Parashat Devarim 5780 — 07/25/2020
Devarim 1:1 – 3:22
I instructed Yehoshua at that time, to say, “Your eyes have seen everything that Hashem, your Gd, has done to these two kings; so will Hashem do to all the kingdoms where you cross over.” (3:21)
“At that time” is after (a) the defeat of Sichon and Og, the Amorite kings on the east bank of the Jordan and (b) after the deal is struck with the tribes of Reuven and Gad and they are apportioned the lands of the Amorite kings, rather than land on the west side of the Jordan. The deal, of course, required them to send their soldiers to participate in the conquest of the land, which they agreed to do (and which agreement they fulfilled, as recorded in the book of Yehoshua).
Or haChaim questions why Moshe waited until after the Reuvenites and Gadites were on board with sending their troops before giving his charge to Yehoshua. Apparently Moshe was concerned that it would look to Yehoshua that Moshe was not confident of Gd’s protection and was looking to the mighty warriors of the two trans-Jordanian tribes to help seal the victory. Or haChaim learns the passage differently:
The Torah therefore stated the passage of I instructed Yehoshua right after the passage regarding the arming of the tribes of Gad and Reuven saying, “Do not think that you would need the might of soldiers who gird themselves for battle and allow fear to enter your heart, for you will not need natural warfare at all, for Hashem will vanquish your enemies. This is what [Moshe] meant when he goes on to say for Hashem, your Gd – “He” shall wage war for you. …
Or haChaim continues on the next part of the verse:
In this statement Moshe included the reason for his instruction to the tribes of Gad and Reuven to cross over the Jordan with the Jewish people, because just as Hashem has done to the two kings of the Amorite [RAR: Sichon and Og] so will Hashem do to all the kingdoms etc. Therefore you must enter into those battles with the same amount of merit that you possessed in the battles against Sichon and Og, so that you will be worthy of having Hashem wage war on your behalf. Just as in the case of the two kings of the Amorite, all twelve tribes of Israel were together, so too on the other side of the Jordan, all of the tribes must assemble, armed, before Hashem. And that is why Moshe commanded the tribes of Gad and Reuven to cross over armed to the obligatory war [against the Canaanites]. … for the merit of twelve tribes is not the same as the merit of nine-and-a-half tribes.
I once read a book of military history where a number of great generals were asked what they thought was the most significant battle in history. The first one in the book was the “battle” of Sencheiriv against Jerusalem (approx 701 BCE) described in the second book of Kings. Gd sent an angel who caused confusion in the massive Assyrian camp, causing all 185,000 soldiers to flee in panic. The general commented that this was the first time in history that a battle was not won on the basis of the strength of the army, but by its moral standing.
This is exactly the point that Moshe is making to the Jewish people. The battles to be fought would not be won by might of arms, for the Jewish people was neither especially strong nor especially numerous. Gd was going to do the battling, just as He did in Egypt. The only difference was that in Egypt the Jewish people was passive and Gd struck the Egyptians with the plagues and the splitting of the sea. In the Land of Israel, they would have to go through the motions of making war, with the knowledge that the outcome depended entirely on Gd, and what Gd did depended not on their skill at waging war, but on their skill at living in accord with Gd’s Will.
Or haChaim points out that there is another layer to this consideration. The nation is made up of sub-units, the tribes, and each sub-unit has something irreplaceable to add to the whole. Each tribe has its own unique set of traits, even, according to the Sages, its own style of prayer that is uniquely suited to those traits. In other words, each of the tribes has its own collective consciousness, and the collective consciousness of the nation as a whole is made up of the collective effect of the collective consciousness of each of the tribes, as it expresses itself and interacts with the other tribes.
Most significantly, for the nation to be whole, all the tribes must be present and functioning in their full capacity. As Or haChaim expresses it, “…the merit of twelve tribes is not the same as the merit of nine-and-a-half tribes.” As an analogy, think of a woven fabric that is whole. All the threads are there, interlocked with one another, and the fabric is strong. If even one thread pulls out, the whole fabric is in danger of unraveling. The collective consciousness of a nation is like one of Buckminster Fuller’s famous “tensegrity” structures, where each piece supports every other piece. Our continued weakness as a people can perhaps be traced to the loss of the 10 Northern Tribes, and that, of course, can be traced to the breakup of the unity of Israel, and that can be traced to the social disintegration caused by the abandonment of Torah.
