egypt; commands regarding the conquest of Canaan; and a brief discourse on theodicy. We could have half a dozen divrei Torah this week and still only be scratching the surface.
And then there's the haftarah. This Shabbat is Shabbat Nachamu, the first of the seven Shabbatot of Consolation that follow Tisha b'Av and lead up to the High Holy Days. This is a time of year of intense contemplation and introspection for many Jews, but for some of us, it is also a time that reminds us of how poorly understood our faith and traditions are outside of the rare population that constitutes the Jewish people. That lack of understanding sometimes manifests itself in particularly nasty ways. We are sometimes told that our history, culture, and tradition are either made up or irrelevant. We have been accused simultaneously and collectively of all the crimes of capitalism and all the crimes of communism. We are accused collectively of being behind the vast right wing conspiracy despite collectively being one of the most reliably liberal groups in the entire country. Our faith has been mocked as just so much "man in the sky" nonsense even though very few of us believe that way -- and I have to say, it strikes me as ironic that those who mock us as fundamentalists for not accepting their worldview take such a literalist, simplistic, fundamentalist understanding of our beliefs, with no greater nuance than that you might expect from a typical three-year-old. It would be funny if it weren't so insulting.
So I hope you'll all pardon me if I don't necessarily address the elements of the parasha per se. Instead, I'd like to offer a (relatively) brief discourse on the nature of Jewish tradition -- a "case for Judaism" if you will, and particularly a case for Judaism and liberalism -- using some of the elements of this portion as illustrative examples.
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David Ben Gurion was famous for saying that where there are two Jews, there are three opinions. (He was also famous for other things.)
I begin with this because I want to be very clear that despite what some people would have you believe -- and ironically, this is one of those areas where some Jews and most antisemites have a lot in common -- there is no one right way to be a Jew. Each of us has his/her own way. That's not to say there aren't limits -- there are. We remain, after all, a communal religion. We are, in short, what social identity theorists would call a "group," and as such, if you want to be one of us, it is not enough that you identify as a member of the group -- you must also be identified by us as a member of the group. That particular social dynamic has both great strengths and great weaknesses, as evidenced by the over 25 million links that will pop up if you do a Google search for "who is a Jew?" -- roughly four links for each Jew in the United States. (Did I mention that we each have our own way of being Jewish?)
So we all have our own ways of being Jewish, and while my approach is substantially similar to that of lots of other Jews' in ways that are particularly salient to us, it is also substantially different from the approaches of lots of other Jews. All of which is just a very long way of saying we're not all the same. And anyone who insists that we are is ignorant at best, and probably a heck of a lot worse.
But what does it mean to be a Jew anyway? Again, every Jew will have his/her own opinion, but those who have studied our history, tradition, culture, and texts carefully will probably tell you it boils down to a few key things. For me, it boils down to two stories from the Talmud. The first, I suspect, most of you have seen before, and has to do with the two greatest rabbis of the end of the first century BCE and start of the first century CE:
A man wanted to embarrass the two leading rabbis of the era, Shammai and Hillel. He decided that he would feign interest in converting to Judaism, but would only do so if the rabbi could teach him the entire Torah while he stood on one foot.
He approached Shammai first. Shammai was so incensed at the ridiculous request -- how could he dare mock the importance of Torah study and the discipline required to do it well? -- that he kicked the man out of his academy.
The man then approached Hillel and repeated his request. Hillel's response?
"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it."
-- Shabbat 31a
The second, however, is somewhat less known:
A man named Achnai invented a new sort of oven. He brought it to the rabbinical court to gain their imprimatur. The rabbis examined the oven, their extensive knowledge of halacha in mind, and announced their decision: it was not appropriate for Jewish use.
But Rabbi Eliezer dissented -- he was certain there was no reason to believe that the oven could not be used. He made every argument his formidable mind could come up with, but his colleagues were not swayed. In frustration, Rabbi Eliezer pointed to a nearby carob tree and cried out: "If Achnai's oven is kosher, as I say it is, let this carob tree prove it!" And the carob tree uprooted itself, flew to a distance a hundred cubits away, and replanted itself.
