Mishneh Torah 7

Over Shabbat I noticed a lot of common language between Devarim 7 (Vaetchanan-Ekev) and the end of "Sefer Habrit" in parshat Mishpatim. With the help of AlHaTorah's TanakhLab tool, I quickly traced out these parallels in a nice graphical format (hopefully I didn't miss any significant ones). Nearly every major idea in that paragraph of Mishpatim is repeated near-verbatim in Devarim 7 - though in a different order and with significant expansion.

Sefer Devarim is called in Chazal and arguably in its own text (17:18) by the name "Mishneh Torah", the repetition of the Torah. Indeed, many of the laws and some of the stories in the previous four books are repeated in Devarim. But it seems very rare for the actual TEXT of the earlier books to be repeated. Two examples of textual repetition are the Ten Commandments and the list of kosher species, but these are special cases: the Ten Commmandments were spoken directly by God and thus worth repeating verbatim, while you can't really list the kosher species in different language without prohibiting a different set of species. So Devarim 7 is the only extensive example I know of where there is actual, large-scale repetition.

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Thoughts on Ki Tavo

My father was a wandering Aramean (26:5)

These are the opening words of mikra bikurim, describing how God took out us out of Egypt and gave us the land which produced these bikurim. But what is the point of mentioning that our ancestor was once a wanderer?

I think it's to create a contrast between our initial state (when we were wanderers and did not have a land) to our current state (where God has given us a land).

Vidui Maasrot (26:12-15)

Chazal refer to the second mitzvah of the parsha as "vidui maaser" (nowaday commonly known as "vidui maasrot"), though the Torah does not give it a name. It only says "you shall say" ("veamarta"), followed by your declaration that you have given maaser ani and thus have kept the mitzvah (and not done one of several possible forbidden actions), followed by your request that God bless you.

The word "vidui" in our minds suggests a confession of sin. But in this case you are "confessing" only that you have done good things, not bad things. So why do Chazal call it "vidui"?

One possibility is that "vidui" in Chazal's language can refer to any declaration, not only to an admission of sin. I found one source which fits this: Tosefta Bikurim 1:7 says that both bikurim and maaser ani require "vidui". Since neither of the two declarations seems to obviously allude to sin, one may presume that "vidui" in this source simply means "declaration". That said, this source seems to be the exception. It appears that in the vast majority of cases where Chazal (or the Torah) mention "vidui", they are referring to confession of sin.

If the word does imply confession of sin, I want to suggest what that sin might be. Elsewhere (Shemot 23:15) the Torah requires that when we visit God we must "not appear before [Him] empty-handed". Technically this mitzvah only applies to the pilgrimage holidays. But like many mitzvot, it is easy to identify a sensible broader idea which lies behind the specified application. In this case, the idea is that one visiting God should bring a gift with them, representing their love of God and submission to God.

The mitzvah of maaser ani follows an unusual schedule, dictated by the shemitah cycle. In years 1, 2, 4, and 5 of the cycle, one brings maaser sheni - holy food - to eat in Jerusalem. In years 3 and 6, maaser ani takes the place of maaser sheni.

Vidui maasrot is recited on an occasion when, despite the absence of maaser sheni that year, you are still visiting the Temple. As mentioned above, I think there there is an expectation to bring some kind of gift when visiting the Temple. But in this case, the gift you would normally be bringing (in 4 out of the 6 non-shemitah years) is conspicuously absent.

Therefore, I think vidui maasrot is an acknowledgment of this lack of gift. You "apologize" for your lack of gift, and then explain the good excuse you have for not bringing it - that God told you to do something else with the food. This acknowledgment is a "confession", not of having broken a commandment, but of failing to meet the expectation that normally goes along with such visits to God.

When you cross the Jordan, you shall erect these stones, which I command you today, at Mount Eval... You shall slaughter shelamim-offerings and eat there, and rejoice before Hashem your God. (27:4-7)

The mitzvah of "simcha" is a part of the three pilgrimage holidays, and also of other gatherings at the Mishkan/Temple mentioned in the Torah, such as this one. A common question is, how can you command someone to be happy?

One answer is textual: you are not commanding them to be happy, but rather to hold a celebration.

Another answer is that the activities involved are ones that naturally promote happiness. This is true on a number of levels. The meal is a source of physical enjoyment. The vacation from work is inherently pleasant. The group and family bonding of the event are good for mental health. The affirmation of common values gives people a sense of purpose. And finally, occasions of "simcha" are generally centered around thanking God for one's well-being, and psychologists tell us that feeling gratitude is one of the most effective ways of becoming happier. All these factors combine, not to guarantee that a person celebrating will be happy, but to make it much more likely.

Explorers and spies

What was the purpose of the mission of the spies, as described in Bamidbar 13 and Devarim 1? And how do we understand the differences between these two accounts?

In this analysis, we will assume that there are two distinct purposes of the twelve men's trip. The first purpose is "latur", meaning to explore* the land, to observe its natural characteristics and agricultural bounty, and to report on this to the people. The second purpose is "leragel", meaning to spy, to investigate the military situation and preparations of the land's inhabitants, in preparation for conquest. We can easily distinguish these purposes when they occur. Descriptions of the land and its produce are irrelevant to conquest and thus a part of "exploring"; descriptions of the people and fortifications (which God had promised to overcome) are irrelevant to "exploring" and therefore part of "spying".

The distinction between these purposes is well-known. But I have not seen anyone examine the passages based on these purposes, in the structured manner that I plan to. When I quote verses, I will use bold text to describe exploring, and red italic text to describe spying. This should make clear what exactly is going on in each verse, and allow us to piece together how the entire episode actually took place.

1. In Bamidbar

God's initial command to Moshe mentions only exploring:

Hashem spoke to Moshe saying: "Send you men to explore the land of Canaan which I give to the children of Israel. One man from each tribe you shall send, each one a prince among them."

The men chosen are princes and leaders, perhaps because a public report is most trusted when given by well known and respected individuals.

But when Moshe commands the men before their trip, he greatly expands on God's command:

Moshe sent them to explore the land of Canaan, and said to them:
Go up here in the Negev, and go up the mountain.
And see the land, what it is like,
and the people dwelling in it, are they strong or weak, are they few or many,
and what is the land they dwell in like, is it good or bad,
and what are the cities they dwell in like, are they in camps or fortresses,
and what is the land like, is it fat or thin, does it have trees in it or not?
And you shall be strong, and take from the fruit of the land.

We see that Moshe instructs the men both to explore and to spy. Indeed, he interweaves the two in a kind of chiastic pattern (ABABA).

