And the Lord said to me, "Say to them, 'Neither go up nor fight, for I am not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies.' " So I spoke to you, but you did not listen, and you rebelled against the command of the Lord, and you acted wickedly and went up to the mountain.

(Devarim 1:42-43)

 

Neither go up: There will be no ascent [victory] for you, but only a descent [defeat].

(Rashi ad loc, Judaica Press translation)

 

Is the Lord in our midst or not? It is a wonder how they could doubt this after having witnessed the pillar of fire and the cloud and many other miracles that everyone knows could only be produced by the Holy One, blessed be He. And it was already written that they believed in the Lord and in Moses, His servant. However, there are two ways of justifying this [doubt]: One is that they knew very well that for the present the Lord was with them and performed miracles, but [perhaps] that was so only as long as Moses lived and the Holy One, blessed be He, leads to the right of Moses, the arm of His glory. But Moses' strength for Israel would not always exist. And we are required to believe that even without revealed miracles, the Holy One, blessed be He, and His providence dwell among us. And so they doubted, is the Lord in our midst - even without Moses and that He looks after us through the ways of nature. It was particularly because of this failure of faith that the war with Amalek came, as will be made clear. The second is that they doubted whether the Lord knew their situation, if they were thirsty or not. And so it is written in Midrash Rabbah, "Is the Lord in our midst - in our water-spring." Indeed, these two [modes of explanation] are interdependent. If the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the wants of every person, He must also be able to rectify them through His providence, even though he is not worthy of a revealed miracle [being produced on his behalf].

(Ha'Amek Davar Shemot 17:7)

 

National Self-Accounting and Personal Responsibility

Deborah Greniman

Parashat Devarim can be seen as a kind of "opening shot" in the season of Jewish self-accounting. The Book of Devarim, containing Moses' reproachful farewell addresses, will accompany us from Tisha B'Av until after the High Holy Days. Indeed, Moses almost immediately begins aiming his words directly at his audience's conscience. He reminds them of their fathers' guilt in the fiasco of the Spies, for which they were not granted entry into the Land of Israel. Having been the people's leader in those days, Moses does not exclude himself from his painful accounting.

In his essay on "Guilt,"¹ the psychologist and psychoanalyst Jacob A. Arlow writes about the element of conscience developed in the Jewish mind-set:

The will of God, which in Judaism articulates the standards of morality, now separated from identification from any human figure, is impersonally incorporated into the voice of conscience. The moral imperative, having been internalized, like God becomes ubiquitous. There is no escaping it. The fear of punishment and disapproval from without is replaced by disapproval from within, by the individual himself. This psychological transition marks the beginning of true conscience. (pg. 306)

Later, Arlow distinguishes between two different conditions of Jewish existence:

Since, in Judaism, God represents the essence of perfection, there can be no injustice in his ways. Thus, the vicissitudes of Israel's painful history of defeat and suffering stimulate not rebelliousness but intensified guilt. This, indeed, was the interpretation of history that the prophets gave and that the talmudic teachers reaffirmed... With the secularization of Jewish identity into nationality, this attitude has changed. In Zionist circles, especially those of a more nationalistic inclination, national misfortune often fails to stimulate soul searching and guilt, but rather elicits anger and the desire for retaliation... The zealots of Masada have become the central, ideal figures of a new mythology, a mythology that serves to create a psychological climate fostering character structure consonant with new ideals and with changed political objectives. (pp. 307-308)

As we see, Arlow distinguishes between the different ways that conscience works in different situations. He holds that self-accounting and pangs of conscience are typical of Jewish life in the diaspora, while the return to Zion is characterized by a fighting spirit which sets aside concern with guilt. Does the description of the transition from the Generation of the Wilderness to the generation which conquered the Land, and the lessons to be learned from it, support Arlow's sharp dichotomy?

When returning to the Sin of the Spies in our parasha (Devarim 1:22-46), Moses details the people's guilt - and his own. He hopes to encourage them so that when the time comes for the command to be repeated - go up and possess it, as the Lord, God of your fathers has spoken to you; you shall neither fear nor be dismayed (1:21) - they will all rise up, determined to completely execute their mission. Indeed, towards the end of the parasha we hear how the warriors are emboldened and are beginning to win victories against those blocking their entry to the Land.