As impressive as this was, the rabbis were not convinced. "No proof can be brought from a carob tree," they said. So Rabbi Eliezer pointed to a nearby stream: "If the oven is kosher, let the water of this stream flow backward!" And so it did -- the stream reversed course immediately. But again, the rabbis were not convinced. "No proof can be brought from a stream of water," they said.
Outraged, Rabbi Eliezer cried out once again: "If the oven is kosher, let the walls of this house of study prove it!" And so the walls began to fall inward. Rabbi Joshua, seeing the impending threat of the walls to collapse and crush the entire assembly, rebuked the walls: "When scholars engage in a disagreement over a point of Jewish law, what gives you the right to interfere?" And so the walls ceased their collapse out of respect for Rabbi Joshua, though they did not return to their upright positions either out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer.
Rabbi Eliezer decided to try one more time: "If the law agrees with me, let it be proved by heaven." And a heavenly voice called out: "Why do you rabbis argue with Eliezer? He is always right in his interpretation of the law!" But Rabbi Joshua arose again and yelled to the sky, quoting the Torah: "'It is not in Heaven' (Deuteronomy 30:12) -- one must follow the majority!"
The sages say that at that moment, God laughed, saying "My children have defeated me! My children have overruled me!"
-- Baba Metzia 59a
To me, if you didn't truly understand anything about Judaism except these two passages, you would still know everything you really need to know. All of Judaism boils down to "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor." Everything else is commentary. As such, everything we do as Jews should advance or at least not harm the goal of treating every human being as we would like to be treated ourselves were we to be found in their position. And as for how you go about doing that, lo bashamayim -- it is not in Heaven. We are not restricted in our behavior because God so commands, but rather because our traditions, our values as we interpret them, require it. We are commanded toward the end of this week's parasha to "Do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 6:18) -- but we get to decide what that means. We get to decide that a law written by men in an attempt to interpret God's intent is faulty, that it does not elevate the human condition, that it denigrates a class of people for no reason, that it violates the crucial command of "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor." We are not obliged to believe that whatever we read in our sacred texts is carved in stone by God, that we cannot deviate from it, that we cannot change it. We see ample examples of changes in the Talmud, made because of the changing social conditions of the time, and there is no reason why we should not continue to make changes now if doing so better reflects the dictum that we must treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves.
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Why do Jews pray?
The answer depends on who you ask -- remember, where there are two Jews, there will be three opinions. Jewish prayers take several inherent forms -- we have prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of benediction, prayers of praise, prayers of repentance, and so on. Our prayers can be highly structured -- think Shacharit, Mincha, Ma'ariv, and the like (for those not familiar with Jewish liturgy, these are the daily services of the morning, afternoon, and evening). And our prayers can be very loose -- most scholars would say that a Jew may pray at almost any time and in almost any place. We have prayers for everything, even things for which there is no set prayer and for situations where you don't know what the appropriate prayer is. (Try wrapping your mind around that one -- it deserves a longer conversation than I'm willing to have in this diary.)
Traditionalists would tell you that a Jew (more accurately, an adult male Jew -- women are exempted from most time-bound mitzvot; again, worth a longer conversation than we can have right now) must recite each of the fixed prayers every day, and that all Jews are obligated to recite other kinds of prayers at other times -- for instance, at meals. Most Jews, however, pray when they feel up to it, which may mean not at all, even if they're attending services.
And I think most people, when they think of prayer, are thinking of a specific kind of prayer -- the kind where you ask for something. Sometimes it's as basic and self-focused as "please, God, let me do well on my algebra test in fifth period"; sometimes it's more complicated and other-centered, like "please, God, let so-and-so feel comfort in his/her time of difficulty." But no matter how hard we pray and no matter how deserving we think we are, sometimes we don't get exactly what we pray for.
