Shalom, Africa
Vol. V, No. 33
Devarim – Shabbat Chazon
4 Av 5769
July 24-25, 2009
Torah: Deuteronomy 1:1 – 3:22
Haftarah: Isaiah 1:1–27
Click here for the Parashah in English
Click here for the Haftarah in English
The Parashah summary was prepared by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair for Ohr Somayach.
I. Parashah Summary
This Parashah begins the last of the Five Books of The Torah, Sefer Devarim. This book is also called Mishneh Torah, "Repetition of the Torah" (hence the Greek/English title Deuteronomy). Sefer Devarim relates what Moshe told Bnei Yisrael during the last five weeks of his life, as they prepared to cross the Jordan into Eretz Yisrael. Moshe reviews the mitzvot, stressing the change of lifestyle they are about to undergo: From the supernatural existence of the desert under Moshes guidance to the apparently natural life they will experience under Joshua’s leadership in the Land.
The central theme this week is the sin of the spies, the meraglim. The Parashah opens with Moshe alluding to the sins of the previous generation who died in the desert. He describes what would have happened if they hadn’t sinned by sending spies into Eretz Yisrael. HaShem would have given them without a fight all the land from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, including the lands of Ammon, Moav and Edom. He details the subtle sins that culminate in the sin of the spies, and reviews at length this incident and its results: The entire generation would die in the desert; Moshe would not enter Eretz Yisrael. He reminds them that their immediate reaction to HaShem’s decree was to want to "go up and fight" to redress the sin; he recounts how they wouldn’t listen when he told them not to go, that they no longer merited vanquishing their enemies miraculously. They ignored him and suffered a massive defeat. They were not allowed to fight with the kingdoms of Esau, Moab or Ammon; these lands were not to be part of the map of Eretz Yisrael in the meantime. When the conquest of Canaan will begin with Sichon and Og, it will be via natural warfare.
II. Og Stands Tall on the Stage of History, by Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, Director, National Jewish Outreach Program
In his recapitulation of the events leading up to the people's entry into the land of Israel, Moses recalls the defeat at the hands of Israel of two great ancient kings, Sihon, the king of the Amorites, and Og, the king of Bashan. (The original stories of the defeat of Sihon and Og, are recorded in Numbers 21:21-35.)
Because the people of Edom did not permit the ancient Israelites to cross through their land, the children of Israel were forced to turn eastward toward the Jordan and travel through the territories that belonged to the fearsome rulers, Sihon and Og. Despite Israel's request to pass through his land, Sihon declines to give permission and mobilizes his army to battle Israel. The Israelites however, smite Sihon and the Amorites by the sword, taking possession of their land. Although these lands were not intended to be a part of biblical Israel, Israel occupied all the Amorite cities, as well as the capital city, Heshbon, and its suburbs.
Marching even further north toward the Bashan, Israel encounters the giant Og, who rallies his army to do battle with the Israelites in Edrei. After being reassured by G-d not to fear Og, the Israelites smite the King of Bashan, his sons and all his people and take possession of his lands as well (Numbers 21:34).
While there is very limited information regarding Og in the biblical text, the Midrash creates an elaborate biography of the King of Bashan.
The Midrash Tanchuma in Leviticus 12, depicts Og as a paradigm of wickedness, citing the verse in Isaiah 57:20, which states that "the wicked are like the troubled sea." The Midrash explains that, like the sea, the wicked fail to learn from previous failures. Just as the waves do not learn from previous waves that they cannot overwhelm the land, so the wicked fail to learn from the punishments of other wicked people. After all, Pharaoh tried to defeat the Jewish people and was beaten down, but Amalek did not learn from Pharaoh. Sihon and Og should have learned from Amalek, but instead turned a blind eye to Israel's military successes, went out to attack Israel and were roundly defeated….
Og is frequently depicted by the Midrash as being enormously large and powerful. When Moses went out to wage war against Og, Og announced deprecatingly: "How large is the camp of Israel? Three parasangs in circumference? [1 parasang = 3.5 miles / 5.6 kilometers.] I will pluck up a mountain three parasangs in circumference, hurl it at them, and kill them." He proceeded to lift a mountain three parasangs in circumference and carried it on his head. But the Holy One sent ants that bored holes in it, so that it slipped down around Og's neck. He tried to pull it up, but since his teeth began jutting out from both sides of his mouth, he could not pull it past them.
