We’re on a new book. The narrative of the Chumash has essentially ended and Moshe Rabenu’s final speech begins. It’s relevant to see how the Sefer relates so closely to the others.
At the beginning of Mesechta Gitten, there is a Tosafot that points out that the standard length of a Gett is 12 lines. No matter how long the names are, you have to fit everything into 12 lines. Where does that number come from? Tosofos says that there are four lines between every Sefer of the Torah which separates each book from the next one. That adds up to 12.
But that’s not true. It should add up to 16, and not 12. There are five books, so there are four breaks and not three.
Tosofot says that the last book has a different status than the others. He says it’s “Mishne Torah,” which means a repetition. He seems to be saying that it is “merely” a repetition. But what he is really saying is that those four lines between it and the book before it are not a real separation because Moshe Rabenu is creating a running commentary on what has come before. He’s not trying to add material. He’s riffing on what has come before. In jazz, that means there was an important solo and now someone has taken up the sound of that solo and is taking it in a certain direction.
No where is that riffing more evident than in the way he uses the episodes of the past. It is a long speech, 37 days in all. He will retell several stories. He dwells at length on the past but he deploys those invocations not as a cudgel to punish the nation but to direct them about the future.
The first part of the speech, which is most of this Parasha and a few lines into the next, is a good case in point. The episode from the past which dominates the first half of the speech is about the spies. He seems to be explaining 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 were of course other failures in the wilderness that could reinforce the same warning. The golden calf, for one. That story will come up but not for several chapters. He tells the story of the spies and then he begins the second half of his speech, in which 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.
And he has even skipped over certain things in the recent past. He speaks about the recent wars with Sichon and Og but he does NOT speak about the most recent war, with Midyan. There were all victories, so there must be something else going on.
As it often does, the structure of the speech tells the story. He is contrasting 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 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 punish. 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 day of historical instruction. Tonight, we will in fact end the Megilla of Eicha and go directly into the five Kinnot of the night. There is no separation because we continue with our own riff on the Megilla. We will spend a lot of time on the destruction that took place on the 9th of Av, and we will also spend time on horrible episodes that did not take place then but which we commemorate on this day of destruction.
Like in Moshe Rabenu’s speech, 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 are still not there. The Chofetz Chaim said that he took up the Mitzva of Lashon Harah as a focus for reasons he did not understand. It came to him.
But he knew that it is connected to Geula, to redemption. In Egypt, Moshe Rabenu does not want to try to save the Jewish people because they are prone to Lashon Harah. As such, they are not redeemable. As it was then, so it is now. We are redeemable when we rush to see the most positive possible interpretation of a negative fact pattern. When we see the good, we will 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 cross the river. That will show that we can make the destruction of the past into the prologue of a new age, across the river.
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