וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
For Father’s Day this year, my children signed me up with a website called, Storyworth. Every week, they send me a prompt question (chosen by my daughter) to write about. At the end of the year, all the answers are assembled in a book. The first prompt question was, “What was it like learning to drive?” This is going to be easy, I thought.
There’s a lot in our tradition that is difficult to accept.
One of the concepts that seems especially not to square with our lived experience is the theology of Divine reward and punishment. It’s hard to reconcile for me, for many in the Jewish community, and for many of the students I work with. The haftarah that we’ll read on this Shabbat Hazon sums it up well:
אִם־ תֹּאב֖וּ וּשְׁמַעְתֶּ֑ם ט֥וּב הָאָ֖רֶץ תֹּאכֵֽלוּ׃
וְאִם ־תְּמָאֲנ֖וּ וּמְרִיתֶ֑ם חֶ֣רֶב תְּאֻכְּל֔וּ כִּ֛י פִּ֥י יְ-הֹוָ֖ה דִּבֵּֽר
If you are willing and obey, you will eat the best of the land.
But if you refuse and disobey, you will be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of G-d spoke. (Isaiah 1:19-20)
This is just not true. It’s hard to imagine, frankly, that it was ever true. But in the decades after the Holocaust, it seems especially impossible to believe. Worse, it’s offensive. Because the argument for it to be true would be that Read More >
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
Do You Believe In Miracles?
A D’var Torah for Parashat Devarim
By Rabbi Marc Rudolph (’04)
In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses assembles the Israelites on the plains of Moab, poised to enter the Land promised to our ancestors. In a series of three speeches, Moses recounts the history of the past forty years, reviews old laws and imparts new ones, exhorts the people to follow the commandments and castigates them for their failure to do so in the past. He recalls the miracles of the plagues in Egypt and the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea. He reminds the Israelites how God cared for them in the wilderness, “as a man carries his son, all the way that you traveled until you came to this place” (Deuteronomy 1:31). God even personally guides the Jewish people on their Read More >
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
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Into and Through Tisha b’Av: Our Fragile Alchemy of “Why”
A D’var Torah for Parashat Devarim
By Rabbi David Markus
There’s gotta be a reason. What’s happening now must be a reaction to something that came before. Someone must be responsible: maybe me, maybe you, maybe all of us. Any God that is good and fair must have some purpose in all this – right?
We sense this yearning for “why” just under the surface. After all, there’s lots to explain, and mere natural explanations don’t always suffice. That’s why so many people, of all faiths, might seek and see divine purpose in most everything from covid to tornadoes.
The human psyche – that sacred alchemy of supernal light and stardust – naturally seeks explanation for life’s twists and turns. For every fairness or unfairness, victory or defeat, comfort or suffering, we’re wired to connect the dots of causation with some coherence. If we’re deeply honest, Read More >
A D’var Torah for Parashat Devarim
By Rabbi Heidi Hoover (’11)
Devarim is the first significant word of this week’s Torah portion, and therefore it gives the Torah portion its name. Because this week is the first portion in the fifth book of the Torah, Devarim is also the name of the whole book, which is called Deuteronomy in English, from the Greek. Devarim means “words,” and it’s an appropriate name for the book, because Moses spends the whole book of Deuteronomy making his last speech to the Israelites. At the end of it he dies and they prepare to go forward into the Promised Land.
In Judaism, words are very important. We are called the “People of the Book”—a book (books, really) full of words that give us the best information we have about what God wants from us. Words can create and destroy reputations. According to our tradition, God used words to create Read More >
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Call for Spiritual Rebirth
A Dvar Torah for Devarim
By Len Levin
“How [eikhah] can I bear alone your trouble, your burden, your quarrel?” (Deut. 1:12)
A paradox. Deuteronomy is the sunniest, most radiant and optimistic book of the Torah. “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God, to walk only in His paths, to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul” (10:12). “The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land…where you will lack nothing” (8:7-8). “The Lord your God will bless you in all you do” (15:18). “For you will do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God (12:28).
But it also contains dark passages. There is the historical recollection of the Golden Calf (9:8-21). There are the Read More >
By Rabbi Kaya Stern-Kaufman
This week’s Torah portion “ D’varim “ opens the book of Deuteronomy, throughout which Moses delivers an exhaustive farewell speech to the people of Israel, recounting their history, reviewing many of the laws given at Sinai and adding new laws for a future life in the promised land. The portion begins with the words Eleh ha-d’varim, meaning: these are the words, that Moses spoke. From this opening statement is derived the name for the fifth book of Torah “ D’varim /Deuteronomy.
Many Sages and rabbis in our tradition point out that when Moses was first initiated into the role of God’s emissary to Pharaoh, he resisted the task, claiming Lo ish d’varim anochi “ “I am not a man of words.“ And yet, forty years later Moses has indeed become a man of words. In D’varim Rabba (a tenth-century collection of midrash compiled in the tenth century from much earlier material), the Rabbis explain Read More >
Vision, Lamentation, and the Question of “How?”
By Rabbi Regina L. Sandler-Phillips
The Shabbat on which the first portion of Deuteronomy is chanted from the Torah each year is called Shabbat Hazon ”the œSabbath of Vision. Its name comes most directly from the accompanying haftarah or prophetic reading, which proclaims “The vision of Isaiah, son of Amotz, which he envisioned over Judah and Jerusalem… (Isaiah 1:1).
At first glance, the œvision of these paired Torah and haftarah readings seems to be one of impending doom more than anything else. Each reading anticipates the imminent arrival of Tisha b’Av, our Jewish day of tragedy and mourning, during which we read the book that is called Lamentations in English and Eikha in Hebrew. Read More >
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