In this week's parasha, Moses knows he is going to have to turn over the burden of leadership to Joshua imminently. But for 40 years, he has worked to lead the Israelites into Canaan. He prays to God to be allowed to go with them and is denied (Deuteronomy 3:23-25), and he doesn't handle it all that well.
Even Moses didn't always get what he prayed for. And perhaps that should tell us something about the nature of prayer -- it's not a magical solution whereby you ask for something and get it. And if you don't get what you prayed for, it doesn't mean that God is ignoring you or that you're an idiot if you keep praying. We are not that uncritical or that unthinking -- we don't believe in the three-year-old-level-of-understanding conception of prayer.
When a Jew prays with genuine kavanah, it is not with the expectation that whatever s/he prays for will come to be. Jewish prayer is meant to be a meditative act, not a selfish one. We pray to remind ourselves that we are part of a collective greater than ourselves, to reinforce our social bonds to our community -- Jewish prayer is primarily a communal activity, not a solitary one. And so our prayer serves its purposes communally. We pray to calm ourselves, to relieve stress -- to remind ourselves that there are people who can help us when we are troubled; we pray to remind ourselves and others to be grateful for what we have; we pray to remind ourselves and others to do more to help those in need. When we read the Torah, we recite prayers for those who are not well, specifically naming the afflicted -- and so we remind the community of some people who could use a little help right now and of the opportunity to perform the great mitzvah of bikur cholim (visiting the sick). When we recite prayers in memory of the deceased, traditionally only the mourners recite the prayer aloud -- and so we remind the community of those who need to be comforted for their loss.
And yes, sometimes we make requests that are only about ourselves and our desires. And sometimes we get what we want, and sometimes we don't -- and when we do, it tends to be via readily identifiable mundane means rather than Divine intervention. But even Moses didn't always get what he prayed for; who are we to think we should do any better?
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One of the more popular prayers from the Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat liturgy (the service marking the beginning of Shabbat) is L'cha Dodi. Anyone familiar with this prayer will be aware of this line: shamor v'zachor b'dibur echad ("keep" and "remember" in a single utterance). This is a reference to the Fourth Commandment (or Third for the Christians here -- you guys count them differently), which is rendered differently in this week's portion here in Deuteronomy (5:12 -- shamor) than it was back in Exodus (20:8 -- zachor). Back in the Exodus rendering, we were commanded to remember the Sabbath day; here, we are commanded to keep the Sabbath day.
One of the more pernicious forms of antisemitism I come across on a regular basis is the denial of Jewish history. This pops up all the time in "discussion" (and I use the term exceedingly loosely) of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I don't want to get into a whole I/P thing here -- suffice it to say that both sides have legitimate claims and complaints. In any case, we frequently hear people claim, thinking that they're defending Israel, that there is no such thing as a Palestinian, or that there wasn't such thing as a Palestinian until 1967.
This claim is a vicious lie. It is hate speech. Its sole purpose is to claim that only Israel has legitimate claims and complaints. It is patently unhelpful and exceedingly hurtful, and no one who genuinely cares about peace accepts it.
And it has an equivalent lie. There are also those who say that contemporary Jews are not descended from the ancient Israelites, but rather from the Khazars, a Turkic nation that existed from the 7th-10th centuries in what is today Northern Turkey and a host of Eastern European nations. This position was popularized at first by Ernest Renan, a French philosopher whose writings were very influential in a 19th century social movement founded and promoted by Wilhelm Marr -- the Antisemiten Liga. The fallacy of Khazar descent came to America through The Dearborn Independent, a rag made famous for the rabid antisemitism of its publisher, Henry Ford. Today, it is a staple of the notoriously antisemitic Christian Identity movement. There has never been any evidence behind the theory, and it has been thoroughly refuted via genetic testing.
All of which is to say that a person who promotes this claim today is an antisemite.
