Parshas Devarim: All We Need to Know We Learned at Sinai

Our Torah portion this week, Devarim (Deuteronomy) 1:1 - 3:22, begins a 37 day review of the lessons, laws, successes and mistakes of the past 40 years in which Moses repeats over and over a need for obedience to God's laws given at Mt. Sinai. 

Moses is not lecturing on current rabbinic law, with its moral inconsistencies, creative interpretations, allowances and nuances. He talks Torah principles in their purest form and teaches their application in human affairs in the Land of Israel. He translates his lectures into 70 languages so that people of all nations represented in the mixed multitude can study and learn Torah!

In a general way, Moses reminds the Israelites of their complaining, their ingratitude for food, freedom, and protection, their doubt in God's providence, their shirking responsibility and blaming others for their problems including God and Moses, their falling back into idol worship and giving allegiance to mere mortals who lead them astray and into much trouble.

In this portion, Moses recounts why and how he appoints men of impeccable righteousness and moral rectitude to adjudicate legal matters in the Land of Israel. Regarding future judge appointments and new legislation, he warns them to select only men who adhere to Torah principles upon which new laws will be based. Moses adds that God will redress perversions of justice caused by immoral legal decisions and laws. He goes on to caution that unscrupulous judges will bear the sin of those who follow their immoral laws and those not held to account for breaking just laws.

Despite all these human shortcomings, the Almighty keeps his promise to give the Land of Israel to the Jews and to multiply their numbers as stars in the heavens. He leads them into victory over seven of ten Canaanite kingdoms that must be conquered before they settle in the Land of Israel, leaving the last three of Ammon, Moab, and Edom to be conquered later.

The seven nations correlate to the seven emotional attributes of the human personality that can be conquered, or trained if you will, to act rightly. In Kabbalistic terms, these can be described as:

Chesed (“Love/Kindness” desire to give) 

Gevurah (“Severity/Restriction/Might” desire to receive)

Tiferet (“Compassion/Beauty/Harmony” desire to get along)

Netzach (“Endurance/Eternity/Victory” desire for power)

Hod (“Humility/Splendor/Thanksgiving” desire to be liked)

Yesod (“Connection/Foundation” desire to connect)

Malchut (“Kingship/Sovereignty” desire to control)

When used rightly these attributes benefit society. When a person lies, cheats, steals and hurts others to satisfy these desires, they hurt society. More subtly, too much giving enables bad and dangerous behavior; expecting to receive more than deserved causes laziness and resentment; an inordinate desire to get along requires abandoning integrity to people please; an excessive desire for power destroys when it becomes tyranny and squashes human flourishing; an immoderate desire to connect demands more than people can give and inhibits dependency on God; an extreme desire to control others ruins relationships as it builds an ever increasing ego in the controller and suppresses spiritual maturation in the controlled.

The last three nations correlate to the human intellect,

Chokhmah (“Wisdom”) 

Binah (“Understanding”) 

Da’at (“Knowledge”) 

The intellect cannot be transformed through the human will. It must be replaced by a God consciousness. In the biblical era, humans are spiritual novices, incapable of understanding and implementing this solution to a mind controlled by the subconscious ego warped by secular ideas. The conquest of these three aspects of the intellect will occur when human beings are capable of this solution, at which time personal and national repentance is possible, initiating the messianic era.

The Haftarah portion, Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 1:1-27, recalls the moral decline in Judah during the reigns of kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Uzziah and Jotham secure the borders and make trade agreements that generate much wealth and prosperity in Judah, allowing a rise in state corruption, moral decay and idol worship that escalates during the reign of Ahaz. Foreign invasions, moral degeneracy, child sacrifice and temple desecration prompt Isaiah's warnings of total national collapse unless rectified by personal and national repentance and legal reforms that restore justice as in the time of Moses. 

Moses' warnings and Isaiah's prophecies pertain uncannily to current affairs. These righteous men speak to us again as humans indulge in moral depravity at the national and personal levels around the globe. Political leaders use corrupted forms of international, criminal and civil law to promote or ignore border crises, crime waves, administrative state corruption, military ineptitude, and financial manipulation. Religious leaders rely on corrupted religious law accepted as normative and binding to allow child sacrifice and other unholy practices that conflict with legally sound, life affirming principles in Torah upon which many legal systems are based but now barely resemble.

Our future depends upon many people around the world realizing the source of our troubles and triumphing over ego centered, intellectual pride by implementing the only workable solution for it, inviting a Divine consciousness to replace the warped ideas that perpetuate misery and the demise of civilization. Human spiritual evolution has brought us to a point now when this restoration of sanity and holiness is possible, making prognostications of an imminent messianic age likely.

As Isaiah foretells, "And I will restore your judges as at first and your counsellors as in the beginning; afterwards you shall be called City of Righteousness, Faithful City. Zion shall be redeemed through justice and her penitent through righteousness."

Cecily Routman

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and good life upon us and upon all Israel. Amen.