What do the spies actually do? We see that they perform both parts of their mission:

They went up, and explored the land from the Tzin wilderness to Rehov near Hamat. They went up in the Negev, and came to Hevron, and there were Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmi, children of Anak; and Hevron was built seven years before Tzoan of Egypt. They came to Nahal Eshkol, and cut from there one sprig and cluster of grapes, and carried it on a pole using two men, and [took] from the pomegranates and figs.

The presence of Anakites ("giants") in the land is clearly of military significance. So is the antiquity of Hevron. R' Yaakov Medan explains that ancient Middle East cities were built as "tels", layer upon layer, so the older the city, the higher its "tel" and the harder it would be to conquer.

When the men deliver their report, they also mention both aspects of their mission:

"We came to the land where you send us, and indeed it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, strong are the people dwelling in the land, and the cities are great and very fortified, and we also saw the children of Anak there. Amalek dwells in the Negev..."

After this the situation descends into a sorry argument and rebellion, but even then the men mention both parts of their mission:

They slandered the land to the children of Israel, saying, "The land which we went in to explore, it is a land which devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw in it were people of measure. And there we saw the Nefilim, sons of Anak from the Nefilim, and we were like locusts in our eyes, and so were we in their eyes."

And so do Yehoshua and Kalev in their dissent:

The land which we went in to explore, the land is very very good. If Hashem is pleased with us, He will bring us to this land and give it to us. Only do not rebel against Hashem, and do not fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their defense has left them and Hashem is with us, so do not fear them.

In summary, we see that in God's initial command, only exploring is mentioned. But in every single event that follows, both exploring and spying are mentioned.

I think this is the most straightforward view of the events. God's initial command was simply to explore. For some reason, Moshe combined this with a command to spy. From then on, for the rest of the episode, exploring and spying were linked together.

2. In Devarim

In Moshe's retelling, no Divine command is mentioned. Rather, the initiative for the trip seems to come from the people, and it is purely about spying:

You all approached me, saying: "Let us send men before us, who will search the land for us, and give us a report of the way we shall go up to it and the cities we will come to."

There is no mention of the men being princes. For spying purposes, any twelve soldiers can do, and if anything, top leaders should not be exposed to the risks of a spying mission.

Then, the men went on their journey. What they did involved both exploring and spying, but perhaps the spying seems to be first and most important. Here, for the only time in the Torah, the verb "to spy" is used to refer to this trip:

They turned and went up the mountain, and came to Nahal Eshkol, and spied there. They took in their hands from the fruit of the land, and brought to us...

Surprisingly, the men's report, as initially told, seems to be entirely about exploring:

They said: "Good is the land which Hashem our God has given us."

But then the people begin to complain, and in their complaint they mention a different report, which involves spying. As Moshe tells it:

You complained in your tents, saying: Because Hashem hated us, He took us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorite to destroy us. Where are we going up to? Our brothers melted our hearts, saying, "The nation is greater and taller than us, and the cities great and fortified up to the heavens, and the sons of the Anakites we saw there."

So what did the twelve men actually report? The results of their exploring, or the results of their spying? I think it's clear that they reported both. But Moshe chooses to dignify their exploring as "the" report, the only one he is willing to mention as such. The report of the spying, he puts in the mouths of the rebellious desert generation, not his own mouth. He thereby implies that the people should have listened only to the exploring.

3. General thoughts

Each passage, in Bamidbar and Devarim, has an internal difficulty. In Bamidbar, the mission includes both exploring and spying, though God had only mentioned exploring. In Devarim, the mission includes both exploring and spying, though the people had only asked to spy. Luckily for us, it seems that each passage supplies the information that is missing from the other. It appears that Bamidbar describes half of what led to the mission (God's command to explore) and Devarim the other half (the people's request to spy). These two initiatives must have occurred around the same time, and Moshe combined them into a single mission, which is fully described in both Bamidbar and Devarim.

For this understanding to work, we must explain what led Bamidbar to exclude the people's request to spy, and Devarim to exclude God's command to explore.

3a. What Bamidbar excludes

Let us start with Bamidbar. In many places, the Torah tells a story twice, and we are supposed to understand something by carefully examining the differences between the original and the retelling. One example is the marriage of Rivka. In the original telling, the slave apparently looked for a hospitable woman from any family. But in his long retelling, he makes it sound like only a relative of Avraham would have been acceptable.

Here in Bamidbar, we have something similar. After God's command, it should be unnecessary to record what Moshe told the men. But Moshe's words are recorded, and they differ from God's command, and this difference (the addition of spying) is exactly what led to the mission's failure. Moshe is the leader, and leaders must take responsibility for their decisions. So here Moshe gets the blame, even if the issue of spying was initially suggested by the people.

3b. What Devarim excludes

Devarim has a different perspective from Bamidbar in two ways. First, Moshe is not speaking as an "objective" historian. Rather, he intends to emphasize the people's past sins and the consequences, to deter them from sinning in the future. Second, he is speaking about himself, so he includes a personal perspective.

As part of Moshe's goal to remind the people of their sins, he shows a negative attitude toward the entire spies episode. If only none of the episode had happened, the death of a whole generation in the desert would have been avoided. The presence of a Divine command to send explorers seriously complicates this picture. Perhaps to keep the message simple, Moshe omits that command entirely.

Interesting, Moshe does use the verb "to explore" ("latur") once. This verb is rare, appearing just 9 times in all of Tanach outside the story in Bamidbar, so its use here is significant. After the negative spying report, Moshe tells the people not to abandon God,

"who travels before you on the road, to explore for you a place to encamp, with fire at night, to show you the road you should walk on, and with cloud by day."

For those who had exploring on their mind, Moshe does emphasize that "real" exploring is that which God continually does to protect Israel, and any negative conclusions that might be drawn from 12 men's exploring are insignificant in comparison.

As for how Moshe portrays his own behavior, as one might expect, his perspective is more complex and mixed than that in Bamidbar. Though he puts the blame for initiating the spying on the people, he also admits that "the matter was good in my eyes" (1:23). This makes him complicit in the sin, and explains why "God was angry at me too regarding you, saying: You too shall not go there" (1:37).

Also, Moshe says that he vocally opposed the spies' defeatism when they returned, unlike in Bamidbar where only Yehoshua and Kalev are mentioned as speaking up. Perhaps, Moshe's words are not mentioned in Bamidbar because, naturally, the people would not listen to Moshe when they could listen to men who had actually seen the land. Whereas in Devarim, even an ineffectual criticism from Moshe fits the theme of the criticisms he is giving the people 39 years later.

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*Coincidentally, the English "tour" and Hebrew "latur" not only sound the same, but appear to derive from the same root, meaning "to turn", as a person goes back and forth seeing things until he has seen everything. But the word "tour" has the connotations of traveling for pleasure, and without a practical goal in mind, which are out of place here. So I use "explore" as a translation instead.