Given Og's enormous size, how did Moses vanquish him? The Midrash tells us that Moses, who himself was 10 cubits tall, took an ax that was 10 cubits in length, jumped 10 cubits high into the air, and struck Og on his ankles, killing him. [1 cubit = 1.5 to 2 feet / approximately 0.48 meters.] Again stressing the great bulk of Og, the Midrash relates a story of Abba Saul, who had been a gravedigger. On one occasion, Abba Saul chased a deer who fled from him and entered the thigh bone of a gigantic corpse. Abba Saul recounts that he pursued the deer into the bone for three parsangs, but he neither caught up with the deer, nor reached the end of the thigh bone. When he returned the way he had come, he was told that the enormous thigh bone was part of the corpse of Og, the king of Bashan.
Scripture in Deut. 3:11 underscores the enormous stature of Og by writing about his special sleeping accommodations: “behold his bed was an iron bed...9 cubits was its length and 4 cubits its width by the cubit of a man.” The commentators explain that Og was so big and so heavy that ordinary wooden furniture could not support him. Others suggest that the Bible is referring to Og's bed when he was a baby, that his cradle would break because Og was so strong.
The Midrash elaborates further on the verse in Deut. 3:11, which states that only Og remained of the remnant of the Refaim. The Midrash suggests that as the floodwaters swelled, Og sat himself on one of the rungs of the ladders of Noah's ark, and swore to Noah and to his sons that he would be their slave forever. With that assurance, Noah proceeded to punch a hole in the ark, and through it handed food to Og every day….
An alternate view cited in the Talmud is that Og was so tall that he was able to stand on the side of the ark, and not drown in the water. Other views, recorded in tractate Niddah, are that the water reached only to Og's ankles, or that Og ran to the land of Israel during the flood, where there was no flood….
The Midrash further relates that when Isaac was born, Abraham made a great feast (Genesis 21:8). Rabbi Judah Barsimeon says, "Do not read it ‘a great feast,' but rather ‘a feast for great personages.'" Og and all the great ones [the giants] like him were at the feast. Og was asked, "Didn't you say that Abraham is like a barren mule who could not beget a child?" Looking dismissively at Isaac, Og said, "So what is this gift? Is it not a puny little thing that I can simply crush with my finger?" G-d was angry that Og had belittled His gift to Abraham [the infant Isaac]. "As you live," said G-d, "you will see thousands of myriads issue from his [Isaac's] children's children!" And it was at the hands of Isaac's descendants that the evil Og was to fall.
What accounts for the unusually extensive attention given Og in the Midrash is uncertain. Certainly, scripture's lyrical description of Og's oversized bed and/or cradle (Deuteronomy 3:11) can easily lead to fantasies about giants and visions of massive creatures. Even the inconsistency of hundreds of years that separate the story of Noah from those of Abraham and Moses, do not seem to rattle the Midrashic creativity. Perhaps the message that binds the Midrashic narratives together is that the Jewish people, with the help of G-d, have the power to vanquish their enemies, no matter how large or powerful. It is a lesson that must not be dismissed.
III: Commentary by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Efrat, Israel
And also against me did the Lord become angry because of you saying that you also will not enter there (the Land of Israel). Deut 1:37.
In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses provides a recap of many of the laws that were given earlier as well as of the various historical incidents which the Jewish people experienced during this period of leadership. Obviously, Moses places his own interpretation both on the commandments as well as the events. What seems rather strange, however, about the way in which he retells the sin of the scouts is that he includes his own failure to enter the Promised Land within the context of the collective punishment of the entire desert generation. He insists that G-d prevented his entrance into the land “because of you”, because the rest of the Jews would be barred from entry. What is especially difficult to understand about this is that only a few chapters before, in the Book of Numbers, G-d specifically forbids Moses and Aaron from entering the Promised Land “because you didn’t believe in Me to sanctify Me before the eyes of the children of Israel; therefore you shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given to them.” (Numbers 20:12) Because Moses and Aaron became frustrated and angry at the people when they once again complained about the lack of water in the desert, Prophet and Priest berated them (“Listen you rebels”) and Moses even struck the rock instead of speaking to the rock. If Moses and Aaron were punished because of their own wrongdoing, why does Moses blame the Israelites when he recounts his prevention from entering the Land of Israel?