However, despite Moses' call for determined and united action, he retells to the people their history in a way that actually serves to strengthen the personal conscience of each individual. He begins by describing the process by which the nation's leaders were chosen: Bring for yourselves wise and understanding men, known among your tribes, and I will make them heads over you. Regarding this verse, RaMBaN writes:

Known among your tribes: "Men whom you recognize, for if one were to come before me wrapped in his tallit, I would not know who he is and of what tribe he is, and whether he is suitable. But you know him, for you have raised him" so writes Rashi [Judaica Press translation] borrowing from Sifrei. In that case, among your tribes is linked to known. However, the plain sense of the verse is: Bring yourselves wise men to your tribes, and I think that the word known means that they are known for judgment, that is to say, their virtue is known and it is recognized that they should be appointed as judges. The word known relates to all the virtues of judges, that judges have to be men of valor, God-fearing, men of truth, haters of profit, as Yitro had said (Shemot 18:21). And these [appointees] are known to be [appropriate to serve as] judges from the start, for everyone said, "That one is worthy to be a judge."

According to both Rashi and RaMBaN as quoted above, the word known points to the personal responsibility of all the members of the tribes to appoint wise and honest leaders. It is not Moses, but rather the tribesmen themselves who know their fellows, and it is up to the tribesmen to decide who among them is worthy of leadership. The process of appointing judges does not detract from the Israelites' responsibility; rather, it actually increases their responsibility.

Afterwards, as Moses puts it, And I commanded you at that time all the things you should do - all the commandments of the Torah, the rules of behavior that shall guide you both while you wander through the wilderness, and even more so after you enter the Land.

And it is at this point that Moses relates the story of their fall, a fall precipitated by those very leaders they had so carefully selected.

Nehama Leibowitz sets out a painstaking comparison between the story of the Spies as told in Parashat Beshalah and its retelling by Moses in Parashat Devarim. She also points to the personal responsibility of the members of the Generation of the Wilderness for the fiasco that brought them forty years of wandering. She cites a different comment by RaMBaN in this connection:

He recounted all of this affair, excepting the plague of the Spies themselves, and he did not mention very much, so as not to speak ill of individuals but rather to rebuke the multitudes, for they had all sinned and were all punished.

As RaMBaN explains in his commentary on the preceding verses, the Israelites allowed their leaders to discourage them even though they should have listened to the reasonable calls of Moses, Joshua, and Caleb regarding their ability to conquer the Land. As Scripture tells us: But you did not want to go up, and you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord, your God.

Individual responsibility did not end with the selection of leaders. Nehama speaks here in terms of a personal accounting: "[Moses] showed the descendants of those who had left Egypt, the sons of those who had forfeited the right to enter the Promised Land through their own misdoing that, in the last resort, every individual is responsible for the misdeeds of the group. Each one is obliged to resist evil and do good, and not excuse himself on the ground that he was influenced by his colleague or superior or even leader. Each individual has ultimately to be his own leader, responsible for his every action and not just a cog in the vast machine called society. 'Because of our sins we were exiled from our land,' our festival liturgy states, and not because of the sin of Titus, the Roman emperor who destroyed the Temple."²

I think that the passages from Arlow quoted earlier point to a genuine dilemma. When we are called upon to defend the Land, there are situations in which we feel that moral qualms harm our steadfastness in the struggle. To this is added the difficulty of finding men of truth, haters of profit in a modern democracy, when we only know them via the media and public relations. However, like that early generation, we too are called upon to bring the commands of conscience and personal responsibility gained during our years of wandering into our efforts to build and strengthen the Land. As the Prophet Isaiah states in the conclusion of this Shabbat's haftara: Zion shall be redeemed through justice and her returnees through righteousness.

1. Jacob A. Arlow, "Guilt," in Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr (eds.), Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs, New York: The Free Press, 1987.

2. Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Deuteronomy, Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1980, Devarim, 2, p. 24.

Deborah Greniman edits Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues. She edits for Israel's National Academy of Sciences and is also an author and translator.

 

Jerusalem has sinned - Israel's Uniqueness as a Chosen People

Commenting on the passage in Lamentations - Jerusalem has sinned, therefore she became an outcast, the Midrash asks: "Jerusalem has sinned - do not other nations of the world sin?! But even though they sin, it is nothing, but Israel sinned and was punished." This indicates that the responsibility weighing upon the Jewish people is greater than that of the nations; when the nations sin, they sometimes are successful despite their sins, whereas for the Jewish people this is not so; iniquity and evil - which do not weaken the foundations of other nations' existence - have the potential to undermine the existence of the Jewish people. This is the uniqueness of the Jewish people which finds expression is the well-known phrase "You have chosen us from all the peoples," a choice which is the acceptance of obligations and their fulfillment alone; this alone is its z'khut - its privilege - as the people of God.