The yoke

Speak to the children of Israel, and let them take to you a perfect red cow, with no blemish, which has never worn a yoke. (Bamidbar 19:2)

That the cow have no blemish is a well-known condition for sacrifices. Why, though, the requirement of never having worn a yoke?

Ever since the first-ever sacrifice in Breishit, where Hevel's offering of firstborn sheep was accepted by God, it has been preferred that "the first" of something be used for sacrifices. This is reflected in numerous later examples, such as bikurim for fruits, the laws of bechor for animals and people, and perhaps even Jericho (the first city conquered in Israel) becoming "herem... la-hashem" (Yehoshua 6:17) rather than being plundered by the conquerers.

I think the rule about the yoke is also a case of sacrificing "the first". In this case, that means that the first work done with the cow should be the act of sacrifice. The word for field labor is "avodah", and a sacrifice is also considered a form of "avodah". Both field labor and sacrifice are part of the service/servitude which might be expected of a cow.

I haven't thought about why exactly this requirement is absent for most sacrifices (one can come up with all sorts of guesses why). But where it is present (for parah adumah, and also for eglah arufah), I think the reason is in order to sacrifice "the first".

Thoughts on Shoftim

When you go forth to battle against your enemies, and see horses, chariots, and people more numerous than you, you shall not fear them; for Hashem your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. And when you approach the battle, the priest shall approach and speak to the people and say to them: "Hear, O Israel, this day you approach battle against your enemies. Let not your heart faint; fear not, nor be alarmed, or frightened by them, for it is Hashem your God who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you." And the officers shall speak to the people, saying: 'What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it...." (Devarim 20:1-5)

According to this passage, two things must be done before Israel fights a battle. The priest exhorts the people not to fear, and the officers tell several classes of people that they may return home without fighting.

Each of these things has its own logic, but what interests me now is the order in which they come. You would expect for the officers' dismissal to come before the priest's exhortation. After all, the best time to dismiss people from the army is when the army is being assembled, while the best time to give an inspiring speech is immediately before the battle. But as it is, the order is reversed. If you have a new wife, house, or vineyard, or if you are afraid, you must still join the army, and travel all the way to the battlefield, and hear the priest's speech before the battle, and only then can you go home. Wouldn't it be easier for such a person not to have to join the army in the first place?

I think that there is a lesson in this ordering, both for the soldiers in the Torah's battles, and for us today. There are people who have good reasons not to fight in battle. But this does not give them an excuse not to be part of the war. They must join the army, travel to the battlefield, experience the same tension everyone else experiences, and only then can they be sent home.

Similarly, certain Israelis today and all Jews abroad, who do not fight in the IDF, must nevertheless feel that they are part of the war, and look for tangible things they can do to help their relatives under fire. I am happy to report than, from what I have heard, in the recent Gaza war this is exactly what happened on a large scale.

Vahashevota el levavecha

The phrase in the title appears, I believe, just twice in Tanach. Literally it means to "return [something] to your heart". "Heart" in Tanach typically refers to your personality/identity/self - including both emotions, which our culture identifies with the heart, and thoughts. Since thoughts and emotions normally come out from the heart, to "return them to the heart" means to remind and convince yourself of them - to internalize them. Perhaps a more poetic translation would be "to take them to heart".

This meaning is clear from the first occurrence of the phrase, in Devarim 4:39-40, which is well known to us from the Aleinu prayer:
וידעת היום, והשבת אל לבבך, כי ה' הוא האלקים בשמים ממעל ועל הארץ מתחת, אין עוד. ושמרת את חקיו ואת מצותיו, אשר אנכי מצוך היום, אשר ייטב לך...
We are supposed to internalize the fact that our God is the only god, and this knowledge will motivate us to keep the commandments.

The second occurrence (Devarim 30:1-2) is harder to understand.
והיה כי יבאו עליך כל-הדברים האלה, הברכה והקללה אשר נתתי לפניך, והשבת אל-לבבך, בכל-הגוים אשר הדיחך ה' אלהיך שמה. ושבת עד ה' אלקיך, ושמעת בקלו...
When the blessing (of reward when we obey God) and curse (of punishment when we disobey) come to pass, we should take to heart... what? The verse does not say what we should take to heart!

I think the answer is that we should take "it" to heart - with "it" being the content of the previous phrase. We should take THE COMING TO PASS OF THE BLESSINGS AND CURSES to heart. We realize that God in fact rewards and punishes, and that is a motivation for us to repent.

If that is the meaning, then how does the grammar work out?

Perhaps the phrase is intentionally incomplete for reasons of conciseness. It should say "take ____ to heart", but because here the phrase "____" is so long, it is omitted and the listener is supposed to figure it out and insert it mentally.

Or perhaps "take to heart", without a subject, means to take to heart whatever is natural to take to heart in the circumstances. If at some point in your life, you are confronted by direct evidence of God's control of the world, that awareness can be enough to drastically reorient a life which has been based on the proposition that God is irrelevant to the world's functioning and to our behavior.

Moshe's view

Last year in September I flew from the US to Israel. For some reason, the plane took an unusual flight path, which let me see a huge part of Israel from "above". Unable to photograph the view, I later recreated it in Google Earth.

This experience reminded me of several verses (Devarim 34:1-4) in parshat Vezot Habracha:

Moshe went up from the plains of Moav to Mount Nevo, the top of the peak which is above Jericho, and Hashem showed him the whole land: the Gilead up to Dan; all of Naftali; the land of Efraim and Menashe; all the land of Yehudah, up to the Mediterranean Sea; the Negev; and the plain, the valley of Jericho, the city of palms, up to Tzoar. Hashem said to him: "This is the land I promised to Avraham Yitzchak and Yaakov saying 'To your offspring I shall give it'; I have shown it to your eye, but you shall not go there."

The areas listed here trace a rough counterclockwise circle, tracing the mountains which surround the Jordan River valley:

It is as if Moshe was scanning his eyes across the incredible view from Mount Nevo, trying to imprint it all into his mind in this last opportunity before he died.

It is the same thing I did from the airplane. The difference being that shortly afterwards, I landed in Israel and have been here ever since. It should be humbling to realize that while I was shown the land just like Moshe was, unlike Moshe I had the opportunity to enter it.

The flight also brought me to more philosophical thinking. From the airplane, I could see everything that happened in Israel, limited only by roofs and the focusing ability of my eyes. And a person on the ground, unless armed with modern weaponry, could not do anything to harm me. It seemed clear to me that the common idea of God being "above" us, in the “heavens”, is in large part a visualization of the ideas of omniscience and omnipotence.

Of course, there was one difference between my "omniscience", in the airplane, and God's. There are skyscrapers in Tel Aviv that when you see them from the ground, even from a distance, they never fail to impress you. From the plane, though, the same skyscrapers barely stood out from their surroundings. This seems like an inherent problem with such "omniscience": the more I saw, the less I was able to examine each thing I saw. God, being infinite, has no such limitation to his omniscience. God is no more impressed by the skyscrapers than I was, but having better "eyesight", is still capable of discerning all of their details.