I believe that when we understand the answer to this question – especially in the manner in which Don Isaac Abarbanel understands it – we will learn volumes about the true difficulty in being a leader and the enormous responsibility which leadership entails. The Abarbanel, a great Biblical commentator and political statesman of 15th century Spain, maintains that both Moses and Aaron died before entering the Promised Land because of the part which each played respectfully in the sin of the scouts and in the sin of the golden calf.
Let us begin by analyzing Aaron’s role in the sin of the golden calf. The Jews had become panic stricken because Moses did not return to them from Mount Sinai when they expected him to. They felt very much alone without their leader-father in an alien and inimical desert; they gather around Aaron and cried out to him, “Get up and make for us a leader (elohim, which also means judge) who will walk before us because that personage Moses who took us out of the Land of Egypt – we don’t know what happened to him.” (Exodus 32:1). What the Jews are asking for is a “Moses substitute”, and indeed the calf was only considered to be the seat or throne of the Egyptian god and not the god himself. Hence, Aaron calls out to them – and perhaps warns them – “There will be a festival unto the HaShem tomorrow” (22:5) – as if to say, make certain that you understand that the calf is only a means to G-d and not a god in itself. Tragically, the Jews do not heed the warning, and do not only worship the calf by singing and dancing around it but even involve themselves in all of the immorality surrounding idolatry. The Abarbanel maintains that Aaron ought to have understood this possible outcome, and never should have allowed them the calf in the first place. At that point he should have shared in the death penalty that was given out to the leaders of the golden calf travesty; however, since his transgression was certainly an unpremeditated one, G-d bides His time before exacting punishment.
Moses played a not dissimilar role to that of Aaron in the incident of the scouts. In this week’s Torah portion he describes how the Jews approached him saying that he send individuals as an “advance team” to scout out the land, the roads which they should take and the cities which they should come upon during the initial stages of the conquest (Deuteronomy 1:22). In this way, Moses is apparently and correctly placing the brunt of responsibility upon the people themselves: it was they who initiated the mission of the scouts and it was the scouts who came back with an evil report. However, argues the Abarbanel, Moses should have been sensitive to the dangers that could have emerged – and did emerge – from just such a reconnaissance mission. He should have either quashed the suggestion, or delayed its implementation until after the conquest, or at the very least insisted upon listening to – and censoring – the report before it came to the nation. Since he did neither, he does bear responsibility and should have been involved in the same punishment as the nation suffered. Just as in the case of Aaron, however, since Moses’ sin was certainly not purposeful and was one of omission rather than commission, G-d delays his punishment as well.
Close to four decades later, when the nation [complains about] the lack of water and Moses and Aaron lose patience with the nation and call them rebels, G-d realizes that their period of leadership has ended; after all, the most important characteristic that a leader must have is patience and unqualified love for his people. G-d therefore informs them that they will not enter the Land of Israel and that they too will die in the desert at the moment of their impatience. But Moses understands that the real punishment is for a prior sin, the sin committed by the nation when its leaders acted too permissively by allowing them to do – both with respect to the calf and with respect to the scouts – what they should not have allowed them to do. Such is the difficult and onerous responsibility of a leader: he/she must be sensitive to negatives which may just possibly emerge from certain initiatives, and put a stop to such initiatives before it is too late.
IV: Attributes of a Leader: Moses Shares His Views of Leadership, by Rabbi Lewis Warshauer
Much of Deuteronomy is taken up with Moses' farewell address to the Israelite nation. He has served his people as their leader in every sphere: military, administrative, judicial and spiritual. Now, he reviews the events of the forty wilderness years, and presents, from his own perspective, a report of how he has led the nation.
Moses does not offer a dispassionate review of the past; to the contrary, he rebukes the nation for its failings.
It falls to midrash to examine Moses' words and not only offer interpretations of his meanings, but to construct leadership principles based on what he has said and done. A number of midrashim, taken together, use Moses as an example of what constitutes ideal leadership. Three components stand out: his views on what a leader must avoid; on the necessity of many people sharing leadership tasks; and on the core attributes of a leader.
In response to the question of what right Moses had to rebuke his people, one of Moses' earlier statements is cited. When Moses defended himself against charges of self-interest leveled at him by the rebellious Korah, he replied: "I have not taken a single donkey, nor done evil to anyone." (Numbers 16:15) This midrash, in other words, emphasizes what a leader must not do; one must not use a position of power to steal from the populace or otherwise harm them. (Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:5) This is to politicians what the Hippocratic oath is to physicians: first, do no harm.
