Shabbat Hazon - D'varim

Deuteronomy 1:1−3:22

Rebukes And Responses

In Moses' final speech to the Israelites, he provides us with a model of effective rebuke.

By Rabbi Bradley Artson on MyJewishLearning.com; The following article is reprinted with permission from American Jewish University.

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 of the ancient Midrash Sifre Devarim 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.

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Masei

Numbers 33:1-36:13

The Importance Of Intention

The Torah's establishment of Cities of Refuge introduces the idea that intention determines the meaning of an action.

By Rabbi Bradley Artson. The following article is reprinted with permission from American Jewish University.

In this week's Torah portion, the Torah addresses the issue of unintentional manslaughter.

What is the appropriate penalty for someone who kills someone else unintentionally? Should there be any penalty at all?

Our parashah discusses the establishment of six Cities of Refuge (Ir Miklat). These six cities were set aside as a permanent asylum. Anyone who unintentionally killed another person was permitted to flee to these cities. Once within their walls, the manslayer was protected by law against any revenge or additional punishment.

In this way, the Torah balanced the need to insist that killing another person is objectively reprehensible, while also asserting a distinction between murder (which is deliberate) and manslaughter (which is not). Contemporary American law makes a similar distinction, mandating a different degree of severity to correspond to the different levels of responsibility due to intention and circumstance.

Three thousand years earlier, the Torah instituted those same legal distinctions based on different intentions. One way to understand the profundity of the Torah's insight is to contrast the Biblical law with other ancient standards. Ancient Greece, Sumer, Phoenecia, and other cultures all articulated a notion of asylum. In those civilizations, a murderer could flee to a local shrine and gain protection at the altar of the local deity. Whether or not the death had been intended was irrelevant to the power of the shrine to protect the murderer. After all, the pagan idol was no less holy, no less powerful, just because the murderer intended to kill his victim.

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Mattot

Numbers 30:2-32:42

No Neutrality: Silence Is Assent

The laws of nullifying vows teach us that our silence and inaction in the face of contemporary injustice and oppression is akin to assenting to it.

By Rabbi Bradley Artson. The following article is reprinted with permission from American Jewish University.

So much goes on every day, that it seems impossible to keep up with the array of human activity.

Troops march to different parts of the globe, unemployment and disease strike specific groups of people, natural disasters ravage a variety of communities, our environment succumbs to human greed, our politicians legislate, initiate and posture. With so many different activities occurring at the same time, all of them of vital importance, how can we possibly keep up?

Because there is simply so much to follow, and there seems to be so little an individual can do to affect any change at all, many of us simply respond by doing nothing at all. Life will go on without us, we reason, so why get all bothered and upset about things we cannot change?

Today's Torah portion speaks, in the language of its own age, to this timeless question--when to get involved. Parashat Mattot addresses the legal issue of the nullification of vows. It records the ancient law that a woman's vows can be nullified by her husband, provided that he cancels her vows immediately upon hearing them. If he delays in silence, her vow becomes irrevocably binding.

While many moderns are troubled by the power of men to override the vows of women, it is also striking that the Torah insists that the husband either use his power instantly, or lose it forever. Why? After all, if he has the authority to nullify her oath, then why can't he choose to exercise that power later on?

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Pinhas

Numbers 25:10-30:1

The Torah portion deals with intermarriage, a problem we know all too well today.

By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch. Reprinted with permission of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

In 1962 I graduated rabbinical school and entered the army for a two-year stint as a chaplain.

Such national service was then still required of all JTS graduates before they could take a pulpit. After completing chaplaincy school in New York, I drove to my first assignment at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I arrived in the late afternoon and decided to visit the Jewish chapel where I would preside without delay. That was my first mistake.

Outside the door paced an agitated, well-dressed gentleman in civilian clothes looking for a Jewish chaplain. I revealed my identity all too quickly and smugly, my second mistake. In the office I would occupy for less than a year (the army would reward my stellar work at Fort Dix by sending me to Korea), he unloaded on me an impassioned account about his daughter who was going to marry a young Greek in basic training at Fort Dix. I couldn't tell exactly whether the father, a wealthy man from Connecticut, was furious because the kid was Christian or poor and uneducated. In fact, the father suspected him of seeking to marry his daughter for her money. He insisted that I call in the kid to disabuse him of his folly, and I, by now floundering in my inexperience, reluctantly agreed. To my surprise, the young man came when I summoned him and turned out to be good-looking and charming. Despite great discomfort, I carried out my futile task and never heard from him or his nemesis again.

In retrospect, my baptism by fire foreshadowed the engulfing crisis of Jewish continuity in our day: Can Jews as individuals avail themselves of the unlimited opportunities of American society and still preserve their group identity? Are the twin goals of integration and survival compatible? As so often, the Torah relates to our predicament.

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