Vidui Maaser

When you have finished tithing every tithe of your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give to the Levite, to the proselyte, to the orphan, and to the widow, and they shall eat in your cities and be satisfied. Then you shall say before Hashem your God, "I have removed the holy things from the house, and I also have given it to the Levite, to the stranger, to the orphan, and to the widow, according to all the commandment you commanded me; I have not transgressed any of Your commandments, and I have not forgotten. I have not eaten of it in my mourning, I did not consume it in a state of contamination, and I did not give of it for the needs of the dead; I have listened to the voice of Hashem my God; I have acted accordingly to everything You commanded me. May you look down from Your holy abode, from the heavens, and bless your people Israel, and the land you gave us as you swore to our ancestors, a land flowing with milk and honey". (Devarim 26:12-15)

This passage is known by Chazal as "Vidui Maaser", the maaser "confession". Normally a "confession" means to admit something you've done wrong. But in this passage, you mentions the various things you've done RIGHT! So why is it called a "confession"?

I think the answer is as follows. There is a principle in the Torah of "lo yerau panai reikam" (Shemot 23:15) - you are not allowed to visit the Temple empty-handed. The direct application of this principle is that when you visit Jerusalem on holidays you must bring a sacrifice (see Hagigah 7a). But it could work as a general principle: your visit cannot be selfish, you must perform some act of recognition and gratitude to God when you come.

In general, one must take two tithes from one's agricultural produce, the first going to Levites. In normal years (1,2,4,5 of the shemita cycle), the second tithe is called "maaser sheni", and must be eaten in Jerusalem while one is pure, almost like a sacrifice. Every third year (3 and 6 in the cycle), "maaser ani" takes the place of "maaser sheni". This tithe must be given to the poor rather than eaten by you, and the poor may eat it outside Jerusalem ("in your cities").

When you visit the Temple in a "maaser ani" year, you come WITHOUT the "maaser sheni" you normally bring. You breach the expected protocol for a Temple visit, and for this you must apologize. Of course, it seems strange to apologize to God for doing what God commanded you to do. But presumably the point of "lo yerau panai reikam" is give to you the right attitude on your Temple visits. If you cannot get that attitude by bringing a gift, you must get that attitude by noting and explaining the absence of a gift.

As a parallel, imagine that upon visiting someone for Shabbat you were expected to bring some kind of gift, like flowers or a bottle of wine. (Well, you are, but imagine that it was extremely rather than moderately impolite to not do so.) Imagine that you visited someone several times, but once you showed up without the expected gift. You explained this as follows: "I'm sorry I didn't bring you anything. I was actually planning on bringing a bottle of this delicious wine I just learned about, but on the way here I ran into a poor person who couldn't afford to purchase wine for this Shabbat, so I gave it to him instead. Hopefully you'll understand."

If the hosts were good people, they'd understand. So does God, if you shown up at the Temple without the wine and other food you'd normally bring as "maaser sheni". But in both cases, while you have a good excuse for not fulfilling your normal obligation, you still need to ask forgiveness for it.

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Most of the passage is written using the word "I": I have done this, I have not done that. One would expect that since "I" performed all the good deeds mentioned in the passage, now "I" have the right to ask for a reward for "myself".

But the passage does not say that. It asks God to "bless YOUR PEOPLE ISRAEL, and the land you gave US". The person making the declaration is asking not only for himself, but for the entire people, even though he may be the only person who performed mitzvot and deserves a reward.

Not only is this a generally good model for prayer, but it is especially fitting for this particular mitzvah. The whole significance of "maaser ani" is that your wealth is shared with other people who need it. In your declaration, you ask that God's blessing similarly be shared with other people who need it.

In effect, you are pointing out that YOU were willing to share your wealth, so GOD should be willing to share HIS wealth as well. Surely, you say, God cannot be any less generous than you have been. How could such a request possibly be turned down?

Tribal ordering and Eretz Yisrael

1. Bamidbar 34

In parshat Matot/Masei, Israel makes some of its final preparations for the entry to the land of Israel. Bamidbar 34:16-29 lists the princes who will represent each tribe in apportioning the land to be conquered. The list goes as follows:

Yehudah
Shimon
Binyamin
Dan
Menashe
Efraim
Zevulun
Yisachar
Asher
Naftali

The ordering of this list is unexpected. It does not follow either of the two normal ways by which the tribes are ordered – by the order of birth of Yaakov's sons, or the order of marching in the desert. Why did the Torah choose to order the tribes this way?

Looking at a rough map of tribal territories, the answer becomes clear. The order of tribes here is the same as the geographic order of tribal inheritance, from south to north.

Yehudah inherited everything south of Jerusalem.
Shimon's territory was considered to be part of Yehudah's territory (Yehoshua 19:9). As such it is mentioned after Yehudah, even though it was in the more southern part of Yehudah.
Binyamin's territory was just north of Jerusalem.
Dan's territory was roughly the Tel Aviv area.
Efraim and Menashe inherited the northern West Bank. (Efraim's territory was south of Menashe - this seems to be the only real deviation in the list from geographic order. Perhaps it can be explained by saying that Efraim and Menashe, being brothers, were listed together, and Menashe as the elder came first. This explanation gains credence because both are listed here as being a subset of Yosef, and only secondarily as independent tribes.)
Yissachar and Zevulun's territories bordered Menashe, in the southern Galil. The territories were roughly adjacent to one another - Zevulun to the west, Yissachar to the east. (On the map above they forgot to label Yissachar! It was surprisingly hard to find a suitable map online!)
Asher and Naftali were the northernmost tribes, Asher to the west, Naftali to the east.

2. Similar lists

The Torah records two other lists of the tribes dating to the 40th year in the desert. These too seem to be ordered by future territory from south to north.

One list is in parshat Vezot Habracha (Devarim 33:6-24). The setting (the conquest of Canaan is about to begin) and the many references to the land make it clear that that's a main theme in Moshe's blessings. The order of blessings is:
Reuven, Yehudah, Levi, Binyamin, Yosef, Zevulun, Yissachar, Gad, Dan, Naftali, Asher
This is the same order as Bamidbar 34, except for the following deviations.
1) Reuven, Gad, and Levi appear. Reuven and Gad are omitted from Bamidbar 34 because they already received land on the east bank, Levi because they would not receive land at all. Nevertheless, they all deserve to be blessed here. Reuven and Gad are included in roughly geographic order. So is Levi, if you take Jerusalem as their eventual inheritance.
2) Shimon disappears. Presumably their blessing is shared with Yehudah, the tribe they eventually assimilated into.
3) Yissachar switches with Zevulun, and Asher with Naftali. Yissachar was east of Zevulun, not north or south, and Naftali was east of Asher. So it is equally logical to have either one before the other. The fact that these particular tribes switch places, while other tribes stay in the same order, strengthens the thesis that the ordering is geographical, south-to-north.
4) Dan moves towards the end of the list. In the end, Dan was unable to conquer its land in the south and went to conquer land in the north. Bamidbar 34 reflects the planned southern inheritance; the order of Devarim 33 is presumably a prophetic reference to the eventual northern inheritance.

