Rabbi's Derasha

President's Message for EB Community

This week, we also launched our annual calendar fundraiser. Especially now, with in-person interactions limited, the Emek Beracha calendar provides a way to connect and leave a year-long impression with community members. In another first, we are inviting members to submit pictures from their travels to Biblical and historic sites in Israel. Winners will have their photo submission featured on a monthly spread, and will receive a complimentary dedication. You may email your submissions to Michal Weinberger at msfuld@gmail.com. The calendar is a great way to offer brachot in a memorable way, and this year’s calendar promises to be both fun and personalized with everyone’s submissions!

Many other efforts for meaningful programming are underway. I look forward to sharing details of these at a later date. 

A quick Covid update: While we eagerly anticipate a return to normalcy, we also want to ensure that we are being thoughtful in how we reopen the shul. Rabbi Feldman, the medical advisory team, and I are in regular contact, balancing what is legally allowed and what is advisable. There are no easy decisions. For the time being we will err on the side of caution to ensure we are not unnecessarily exposing those who do decide to attend minyan.

Shabbat Shalom!
Daniel Hekier

Rabbi Feldman's Derasha

The last book of the Chumash is the king of all after-dinner speeches.  The narrative of the Chumash has essentially ended.  Some of those stories will be reprised but only in recollection.  With a captive audience waiting on the east side of the Jordan River, waiting to enter the land, it is now Moshe Rabenu’s chance to have the last word.  He begins the speech on Rosh Chodesh Shvat and it ends as he passes away a little over a month later.  

As an adept speaker, Moshe divides the long speech into parts.  Almost all of this week’s Parasha, and the beginning of next week’s make up the first part.  And even that is broken into smaller parts.  This is crucial to follow, as the structure in fact points to the thrust of the story, and suggests how Moshe deploys the past not as a bludgeon to direct the nation but for another purpose altogether.

The first “old” story Moshe tells is about preparing 38 years earlier to go into Eretz Yisrael.  The appointment of the judges was an act meant to prepare for conquest.  The Malbim (R’ Meir Levush, 1809 - 79) points out that Yitro advised Moshe about the appointment of judges but it was not implemented until Moshe had a chance to think about it.  It was carried out as they were told by Hashem to leave Har Sinai because part of a functional society, even as it is in the midst of conquest, is to have a proper judicial system.  The sense that injustice is rampant becomes an impediment to any progress, and can easily gum up the machinery of conquest.  

The next story he tells is about the spies.  And here we seem to see a hint of what he’s trying to do.  He explains why the present generation is in the position they are in many years later: It is because a previous generation fouled up.  The overall message, then, seems to be that I’m going to tell you this story to give you a sense of what you should not do.  It is a tale of woe, which serves as a warning.

There are other failures in the desert that could reinforce the same warning.  The golden calf, for one.  But that won’t get into the speech for several chapters. This is really the only story he tells now.  And then he quickly skips almost 40 years, to the present.  He continues to tell stories, but now they are stories from the recent past, stories that were actually experienced by the generation he is addressing. In fact, he’s not telling them anything that they don’t know first-hand.  

What is the point of this speech?  We see from the structure of things that the speech divides sharply between the past and the present, between the previous generation and the present one. Things now come into better focus.  There were two commands in the section about the past -- to go up to the land, which the spies fouled up, and to NOT go up to the land, which the defiant few also ignored. And the present generation?  They were given two types of command as well: to NOT start up with the nations of blood relatives like Edom (Esav) or Moav and Amon (from Lot) and to yes to do battle with the KIngs Sichon and Og.  The speech now has a symmetry, which sharply contrasts the way the previous generation failed versus the way the present generation has thus far succeeded.  

The story of the spies is not being used as a cudgel to correct the behavior of the new generation.  It is being used to encourage them by reinforcing the fact that they have thus far succeeded by being cooperative.  Following the commands led to quick conquest instead of the pointless wandering of the previous generation.  Used this way, even the mistakes of the past are helpful.  They make an instructive contrast.  

We are going into a week of historical instruction.  We will spend a lot of time on the destruction that took place on the 9th of Av.  We will also spend time on horrible episodes that did not take place then but which we commemorate on this day of destruction.  

From the beginning of Moshe Rabenu’s speech, we can understand where we stand.  We will be dwelling on the past because we have not yet become a new generation.  We are still wandering like the generation that fouled up the plan.  We have seen hints that we are in a new age, but we still don’t rush to see the most positive possible interpretation of a negative fact pattern.  Once we have judged harshly, we do not run from Lashon Hara.  It is encouraging that the Chofetz Chaim raised Lashon Hara to the level of awareness he did.  And it is encouraging that so many signs of a new age have come since.  That is what we have to pursue in order to turn the page. That will show that we can make the destruction of the past into the prologue of a new age.