In his address to the people, Moses tells them that he was not able, by himself, to bear the burden of acting as judge in all cases. He required that additional judges be appointed so as to have a more manageable case-load. A midrash turns this necessity into a virtue. It states that, as a matter of settled law, a rabbi or judge of a community may not administer justice alone. Only God judges alone. (Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10) Ideal leadership is not a solo act. It is more like an ensemble. (N.B. my emphasis)
The third area has to do with the personal qualities that a judge or, by extrapolation, other types of leaders must possess. The account in the opening chapter of Deuteronomy of the start of the Israelite judicial system is the second time the issue is dealt with in the Torah.
In the Book of Exodus, the idea of delegating authority is attributed to Moses' father-in-law, Jethro. A midrash asks why in the Book of Exodus version, (18:21) four attributes of a judge are mentioned, while in Deuteronomy (1:13), three are listed. The answer offered is that the lists must be combined to yield a total of seven attributes, with a judge having all seven. However, if the community can find candidates with only four of these attributes, or even only three, those candidates should be made judges.
What if a potential judge has just one of these attributes? He should be chosen, only if he possesses the quality of hayyil-- valor, strength, or capability. Another verse in the Bible also cites the quality of hayyil as constituting the core value of a woman of valor, adding, "who can find her?" (Proverbs 31:10) It is significant that this particular Biblical verse is chosen, given that in traditional Jewish law, women may not serve as judges.
Returning to the issue of leader as rebuker, the midrash inserts a line that does not actually appear in the Biblical text. God is imagined as saying, "Moses, you have rebuked the people. They have accepted the rebuke meekly, now bless them." (Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:9)
It is relevant to assess leadership in the Jewish community today in view of these midrashic descriptions of ideal leadership inspired by Moses' farewell speech. Most people would agree that communal leaders should do no harm and should be capable. Yet what about promoting a model of shared leadership? In a variety of Jewish institutions, this model is not yet in place. As for the quality of knowing both how to rebuke as well as how to bless people, that skill, in most cases, needs further cultivation.
V: From the teachings of Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, Growth through Torah
The Torah portion begins with the words: "These are the things which Moses spoke to all of Israel" (Deut 1:1)
The Torah then enumerates what is seemingly a list of places the Jewish people had traveled. The [Midrash] elucidates that out of respect for the Jewish people, Moses alluded to their transgressions by the name of each place, without being explicit. What can we learn from this?
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Chasman of the famed Hebron Yeshiva comments that a person who is sincerely interested in self-improvement and growth only needs a slight hint that he has done something wrong in order to realize that he needs to improve. Such a person looks for opportunities to make positive changes in himself and uses his own ability to think to fill in the details when someone gives him a hint that he has made a mistake. The Jewish people only needed a hint.
The goal of life is to improve and to be the best that you can be. Just like a person interested in becoming rich will use any tip if he thinks it will be of financial benefit, so should we look for messages which will help us improve. Rabbi Yisroel Salanter once asked a shoemaker why he was working so late and with an almost extinguished candle. Replied the shoemaker, "As long as the candle is still burning it is possible to accomplish and mend." From this Rabbi Salanter understood that "as long as the light of the soul is still going, we must make every effort to accomplish and to mend."
VI. Rebukes and Responses, by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Vice-President of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles and Dean of its Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies
May I have a word with you? The opening words of the fifth book of the Torah begin simply enough, "These are the words that Moses spoke (diber) to all Israel." The Rabbis … note that every place the Bible uses the verb 'daber' indicates harshness or rebuke, whereas the Hebrew word 'amar' conveys a sense of praise.
Why, then, did Moses 'diber' to the Jews? Why did he speak harshly to them on the border of the Promised Land? Because his final speech to them, the culmination of his long life of service to them and to God, consisted of chastisement--reminding them that they fell far short of the sacred standards embodied in the Torah and Jewish tradition.
And did the people resent Moses' apparent harshness, as most of us would? Did people say, "He never gives us a break," or note that even at the end, he was still haranguing them, unable to focus, even for a moment, on their virtues and better natures? Apparently not.
The speech is, after all, dutifully recorded in the Torah and read every year in synagogues around the world. And when Moses concluded his words and then went off to die, the Jewish people mourned his loss, even as we still keenly feel his absence today.
Can you imagine what it would be like if a Rabbi, at a dinner honoring 25 years of service with a particular synagogue, rather than dwelling on warm memories, started to list all of the congregants' flaws over the past two-and-a-half decades? Can you imagine how resentful and bitter most of us would feel?