The final list is Devarim 27:11-13, which explains the ceremony that will take place in Shechem, with 6 tribes standing on one mountain and 6 on the other. These are:
Yehudah, Shimon, Levi, Binyamin, Yosef, Yisachar stand on Mt. Gerizim (towards the south), while
Reuven, Zevulun, Gad, Dan, Naftali, Asher stand on Mt. Eval (towards the north).

Here, except for Reuven and Gad, it once again appears that southern tribes are listed before northern tribes. The explanation of Reuven and Gad may be that Mt. Gerizim was somewhat to the southwest rather than due south, and Mt. Eval northeast rather than due north. So the "north" mountain is really "northeast", and the eastern tribes Reuven and Gad fit there just as well as in the south.

(Note: I have changed the order of the tribes on each mountain from the list in Devarim 27, to make the similarity to the other lists clearer. I think the ordering in Devarim 27 is for literary reasons: each list of 6 tribes splits into two lists of 3 tribes, and each list of 3 tribes has the tribe with the shortest name in the middle. Presumably it sounds nicest that way.)

3. An implication

One implication of this list is that the tribal locations were decided upon before the conquest took place. This helps us explain many different verses in the Torah. For example:

1) In Breishit 38 Yehudah apparently settles in Adulam (a city near Beit Shemesh, in the tribe of Yehudah's future territory.) Perhaps this was no coincidence, and Yehudah intended to colonize land which he expected would eventually belong to him. (Similarly, Shimon and Levi may have expected to receive Shechem, hence their zealotry there. But as punishment, they lost their right to inherit as independent tribes. If so then Yehudah, Shimon, and Levi – three of the four oldest sons – would have received the most central inheritances, later given to Yehudah, Efraim, and Menashe. Perhaps the oldest son Reuven also would have received a valuable inheritance, but he too was disinherited.)
2) Yaakov promised Yosef “Shechem echad al achecha” (Breishit 48:22). This refers to the double inheritance of Menashe and Efraim. But it may also allude to the city Shechem itself – which was in Yosef's future territory.
3) The names of some Israelites are also the names of cities in the tribal territory each individual would later live in. For example: Shechem, Hefer, and Tirtzah from the tribe of Menashe, and Hetzron from Yehudah. Perhaps, these Israelites' parents gave them the names with the expectation that the kid or his descendants would later control that city. (However, the fact that the best examples of this are from Menashe suggests a different explanation: that these individuals lived in the territory of Menashe rather than leaving Egypt with Moshe, a thesis discussed here.)
4) Moshe's viewing of the land from Mt. Nevo (Devarim 34:1-2) mentions the names of five tribal territories in their correct locations, even though the tribes had not inherited yet. Similarly, Breishit 14:14 mentions the city of Dan, which had a different name (Laish) until long after the inheritance – a seeming anachronism.

Each of these verses can be understood clearly through the idea that the tribal locations were known before the conquest.

If so, then the “casting of lots” used to apportion territory (see Yehoshua 14:2,15:1,etc., and Bamidbar 26:55) must have served either to define the exact boundaries between tribes (which had never been precisely specified), or else simply to give a Divine stamp of approval to the previously agreed-upon division.

4. Why south before north?

Why does the ordering of tribes go from south to north, and not in some other direction? An east-to-west ordering makes little sense, since the land of Israel is longest in the north-south direction. But why south to north, not north to south?

I think this is easy to explain. Nowadays we have north at the top of our maps, but in the ancient Middle East, east was at the top. (As a result, the country Yemen was on the right side of the map. This is reflected in its name, which comes from the Hebrew word "yamin", meaning "right". Similarly the word "kedem", meaning "forward", also means "east" in Tanach.) A Hebrew speaker, who read writing from right to left, would naturally read the map from right to left - that is to say, from south to north, the same order we see here.

The same logic explains why the "blessing" of Gerizim and Eval was on the southern mountain, Gerizim. (You might expect the opposite, since the south is drier and less fertile in Israel). A person's right hand is stronger and has higher status than their left hand. In this symbolic ceremony, the mountain on the right is privileged as well.

Blessings in the Torah

This post has been removed in preparation for publication elsewhere.
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Thanks to M.K. for teaching me part of this and motivating me to think of the rest.

Moshe's eye

Moshe was a hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not darkened, nor his moisture ceased. (Devarim 34:7)

Rashi and Ibn Ezra understand "moisture" as referring to the youthful appearance of the skin: Moshe's skin did not become dry and wrinkled as generally happens with old people.

The darkening of the eye, which also did not happen to Moshe, might seem to refer to blindness. This is slightly difficult because if so, you might expect the verse to refer to Moshe's eyes, not to a single eye. That does not seem like an insurmountable difficulty, but in any case I want to propose a different understanding of the word "eye", or rather, the Hebrew word "ayin" which is used here.

In some other places, we see that "ayin" means not "eye", but "appearance". (For example, here. And of course the concepts of "eye" and "appearance" are related so it makes sense that they would share a word.) Perhaps the same is true in our verse: it was not Moshe's eye that did not darken, but rather his appearance that did not darken (or become worse).

[I wanted to say that the same was true of Leah - that not Leah's eyes but her appearance was "weak", making the contrast between her and Rachel crystal-clear. But Leah's eyes are mentioned in the plural, so the meaning of "ayin" there is probably not "appearance". It was in the process of researching this possibility that I found the idea for my last post.]

If "ayin" in fact means "appearance" here, the descriptions of Moshe's "ayin" and "moisture" would be referring to exactly the same thing: the youthful quality of his skin. You can see such redundancy as a problem, or else as an advantage, because literary parts of Tanach often use parallelism. I'm undecided which possibility is more likely, and undecided whether blindness or bad skin is a likelier explanation overall.

As for why Moshe's face would have special healthy qualities even at age 120, I think it's impossible to avoid mentioning Shemot 34, where Moshe comes down from Mt. Sinai and his face is shining with some kind of special light, and as a result he has to put a mask over his face. It's not clear how long this shining lasted (it could be for the rest of his life, but I'm not convinced that's necessarily the case) but in any case, I think this shining quality is somehow linked to the special appearance Moshe's face had at the time of his death.

