There is a story about a rabbi who very carefully prepared his drashot each week and would type them out very neatly to read from the pulpit. After his drasha he would place his papers, face down in a pile just next to his pulpit. Week after week, month after month, year after year, the pile grew higher and higher. Until, one day, the rabbi retired and moved away.
After an appropriate search process, a successor was chosen and installed at that synagogue. Everything went well, the rabbi was charming, the congregation was friendly…until it was time for the rabbi to deliver his first drasha. Somehow, he had not found time to prepare any remarks. The Torah was returned to the ark, the curtain closed, the congregation took their seats, and the rabbi had nothing to say. Trying hard to suppress a rising feeling of panic, the rabbi looked down and saw, right at his feet, a pile of drashot. He picked one up, and began to read.
The reaction from the congregation was immediate, it was intense, and, to this rabbi’s great relief, it was positive! The next week the same thing happened. Somehow he never prepared anything to say, and, in a fit of panic, he decided to, one more time, read a drasha from the pile, and once again he received a very positive reaction from the congregation. The third week he knew that he would tread a drasha from the pile and made to pretense of preparing one of his own. He earned a lot of praise from the congregation for that drasha as well. This went on for three years.
At the end of the third year, the president of the congregation sat down with the rabbi for a conversation. Your predecessor was here for many years, and his drashot kept getting better and better the longer he was here. Your drashot, however, seem to be getting worse and worse…
I haven’t yet found the box of drashot.
More importantly, I share this anecdote, this cautionary tale, because the messages that one generation leaves for another, is a subtle theme in Parashat Devarim – indeed in the way that we transmit messages from one generation to another, one can see the secret of Jewish survival.
Sefer Devarim consists of a series of speeches that Moshe gave in the final days of his life. These speeches were given with full awareness by Moshe that he would soon die and that awareness filled Moshe with a sense of urgency and importance. Given that seriousness, the Torah records the precise location, timing, setting, and context for Moshe’s speech.
These are the words – Ela haDevarim – that Moshe said to all Israel on the far bank of the Jordan, in the wilderness, teh Arava, across from Suf, between Paran, and between Tofel and Lavan and Hatzerot and Di-Zahav.”
But there is something shocking and challenging statement at the very heart of that opening line:
“Ele HaDevarim Asher Diber Moshe el kol Yisrael.” – These are the words that Moshe said to Israel!” Indeed, Sefer Devarim is a series of Moshe’s speeches- but we must ask – what are those speeches, what are the words of Moshe, doing in the Torah?!
If we understand that the significance of the Torah derives from it being the word of God, why is one book of the Torah characterized as being the words of a human being? And if the uniqueness of Moshe’s prophecy is understood as being the faithfulness with which Moshe transmitted God’s Word, without distortion, and without inserting his own opinions, why cloud that legacy with a book of Moshe’s own words.
The Torah itself is aware of the significance of these questions and responds to them by the use of two contradictory phrases:
ַוְיִהי ְבּאְַרָבִּעים ָשָׁנה, ְבַּעְשֵׁתּיָ-עָשׂר ֹחֶדשׁ
ְ.בֶּאָחדַל ֹחֶדשׁ;ִדֶּבּר ֹמֶשׁה, ֶאלְ-בֵּניִיְשָׂרֵאלְ,כֹּכל ֲאֶשׁר ִצָוּה ְה‘ ֹאתוֹ, ֲאֵלֶהם
“And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moshe spoke to the children of Israel, according to all that God had commanded for them.” in verse 3, and then in verse 5
ְ.בּ ֵע ֶבר ַהיְַּרֵדּן, ְבֶּאֶרץ מוֹאָב, הוִֹאיל ֹמ ֶשׁה, ֵבֵּאר ֶאתַ-התּוָֹרה ַהֹזּאת ֵלא ֹמר
“Beyond the Jordan River in the land of Moav, Moshe began to explain the Torah”
Sefer Devarim is both an accurate record of what God has already told Moshe and is also a record of Moshe’s own explanations and interpretations.
It fell to Ramban, the great Medieval scholar Nachmanides, to explain the meaning of those verses, and in so doing, explain the nature of Sefer Devarim, and teach us the secret of Jewish continuity.
The Torah is mentioning two elements of Moshe’s leadership. “Moshe told the Israelites all that God had commanded for them,” and this is a reference to the mitzvot that are written for the first time in Sefer Devarim and that were not mentioned earlier in the Torah. And the Torah emphasises that all of them were commanded by God and Moshe did not add or subtract from what he had been commanded. …But the Torah then says that Moshe took the initiative and wanted to explain the Torah to the Jewish people in his own words. It was Moshe’s own initiative and desire to explain and expound. He had not been commanded by God to do so.
It has been that dialectic between faithful, accurate, meticulous, loving transmission of God’s word on the one hand – and Moshe’s own initiative, his decision to take from within himself and add a new perspective, a new idea, or new insight to the Torah on the other hand, that has allowed the Torah to survive.
We have two Torahs. The written Torah is carefully transcribed, even one missing letter makes the entire scroll invalid. With every generation, the written Torah moves farther and farther from Moshe and his unique intimacy with God and we have to try a little bit harder to make sure that we pass along that Torah without distortion. But God also gave us an oral Torah. And the oral Torah depends on scholars discovering new things, formulating ideas in new ways, and arguing with each other and expressing differences of opinion. This oral Torah grows and expands each generation as a new cohort of scholars and students contribute to the Torah from their unique personalities.
This dialectic allowed Moshe to walk peacefully to his death, secure in the knowledge that a new generation, and generation and generation to follow, of leaders and scholars, students and teachers, would be able to keep the Torah alive, and ensure a flourishing future for the Jewish people.
This dialectic was understood by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai – the hero of Tisha b’Av, who on the Eve of Destruction, with the Roman armies besieging Jerusalem, escapes the city in a coffin and asks the soon-to-be emperor Vespasian for permission to open an academy of Jewish learning in Yavneh that was dedicated to both transmitting the Torah of the old generation, and to enabling the young generation to discover new insights and meaning within that Torah, thereby ensuring that the Jewish people would live and thrive centuries after the might that was Rome has crumbled to dust.
Here in Lakeview, on a communal level that dialectic exists as well. We have, each of us in our own way, inherited a unique community. That uniqueness is the product of the hard work, vision, and leadership of many of you in this room – together with many who are no longer here. And we must treasure all of the wonderful values and traditions that are the spiritual legacy of this congregation.
But Moshe understood that he had something to offer that was unique to him. And because Moshe was able to contribute to the oral Torah, others were able to contribute too.
So too, for this community to thrive, both sides of the dialectic must be strong. We have a responsibility to transmit all that we treasure about this community to the next generation as a form of written Torah. But we also need to emulate Moshe, and take initiative, exercise leadership, demonstrate creativity, and expand the oral Torah that is the secret of Jewish survival.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 