Rabbi Tarfon, a great sage of the Mishnah, read this passage and sadly observed, "I swear by the Temple service, I doubt if there is anyone in this generation who is fit to rebuke others. For if one says to another, 'Remove the mote from between your eyes,' the reply invariably is, 'Remove the beam from between your eyes.'"
No one in Rabbi Tarfon's time was exempt from the very faults they would point out in others--hardly role models capable of rebuking their neighbors with disinterest.
Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah said, "I swear by the Temple service, I doubt if there is anyone in this generation who is able to receive rebuke." Rabbi Eleazar observed that people no longer accepted criticism as an act of love. Instead of listening openly to a description of how they had acted inappropriately and then working to modify their behavior to remove that flaw, the object of rebuke would respond defensively by either ignoring or insulting the person who had highlighted the error.
Rabbi Gerson Cohen, past Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, tells of the time he was a child at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. As he and his friends were playing basketball, the game got a little rough--as sports often do. Without warning, one of the scholars-in-residence, a Rabbi and professor of Talmud, intervened, scolding the boys that, "There is a Jewish way to play basketball. And this is not the Jewish way."
Rabbi Cohen remembers that they were stung by the remarks, and humbled. Instead of grumbling about it, however, they stopped their game and started a discussion about how they would try to play in the future. As the scholar was about to walk away, he said to the kids, "How wonderful, a group of boys able to receive rebuke."
Rabbi Akiva, a contemporary of Rabbi Tarfon, added the third leg of lament to those of his colleagues. "I swear by the Temple service, I doubt if there is anyone in this generation who knows how to rebuke."
Pointing out someone's shortcoming or error should not be a chance for insults or a sense of superiority. It should not become an opportunity to humiliate or gloat. Instead, a rebuke, if properly intended and given, becomes an act of affirmation and love, an affirmation that the person is worth the effort in the first place, and a faith that he or she remains capable of improvement. Offered with love and a sense of humility, a rebuke is a gift and a challenge.
Without our friends, colleagues and families willing to point out our own errors of judgment or action, we all blind ourselves to our own faults and to those aspects of reality we don't want to see. Each of us depends on the caring of others, their courage to articulate disappointment in our action, as the indispensable prerequisite to self-improvement and refinement.
We cannot afford to wait for the perfect, loving hero to point out our flaws. Instead, we rely on those around us, family and friends, to act as our early warning system, pointing out moral failure and ethical obtuseness before it is too late to improve. But when they do, we must be able to really listen.
VII. Comment on the Haftarah, adapted from the commentary found in the Artscroll Stone Chumash
The Shabbat before Tisha B'Av is called Shabbat Chazon - the Shabbat of foretelling - as we read the Haftarah portion from the prophecy of Isaiah (1:1-27), as the final of the "three of affliction" readings.
Rabbi Mendel Hirsch points out, the prophet does not lament because the Bet HaMikdash (the Temple in Jerusalem) was destroyed; rather he laments over the underlying causes of that destruction.
This annual lesson must serve to focus the national mourning of Tisha B'Av not to the past, but to the present.
It is not enough to bemoan the great loss suffered by our people with the destruction of our Land, our Holy City, and our Holy Temple. We must use our mourning as a way of initiating an examination of our present-day feelings, thoughts and deeds.
What have we done to eliminate the attitudes and practices that thousands of years ago sent our ancestors into exile - not once, but twice?
[Why was the Temple destroyed? The First Temple was destroyed because of our people’s sins, especially idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed. The Second Temple was destroyed because of Jewish divisiveness: “Instead of uniting to oppose the Romans, they spent much time and energy assaulting one another.” See Rabbi Irving Greenberg, “Destruction As Punishment.” Read a second essay that concludes: [The] frightening combination of senseless hatred, a corrupt leadership - the rabbis who sat at the party without objecting to Bar Kamtza's humiliation - and a leader who lacked the capacity to reach a final decision - this combination led to the tragic destruction of Jerusalem.
♥ ♥ ♥
May God grant us a life in which our hearts’ desires for goodness will be fulfilled. May God bless us all until we meet again.
Rabbi Howard Gorin,
Rockville, Maryland
Rabbi Howard Gorin
Tikvat Israel Congregation
2200 Baltimore Road
Rockville, MD 20851
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http://www.rabbihowardgorin.org/Home.html
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