Thoughts on Vayelech

[Moshe] said to them: "I am a hundred and twenty years old this day; I can no longer go out and come in; and Hashem has said to me: 'You will not pass over this Jordan.' Hashem your God, He will pass over before you, He will destroy these nations from before thee, and you shall dispossess them; and Yehoshua, he will pass over before you, as Hashem has said." (31:2-3)

What does it mean to "go out and come in"? Moshe has just been giving long speeches to the entire people, so it cannot mean that at age 120 he is incapacitated and bedridden!

In fact, we see from many other places in Tanach that "to go out and come in" has a specific meaning: to go out to battle, and to come in from battle. With this understanding, the continuation of our passage follows logically: Moshe cannot go to battle, so Yehoshua and figuratively God will have to lead the conquest of Canaan.

From where do we know that "to go out and come in" generally refers to battle? Here are some sources. The first one is the most explicit.

Kalev ben Yefuneh arguing why he should be the one to conquer and inherit Hevron:
"As my strength was then, so is my strength now, for war, and to go out and to come in." (Yehoshua 14:11)

David fighting the Philistines:
"The Philistine princes went out, and it happened that whenever they went out, David did better than all of Shaul's servants." (Shmuel Alef 18:30)

Shaul stops sending his army to capture/kill David, because he does not know where David has fled to:
"Then David and his roughly 600 men rose and left Keilah, and went wherever they could go. It was told to Shaul that David had fled Keilah, and he stopped going out [after David]." (Shmuel Alef 23:13)

Achish king of Gat explains to David why he must leave the Philistine camp as they go to fight Israel, because the other Philistines think David will betray the Philistine side. Background: David has lived with Achish and launched periodic raids against Amalek, but told Achish that the raids were actually against Israel.
"You have been upright, and your going out and coming in with me in the army is good in my sight; for I have not found evil in you, from the day of your coming to me unto this day. Nevertheless, the [other] lords do not like you. Now go, depart in peace." (Shmuel Alef 29:6-7)

When Shlomo first became king he was not confident in his ability to conduct royal affairs, unlike David his father.
"And now Hashem my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, but I am a young lad, I do not know about going out and coming in." (Melachim Alef 3:7)

And last, a well-known verse. This *could* be another example, but it also makes perfect sense even if the subject is not limited to war.
"May Hashem guard your going out and coming in, from now and forever." (Tehilim 121:8)

Thoughts on Ki Tavo and Nitzavim

It's been a while since I've done a "Thoughts on ____" post. Or rather - since I've finished such a post. I have started but not finished several such posts in the meantime.

Sefer Devarim has the following structure, with the numbers referring to chapters:

1-4 - Initial speech
5-26 - Really long speech with a zillion mitzvot in it
27 - Instructions for ceremony on Mt. Eval
28 - Blessings and curses
29 - "Nitzavim" speech
30 - Teshuva etc.
31-34 "The last day" - stuff Moshe has to do before he dies

(Parshat Nitzavim consists of chapters 29 and 30, minus the beginning of chapter 29.)

I separated chapters 27, 28, 29 and 30 the way I did because chapters 27 and 29 address Israel in the plural, while 28 and 30 address Israel in the singular. Chapter 28 is the text of a covenant, to which chapter 30 is apparently an appendix. In contrast, chapters 27 and 29 are speeches given by Moshe. [I wrote about this structure for DBH way back in 2003, for some reason it does not appear in the archives.]

What should bother you about this structure is that chapters 28 and 29 have very similar content. First we have a covenant in which we are promised blessings if we obey and curses if we disobey. Immediately after this in chapter 29, we have a speech saying the exact same thing: if you disobey, you will suffer! Why the repetition?

The answer is that Chapter 28, like most promises of reward and punishment in Tanach, talks about the behavior of the entire people. If we all obey, we will collectively be rewarded, and similarly if we disobey. The chapter begins by saying: "And it will be, if you obey Hashem your God, to carefully perform all his commandments which I command you today - then Hashem your God will make you ascendant over all the peoples of the earth." An individual cannot "become ascendant" relative to a nation - only another nation can. Evidently this line - and it seems all the blessings and curses which follow it - are talking about collective reward and punishment, naturally for collective good and bad behavior.

In contrast, chapter 29 talks about the behavior of individuals: "Lest there is among you a man or woman or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from Hashem our God" (29:17). What do these individuals do? "...And when he hears the words of this curse, he will bless himself in his heart to say 'I will have peace when I follow the arbitrariness of my heart' " (29:18). Evidently, he assumes that the curses talk about communal behavior. But he is simply an individual sinner, insignificant compared to the rest of the community. So he thinks the curses do not apply to him personally, and he can get away with his misbehavior.

Right after that, Moshe corrects this misimpression, by describing how the deviant individuals or tribe will indeed be punished.

However, Moshe then describes the results of this punishment: exile, and the destruction of the land the exiles used to live on. We are still in the speech of chapter 29, but suddenly this looks much more like a collective than an individual punishment!

I can think of two explanations for this change, one of which is my own, one which appeared in a recent issue of "Daf Kesher" (which I can't find now).

The first explanation is that we have simply gone from talking about individual people to individual tribes, and a whole tribe can be (and was on occasion) punished and exiled while the rest of the people remains unpunished.

The second explanation is that an individual sinner, if left unpunished, will influence others to do the same until the entire people is involved - שורש פורה ראש ולענה. As a result, we are obligated to punish individual sinners to prevent the misdeeds from spreading. Thus the last line of chapter 29 states that "The secrets belong to Hashem our God; but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of this Torah." If a person sins in secret, there is nothing the rest of us can do about it. But if their sins become revealed, then our duty to punish them, and to prevent more sins in the future, comes into play.

A blog-collage

1. There is a water fountain in my department whose water is so cold, that it frequently comes out as frozen slush rather than water.

2. In my thoughts, I recently found myself mixing up Philadelphia and Haifa when thinking of the place I currently live in. Guess it's easy to get those obscure college towns confused with one another.

3. Today I visited Har Eival and Yehoshua's altar there. It is quite an amazing site, and I believe that were it not for politics (we had to drive just a few hundred meters north of Shechem) it would be one of the country's most visited national parks.

As for the question of "so why is the altar in a place you can't see Har Gerizim from", the tour guide suggested that the blessings-and-curses ceremony (between Har Gerizim and Har Eival) was separate from the sacrificial ceremony. (And indeed, the Torah discusses the two ceremonies in separate passages.) The guide also pointed out the part of Har Gerizim and Eival where the hills form a natural bowl-like shape, creating a sort of natural amphitheater where the voice of one or a few people could be heard by many, many others.

I found it interesting that the Har Eival altar, like the holy places in Shiloh and Jerusalem, is on a hill which is not the highest hill in the area. It is as if the intention is always to be above and respected by the people, but not above and transcending nature as Canaanite altars were. The theological implications are interesting.