And it doesn't stop there. It's not enough to deny that we are, in fact, the descendants of the Israelites. It is often said that we have never looked at Israel, or Zion, or Judea, or Canaan, or whatever you want to call that parcel of land at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as any kind of important part of our culture. Never mind that it features prominently in every other prayer in our liturgy. Never mind that it figures prominently in all our sacred texts. Never mind that for nearly 2000 years in exile, every time we celebrated a holiday, we recited the line, "Next year in Jerusalem!" Never mind the debates as to whether it was a requirement for the messiah to come first for us to be able to return to Zion or if a return to Zion was a requirement for the messiah to come. Never mind that every bit of literature, every bit of culture, every bit of ritual we have ever had has featured our ancestral homeland. Never mind any of that, it is still common to hear it said that Israel has never mattered to Jews or Judaism.
It is a vicious lie. It is hate speech. Its sole purpose is to claim that Jews are nothing but colonial interlopers who have no legitimate claim to the land of Israel and no legitimate cause to complain about any insult or injury done to them as a result of their political sovereignty there. It is patently unhelpful and exceedingly hurtful, and no one who genuinely cares about peace accepts it. And if you think it is merely an anti-Israel claim, you are sorely deluded.
No matter the ethnoreligious, cultural, and historical identities of the parties to the I/P conflict, there can be no excuse for the brutality exhibited in the conflict, but again, that's not the point here. The point is that parties on both sides who claim to be supporting one side or the other have done great injustice to the other side by denying the very existence of their identity. (And frankly, both sides could do a hell of a lot better if they only accepted that it's not a zero-sum game. In the end, if there is to be lasting peace, both sides are going to have to accept that the other has legitimate claims and complaints, both sides are going to have to accept that the other has a right to a sovereign state of its own, and neither side is going to get anything near everything it wants. But again, that's a topic for another diary.)
This is hardly the only context in which we have had our identity denied. Much of the history of the Jewish people is written, sadly, in the blood of our ancestors whose neighbors tried to deny their existence and all too often tried to destroy it altogether. Here in Parashat Va'Etchanan, and back in Exodus, we are explicitly commanded to remember and keep the Sabbath, but that is only one aspect of our identity as a people. We must be equally vigilant in remembering and keeping all aspects of our identity. There are far too many people out there who are all too eager to take bits of it away from us.
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Bad things happen to good people all the time.
Good things happen to bad people all the time.
There are those who acknowledge these facts and ask, "What kind of a feckless God would allow that to happen?" It is unjust; it is unfair; it is not right.
Who ever said life was fair? And who ever said it was God who allows such disparity between the fairy tale where all bad people get their comeuppance and all good people get their just rewards, and the reality that is so much more complex than that?
Some would say that's exactly how Parashat Va'Etchanan ends:
Know, therefore, that only the Lord your God is God, the steadfast God who keeps His/Her/Its covenant faithfully to the thousandth generation for those who love Him/Her/It, but who instantly requites with destruction those who reject Him/Her/It...
-- Deuteronomy 7:9-10
But that's a literal interpretation, and most of us are not fundamentalists. Indeed, the famous 11th century commentator Rashi -- possibly the most widely cited commentator in all of Jewish Scripture -- immediately tells us we can't interpret the verse literally. He tells us that sincerity matters, that there is a difference between people who do the right thing because it is the right thing to do and those who do the right thing for selfish reasons. Do you help out a fellow human being in need because it is the right thing to do, or do you help because you expect to be rewarded for doing so? Do you protect those who are persecuted because it is the right thing to do, or do you do it because doing so will enhance your reputation? Do you extend a hand to those who need it because it is the right thing to do, or do you do it because you expect them to return the favor some day?
I've been told that this sounds a lot like probability statistics-based karma, but that isn't so helpful. For one thing, it's still too literal -- there's really no nuance at all. For another, wouldn't you still ask how a feckless God could allow good things to happen to bad people and bad things to happen to good people based on something so fickle as probability? No, I don't think that's too helpful at all.