History is littered with the shards of powerful armies of great empires that have been defeated by much smaller forces with high morale and strong unit cohesion – think of the Maccabees or the American revolutionaries or the Spartans at Thermopylae. Israel’s War of Independence is another miraculous example. Moshe is teaching Yehoshua, and us, that our success is dependent on our integrity, and our integrity is dependent on our faithfulness to Gd and to His Torah.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Devarim
Parashat Devarim can be translated as “words.”
Devarim begins with “and these are the words Moses spoke” and ends with “Do not fear them [other nations] for the Lord, your Gd, is fighting for you.”
As I began to think about “devarim,” words, I began to think about the letters that make up the words, the grammar that connects the words, and the different levels at which words, letters, and grammar exist and their connection to a life without fear in which we experience, without needing to be told, that Gd is fighting for us – and transforming our world into a world in which we have no enemies, neither outside our self nor inside our self. Not people, not thoughts or feelings, not storms or droughts or other acts of Nature.
And as I begin to think, I also began to feel the letters are souls. They are the fundamental expressions of Gd’s infinite vibration through which Gd’s Self-Referral Awareness manifests and un-manifests the limited world that we ordinary folk experience as reality, Since Gd is Infinite Love and Joy, the letters are also this and their shapes and sounds are only limited on the surface level of their appearance. At subtler levels, they are more and more subtle and unlimited in their forms and sounds.
And at the Transcendental level they completely weave one into the other and their shapes and sounds and qualities of Love and Joy are infinitely varying.
The Hebrew letters are called “otiyot”. Yehudi Goldberg created a flowing exercise based on the shapes of the Hebrew letters and called it “Otiyot Chayot”: “Chai” means “life” and “Chayot” are a class of heavenly beings, described in Ezekial’s vision of the heavenly chariot.
As it is with the letters, so it is with the words, the Devarim, and sentences, this parshah and Torah as a whole.
Back to the physical level of the letters, there are 22 and there are 22 chromosomes in the DNA plus a Male and Female chromosome, which can relate to the long and short vowels. This gives us a clear sense of the role of the letters in the manifesting of physical reality.
Kabbalah makes similar combinations for letters and the physiology and for Torah and the physiology.
The words Moses spoke were basically a review of the 40 years in the wilderness and here, too, there is a fundamental unity in the symbolism of the words of the review.
The mention of “40” often occurs in Torah as a symbol of completeness and here it occurs as 40 years spent in the desert between leaving Egypt (Mitzraim: Restrictions) and preparing to enter Canaan(“Synchronicity, Integration”), the Promised Land. This put in my mind the Kabbalastic view of the 10 Sefiroth (qualities of Gd) times the four worlds (the world of Emanation: Atzilut; the world of Creation,: Beriah; the world of Formation Yetsirah; and the world of Action, Asiyah. This equals 40. And so when we experience the 10 qualities times the four worlds we have 40, a symbol of completeness.
“Forty” is used by Dr. Tony Nader, PH.D, MD, MARR, in showing the connection between the Veda and the Vedic Literature with human physiology, as a way of illustrating that our human body is not only flesh, bones, muscles and so on but in essence, it is Consciousness. “Consciousness” is a scientific way of referring to Totality, One without a Second, which from a religious point of view we refer to as Gd. Dr. Nader shows that 40 aspects of the Veda and its Literature correspond to 40 different aspects of our human body.
So by exploring, intellectually, emotionally, experientially, the words and letters, sentences, paragraphs, parshahs of Gd, the grammar of Gd, the different qualities of Gd in the different stages of manifestation (within Gd), we become capable of entering a world in which we directly experience that Gd is Totality, we are expressions of Gd within Gd, Gd goes before us, makes our path safe, transforms any possible enemies into friends and we live a life very unafraid, very aware that Gd is filling our life with Joy, Love, words and actions of truth.
Such a life is one in which we fulfill Gd’s command: “Be thou holy, for I am holy” and in which we “Love the Lord, thy Gd, with all our heart, all our soul, all our might” and we “Love our neighbor as our self” and are loved by our neighbor the same way.
Such a life is a fulfilled life.
In our congregation there is a lot of Love and Joy, signs we are making good progress, signs we are experience a lot of protection and a lot of fulfillment.
Thank You, Gd, for all you do.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
Baruch HaShem