From the site we could see Arab villages which are associated in Israelite pottery inscriptions or village names with the ancient families of Tirtzah, Hoglah, and (IIRC) Machlah. These families were evidently descended from three of the five daughters of Tzelafchad as discussed in Sefer Bamidbar, and their inherited territory was around and slightly north of Shechem. (The remaining two daughters presumably inherited land nearby, but no record of it has yet been found.)

UPDATE: Palestinians have a history of quite methodically destroying Jewish historical and religious sites, including the palaces and synagogue in Jericho, Kever Yosef in Shechem, the ruins under the Temple Mount, and so on. So it is a matter of concern that a site as important as this one is totally exposed in such an unfriendly neighborhood. Luckily, the Palestinians don't seem to know what the site consists of. Looking on Wikimapia, the only Arabic commentator left a note which I translated online to mean "Usurper army was expelled from the mountains and these are no longer settlement". So this guy, at least, thinks the altar was destroyed in the disengagement!

4. On the way back from Har Eival (the tour let us off at the remote settlement of Shavei Shomron), I waited an hour in vain for a hitchhike to anywhere outside the West Bank and Jerusalem, before a bus finally arrived. The thought passed through my mind that "Gush Katif was destroyed because not enough people from there drove to Haifa." It sounds ridiculous, but on reflection I found it to be quite true. For social and religious reasons, the people in settlements associate with people in other settlements, in Jerusalem, and to a lesser extent in parts of the Tel Aviv area. They have little association with the large mass of secular people in the rest of Israel (and the religious people living elsewhere in Israel seem to me to be quite different in outlook from the settlers). Thus secular people rarely meet settlers. Each group gets to thinking that it represents all of Israel and thus deserves to get everything it wants politically. When these mutual delusions are translated into policy debate, the results are ugly and traumatic events like the disengagement result.

Thoughts on Ki Tavo

"...Because you did not serve Hashem your God - in happiness and goodheartness, and an abundance of all.
You will serve your enemies, whom Hashem will send among you - in hunger and thirst and nakedness and lack of all." (28:47-48)

Chassidim love to quote the first verse, to show why you must always be happy and smiley and touchy-feely when doing mitzvot. After all they say, it talks about people who kept all the mitzvot, but in a dour Lithuanian manner, and God exiled them for it!

Fortunately, this is a total misinterpretation of the verse. Look at the next verse, and the parallels between the two verses. Serving God vs. serving enemies; abundance of all vs. lack of all. In each verse, the object of service comes first, followed by conditions in which you serve them.

In the second verse, "Hunger and thirst and nakedness and lack of all" does not describe your attitude - how can you have a hungry and naked attitude? - but rather the physical conditions you are in. Similarly, "happiness and goodheartness, with an abundance of all" in the first verse must describe the conditions you were in. You were rich and successful and living at ease, yet you did not bother to serve God. Thus you will now be punished, and lose your comfort and wealth.

Thus, the first verse is best translated as "...because you did not serve Hashem your God - WHEN YOU HAD happiness and goodheartness, and an abundance of all."

Happiness is of course legitimate. There is a verse in Tehillim which says "ivdu et Hashem besimcha" (100:2). But there is also a verse which says "ivdu et Hashem beyirah" (2:11). The two have to be balanced. Each emotion is appropriate in some situations - and inappropriate in others.

"These are the words of the covenant which Hashem commanded Moshe to make with the children of Israel, in the land of Moav - besides the covenant He made with them in Horev [=Sinai]." (28:69)

"These words" means chapter 28 - an actual specific text which was passed back and forth, or signed, or whatever else was appropriate, in order to make it into a binding covenant. What is the comparable covenant at Sinai? The whole giving of the Torah was a sort of covenant. But more specifically, by comparison with Ki Tavo, it would seem that that the covenant at Sinai was a particular written text.

Luckily, we possess a very similar text which we know comes from Sinai - parshat Bechukotai. There we have a blessing and curse which are extremely similar to the ones in Ki Tavo. It seems that they too form a written covenant. They date to Sinai, even though due to the verbosity of Sefer Vayikra they come long after the main Sinai story.

God and the Jewish people talked to each other, promised, warned, agreed, and discussed many things at many times. It seems that all of this is condensed and crystallized into a single written "contract" at the end of each story. The rewards, punishments, and promises - in short, the terms of the contract - are recorded in the form of a covenant. There is one such covenant at the end of Vayikra, at the end of the Sinai story. There is another in Ki Tavo, when a new generation finished its desert experience and prepared to enter Israel.

Thoughts on Ki Tetze

You shall not return a slave to his master, if he flees to you from his master. He shall dwell with and among you, in the place which he chooses, in one of your cities, as is good for him; do not wrong him. (23:16-17)

"The place which he chooses" is a familiar phrase to anyone who has been reading Sefer Devarim the past few weeks. It is used 10 times in the book to refer to Jerusalem (or Shiloh) - the location which God would eventually indicate for the Temple, but which was not yet known in Moshe's time. Here the same phrase appears, referring not to God's choice of Jerusalem, but of the slave's choice of a place to live.

What's the reason for the use of identical (and distinctive) language in this totally different context? I don't really know, but perhaps this teaches us to welcome the runaway slave as enthusiastically as we would welcome the Temple (before we knew where it would end up being).

Hashem has called you an abandoned and distressed wife. "Can a wife of one's youth be rejected?" says your God. "For a small moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you [to me]." (Yeshayahu 54:6-7, from the haftarah)

The haftarot between Tisha Beav and Rosh Hashanah are all from Yeshayahu, and all of them seem to be chosen based on their relation to the time of year, not their relation to the parsha.

But this week, it is clear that there is a relation to the parsha as well. The haftarah is centered around the extended metaphor of Israel as God's abandoned wife. And the parsha is packed with laws about women and marriage (1). Thus, out of all the possible haftarot which fit the theme of the time of year (anything in the 2nd half of Yeshayahu, I'd assume, plus some other possibilities), the one which fit our parsha best seems to have been chosen.

1. For example: the war-captive wife, the loved and unloved wives, the various laws of adultery and virginity, incest, marriage with genitally damaged men, marriage with converts from various nations, prostitution, divorce and remarriage, that newly married men don't fight wars but rather gladden their wives, and yevamot.

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UPDATE: In the "Daf Kesher" newsletter for Parshat Ki Tavo 5768, R' Amnon Bazak notes the same thing about the runaway slave passage that I did, and comes up with a different, perhaps better, reason for why it's phrased that way.

Thoughts on Shoftim

The laws of eglah arufah are very similar to those of the scapegoat from the Yom Kippur service. In both cases an unworked animal is taken to an uninhabited location, and is killed by an atypical method, after which our hands and/or body must be washed. And in both cases priests are present as we request atonement ("kaparah") for sins which may have been committed.

