Hebraic Studies - Parashat Davarim
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do NOT visit this site on Shabbat or on a
- Y-H-V-H, which
we usually pronounce as “Adonai” or “HaShem”.
*“This
is My Name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.”
Shemot - Exodus 3:15.
Although some minor alterations have been made relating to names and attributes having been corrected.
Please Note:
Verse numbers may at times vary in non Jewish Bibles.
Devarim - Deuteronomy 1:1 to 3:22.
With Rabbi Reuven Ben-Avraham.
“Eleh Ha’Devarim” - 
-
“These are the words”; the words that recount the life
and journey of a people, their entrance into covenant at Sinai.
But as we rabbis will frequently remind us, the Torah is eternal,
reverberating anew for each individual Jew in every generation.
And thus the guiding theme of remembering also takes place in the
mind and heart of each person.
We are part of a people and a community, but we are also our individual selves, bound up in our personal relationships and in self-examination. This is how we may understand the strong themes of justice and love that are expressed in Davarim’s wise discernment and compassionate care for the other, the urgency of love in devotion. These ethical and theological imperatives flow directly from the exclamations of Parashat Devarim, the introspection, self-examination, and turn to memory.
Indeed, if Davarim as a whole may be
understood as an exhortation to justice and care of the
vulnerable as a precondition for proper love of Elohim,
blessed be His Sanctified Name, then are we to understand the
rabbinic choice to have made this the Parashat to be read on
Shabbat Chazon (the Sabbath preceding the Ninth of Av),
the latter word deriving from the opening word “Chazon”
- (“The Vision”) of the Haftarah linked to this
occasion, Yeshayahu - Isaiah 1:1-27. This is a Haftarah of
harsh admonition and rebuke, an attempt by the prophet to awaken
the urgency of repentance, the imperative of social justice in
the form of care for the wronged and the vulnerable:
“…
cease to do evil … Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve
the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow …
Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the
fatherless, plead for the widow … though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” Yeshayahu - Isaiah
1:16-18 (JPS - Jewish Publication Society version of the Tanakh).
This is the essence of piety: not the
external formalities of ritual performance alone, but animated by
interpersonal acts of justice and compassion. “To what
purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?” the
prophet Yeshayahu (1:11 - JPS) he says in the Name of Elohim.
“Who
hath required this at your hand, to trample My courts? Bring no
more vain oblations; it is an offering of abomination unto Me
… the holding of convocations, I cannot endure iniquity
along with the solemn assembly …when ye make many prayers, I
will not hear; your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you
clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes,
cease to do evil” Yeshayahu - Isaiah 1:12-16 (JPS).
Religious ritual and prayer without teshuvah (repentance)
for moral transgressions, for evildoing and lack of care for the
vulnerable, is useless and unwanted by God. Spiritual practice
must be grounded in the moral imperative of compassion and care
to achieve depth and authenticity.
Let it be in this spirit that we view the
trajectory of time progressing toward the 
- ‘Yamim Noraim’ (the “High
Holy Days” or the “Days of Awe”), toward the 
- “Aseret Yemei
Teshuvah (Ten Days of Repentance). This time in which
we find ourselves, the three weeks of collective mourning during
the second half of the Hebrew month of Tammuz and the first part
of Av, this is our re-enactment of the brokenness that culminates
in Tishah Be’Av (Ninth Day of Av), which commemorates the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and has also come to
symbolize the many catastrophes that have befallen us the Jewish
people for so long.
I suggest that we understand the ruined House
of Elohim, blessed be He, not just in its literal sense as the
historical 
- “Beit Hamikdesh”, but as the
sacred space of peace, balance, and kindness within each of us.
Perhaps this is a figurative way to read the classical idea that
the
“Yet
ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of your
Elohim; and ye murmured in your tents, and said: 'Because hated
us, He hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver
us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us” Devarim -
Deuteronomy 1:26-27 (JPS).
The Haftarah of Shabbat Chazon may remind
us of the inner brokenness and the pain in others that is caused
by our indifference to suffering. That is the deep wail of Eikhah
(Lamentations) that we recite in re-enacted despair on Tishah Be’Av;
a howl over the brokenness and ruin that has come about as a
result of our actively destructive behaviour and our
apathy toward those in a state of vulnerability who need our
intervention, our work of justice, compassion, and love.
The wail of lament and despair includes an
introspective awareness of the ruined interior
Interpersonal justice is itself a
prayer come to life. It prepares our hearts, once hardened,
judgmental, and indifferent, arrogant and angry, to be softened
into compassion and care, to lift up the broken remnants of the
Always remember our motto seen on the logo at
the top of this page: “The More Torah, the More Life”,
for Elohim, blessed be His Sanctified Name,
is the one who gave us our Life!”
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