(Y. Leibowitz, Sihot al Hagei Yisrael u'Mo'adav, p. 138)

 

The Lord God called to the human and said to him: "Ayeka?" ["Where are you?"] (Bereishit 3:9)

Eikha [Alas], Eikha, Eikha and "Ayeka" ("Ayeka" [where are you] and "eikha" ['alas' and 'how'] share the same spelling.)

Rabbi Abahu said in the name of R. Hanina: It is written: They, as a man [k'adam], transgressed the covenant (Hosea 6) - they are like the first man [Adam]. Just as I placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, and commanded him, but he transgressed my command, and I sentenced him to be expelled and sent-out, and I made a lamentation over him; I placed him in the Garden of Eden, for it is said, and placed him in the Garden of Eden (Bereishit 2), and I commanded him, for it is said and the Lord God commanded the human, and he transgressed the command, for it is said have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from? And I sentenced him to be sent out, for it is said, and He sent out the human, and I sentenced him to expulsion, as it is said, and He expelled the human, I said a lamentation over him, saying eikhah [how could it be?], for it is said, and said to him, ayekah [where are you] - which is written like eikha. So too, I caused his children to enter the Land of Israel, and I commanded them yet they transgressed My command, I sentenced them to be sent out and expelled, and I made a lamentation over them. I brought them into the Land of Israel, for it is said, and I brought you to the land of the Carmel (Jeremiah 2), and I commanded them, for it is said, and you, command the Israelites (Shemot 27), they transgressed My commands, for it is said, and all of Israel transgressed Your Torah (Daniel 9), and I sentenced them to be sent out, for it is said, Send them away from My presence (Jeremiah 15), and I sentenced them to be expelled, for it is said, I shall expel them from My house (Hosea 9), and I lamented over them saying eikhah, for it is said How does [the city] sit [lonely].

(Bereishit Rabbah 19:9)

 

Eikha yash'va - three prophesied with the term Eikha, Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Moses said: How can I bear unaided etc.

Isaiah said: Alas, she has become a harlot, Jeremiah said: Alas! Lonely sits the city.

Rabbi Levi said: This can be compared to a wealthy woman who had three close companions; one knew her in her tranquility, the second in her wantonness, and third in her shame. So Moses saw Israel in their time of honor and tranquility, and said, How can I bear unaided the trouble of you. Isaiah saw them in their time of wantonness, and said, Alas, she has become a harlot. Jeremiah saw them in their time of disgrace, and said, Alas, lonely sits the city.

(Eikha Rabba, Parasha 1)

 

We find that Eikha extends from the promise of settlement in the Land, through the actual dwelling in the Land, up to and including the destruction and subsequent exile from the Land. The deep significance of this is the teaching that the end of a matter is already embedded in its beginning, and the actions of the individual and the group, and the consequences of their actions, all merge into one, or, to phrase it in religious terms, the sin and its punishment are one, the sin itself is also the punishment.

(Y. Leibowitz, Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat haShavua, p. 762)

 

Midrashei Tzafon 

From the pen of our member, Ronen Ahituv

The Sidonians call Hermon Sirion; and the Amorites call it Senir (3:9)

This verse was written solely in order for it to be expounded upon.

Why was it called Sirion? Because it lifted up its head from the earth to contend [shesara] against its Creator. The Holy One, blessed be He said to it: You are banned [herem] and He called it Hermon and set up dens of lions and leopards there, for it is said, from the peak of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards (Canticles 4:8). And what is its name? Senir is its name.

In future times faith and song will come to Israel from there, for it is said, with me from Lebanon shall you come; you shall look [tashuri - similar to tashiri, "you will sing"] from the peak of Amanah [similar to emuna, "faith"] from the peak of Senir and Hermon (ibid). And it is said: like the dew of Hermon that falls upon the mountains of Zion (Psalms 133:3).

Indeed, the verse adds nothing to the Torah's account and it appears to be superfluous. The drasha is based upon an Arab folk legend that links Hermon with herem. According to the drasha, the Hermon's daring led God to punish it. Canticles, however, praises the Hermon. Hidden within that book is the drasha's concluding idea - that redemption will begin in the Hermon. It seems that daring brashness towards God causes the Hermon both to be banned in this world and to bring redemption in the days of Redemption. This hints at Zionism which involves no small bit of audacity towards God, but it is precisely that Zionism which brings redemption in our days.

 

 

 

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