It therefore seems that the purpose of the two procedures is identical: to symbolize that we are receiving atonement, that the sin(s) are literally being removed from our midst.

The only difference is that while the scapegoat is integrated into the formal Temple service, the eglah arufah takes place locally (depending on where the corpse is discovered) and thus is independent of the Temple service.

The laws both immediately before and after eglah arufah concern various aspects of war. We would therefore expect that eglah arufah is also related to war, and the discovery of unattended corpses in the field is certainly compatible with that. Perhaps each city has a responsibility to absorb and protect any civilians who happen to be in the path of the armies. If the city shut its gates and left these people to their own devices, its leaders would in fact be culpable if the civilians ended up getting killed.

"Thus says your Lord - Hashem; and your God - who advocates/struggles ["yariv"] for his people..." (Yeshayahu 51:22 - this week's haftarah)

Biblical poetry is notable for its frequent use of parallelism, where one phrase is followed by a second phrase with the same meaning but different choice of words. This is clearly the case here, where "your Lord" in the first phrase parallels "your God" in the second.

But what about the second half of each phrase? If this verse is following the common pattern, then the proper name "Hashem" must parallel the description "advocates for his people". This would be unusual, in that a proper name is juxtaposed with a description.

But perhaps this is a fortuitous source which allows us to define the meaning of the name "Hashem". Based on the parallelism, it seems the name "Hashem" by definition implies particularistic intervention on behalf of the Jewish people. This is in opposition to names such as "Elokim" and "Shadai", which refer to the same God, but which relate to more universal/natural behavior by God.

We could perhaps have reached the same conclusion, by looking at the patterns of name usage in Tanach. But that would be difficult, since other factors often complicate the choice of names, and the patterns are not 100% consistent. In contrast, in this verse, the definition is virtually explicit.

Thoughts on Reeh

"You are children of Hashem your God; do not cut yourselves, nor make a baldness between your eyes for the dead. For you are a holy people to Hashem your God, and Hashem has chosen you to be a treasured people, from all peoples on earth. (14:1-2)

Let us start by noting that the phrase "between your eyes" must mean a location where there was originally hair, before being made bald. By comparison tefillin, which are also placed "between your eyes", must also be above the hairline. (see Menachot 36a)

The resemblance between tefillin and this prohibition may in fact be deeper. Excluding the Temple service, tefillin are the probably quintessential item of ritual holiness. Making a "baldness" on the tefillin spot, thus perhaps making it impossible to wear tefillin there, implies deliberately refusing this holiness. Thus, in way of explanation, the Torah explains that "you are a holy people" - a status which you may not refuse.

Furthermore, people who mutilate themselves (for suicidal or other reasons) apparently tend to cut their arms or wrists in particular. (This may be simply because the arm is the most accessible body part, and the wrist includes important blood vessels.) Thus, the "cutting yourself" referred to earlier in the verse may specifically refer to cutting the arm. If so, we have another connection to tefillin. The two examples of mutilation would refer to the arm and the forehead, the two places where tefillin are placed.

By comparison with tefillin, we can therefore explain both of the strange commandments in this passage, their juxtaposition with each other, as well as the explanation given for them.

Thoughts on Vaetchanan

"For which great nation has God as close to them, as is Hashem our God whenever we call upon Him?
And which great nation has statutes and laws, as righteous as all the law which I present to you today? (4:5-6)

In these two lines Moshe alludes to two of the main forms of religious experience - the experiential/spiritual, versus the intellectual. He says that the Jewish people has experienced both, in ways that no other nation has.

Now, it is easy to think of extraordinary spiritual experiences that Moshe could be alluding to, for example the splitting of the Red Sea. It is also easy to think of intellectual experiences, specifically the many laws which Moshe taught them over the course of 40 years. But there was only one event which was a spiritual and an intellectual experience. This was the revelation at Sinai. It should be no surprise that Moshe now mentions Sinai as the lasting evidence for the claims he has just made...

Only beware, and watch yourself carefully, lest you forget the things which your eyes saw, and lest they leave your heart all the days of your life; but rather make them known to your children and grandchildren - the day you stood before Hashem your God in Horev..." (4:7-10)

Devarim and Tisha Beav

One obvious parallel between Parshat Devarim and its haftarah is the presence of the word "Eichah", which in both places we read in, um, the Eichah-tune.

This parallel is intimately related to a deeper parallel: the role of judges. In Devarim, Moshe's complaint about being unable to manage the people's quarrels leads him to appoint judges to do it for him. In the haftarah, we read about moral deterioration: "How ["Eichah"] the faithful city has become a harlot! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers..." (Yeshayahu 1:21) And the stated reparation for the sin involves fixing the justice system: "I will restore your judges as before, and your advisors as at the beginning; afterward you will be called 'The city of righteousness, the faithful city'. Zion will be redeemed through justice, and its returnees through righteousness." (1:26-27)

We learn in Bamidbar 35:32-34 that unpunished murder "defiles" the land and cannot be atoned for except by punishment. The language is similar to Vayikra 18:27, which says that sexual immorality also "defiles" the land and leads to exile. In Devarim 4:25-27 we read that idol worship causes exile. These are the clear sources in the Torah for Chazal's statement that idolatry, murder, and sexual immorality lead to destruction. Yeshayahu, by calling for a reformed or more effective justice system, tried to address the second of these three potential causes. Moshe had similar motivations in appointing judges, even if murder and other injustice had not yet become prevalent.

In later generations, the impulse towards idolatry disappeared, but sexual immorality and the absence of justice persisted. The gemara (Gittin 55b-58a) tells a series of stories relating why the second Temple was destroyed. The first is that of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, and the last is that of "two wicks in one lamp" - that is to say, adultery.

In the Kamtza/Bar Kamtza story, virtually everyone is to blame, but perhaps the ultimate cause of destruction is the rabbis' failure to protest Bar Kamtza's embarrassment. Elsewhere, the gemara (Bava Metzia 58b) likens acute embarrassment to murder. Even if we do not take that statement literally, it remains true that the rabbis, in their role as authorities and arbiters, neglected to justly resolve the dispute between Bar Kamtza and the host, with disastrous consequences.

Thus, the gemara begins with a story about the abdication of justice, and ends with a story of sexual immorality. These were only two causes of the destruction, among others, and can perhaps be subsumed under the general label of "sinat hinam". But they were the most prominent and perhaps most important causes, and thus merit being at the very beginning and end. Perhaps due to this importance, in this week's haftarah we are warned about the presence of murder and the absence of justice.

As far as warnings about sexual immorality, do not feel cheated that there are none in parshat Devarim or its haftarah, or on Tisha Beav. These warnings will come soon enough - two months from now, on the afternoon of Yom Kippur.