Instead, I prefer to think of this in sort of a dual way, using the concepts of the great Jewish theologians Rabbi Akiva, Ben Azzai, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (In the last case, the "Jewish" bit describes the concept more than the person, and like many Jewish concepts, it's hardly exclusively so.)
Rabbi Akiva taught:
Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted. The world is judged favorably, yet all depends on the preponderance of good deeds.
-- Pirkei Avot 3:19
Jews generally believe that even a God we believe to be omniscient grants us the freedom to choose for ourselves between good and evil. (I know, I know -- if God already knows everything, including what your choice is going to be, do you really have freedom of choice? I hate to repeat it, but I have to -- that's a topic for another diary. But the short version is this: If we don't have freedom of choice, is life meaningful?) Indeed, in just six weeks, on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashana, we will read this passage:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life...
-- Deuteronomy 30:19
That's not a statement of what you're going to do. It's advice. It's God telling the Israelites what the right thing is to do, and telling them they can decide for themselves if they're going to do it or not.
So what about reward and punishment? Is it really that simple -- that God automatically rewards those who do good and punishes those who do evil? (Short answer: no.) How can it be so if the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? (Short answer: it isn't so, and it still wouldn't be so even if the righteous all prospered and the wicked all suffered.) Or is it that we shouldn't take the verse quite so literally? (Short answer: now you've got it!)
Ben Azzai taught:
Pursue even a minor mitzvah and flee from a transgression, for one mitzvah generates another and one transgression generates another. Thus, the reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah and the penalty for a transgression is another transgression.
-- Pirkei Avot 4:2
Mitzvah is commonly mistaken for "good deed" when it really just means "commandment," but in this context, it's not so unfortunate a mistake. Behavior is, to use a somewhat unfortunate analogy, a highly contagious virus. When you do the right thing, you create additional opportunities for yourself and for others to do the right thing. You set a good example for yourself and others. You model the right way to go about things. And when you do the wrong thing, you create additional opportunities for yourself and for others to do the wrong thing. You set a bad example for yourself and others. You model the wrong way to go about things.
Whether you choose good or evil, the way you act affects other people. And whether you choose to treat them with dignity and respect or with denigration and disdain, you create opportunities for them to pay it forward to someone else.
Which brings us to Rev. King:
I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?"....
I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow....
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
-- Speech from the steps of the Alabama State Capitol, March 25, 1965
Truth crushed to earth will rise again.
No lie can live forever.
You shall reap what you sow.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. It may not always be fair to individuals. It may not always treat us the way we deserve. It may constrain our choices due to the choices others have made. And yes, it allows the righteous to suffer and the wicked to prosper.
No one ever said the world was perfect.
What kind of God allows self-righteous hypocrisy, opposes progress, ignores our prayers, allows cousins to treat each other with savage brutality over shared land, allows people to deny the heritage or even the existence of others, and lets the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper? That's not the God we believe in; that's the God we have created out of our own fecklessness, in our own image. That's not God. It's us.
No one ever said the world was perfect. The moral arc of the universe is long, and our job as Jews -- as human beings -- is exactly as Rabbi Tarfon taught:
You are not obligated to complete the task (of building a better world), but neither are you free to desist from the effort.
-- Pirkei Avot 2:21
It's a marathon, not a sprint. And as happens with marathons, it's a lot easier to run the race when you have a chevre to offer mutual support.
That is a progressive theology. That is the Judaism I believe in. And I will keep it and remember it all the days of my life.
Shabbat shalom.
Reminder: Elders of Zion is an open space for discussing and learning about all things Jewish. This group is not the place for whatever I/P pie fight you want to start. It is not a group about Zionism or anti-Zionism. If you want to talk acrimoniously about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, regardless of the target of your anger, there are other diaries more suited to your preference. Antisemitism, diary hijacking, and pie fights are out of line with our group's mission and will be troll rated.