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Parshat Haye Sara – Eliezer’s Test

30 Tuesday Apr 2024

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The servant of Abraham requests from God to give him a sign: if the woman whom he asks for water, offers to give also the camels to drink, then it is she whom God set aside for Isaac to marry (Gen. 24:12 ff.). The Talmud (תענית ד) says that there are three who asked incorrectly שלשה שאלו שלא כהוגן two of whom were answered correctly. These two are Eliezer the servant of Abraham and Jonathan the son of King Saul. In the Laws of Idol worship Maimonides writes that it is forbidden to rely on a sign by declaring that if a certain event happens, that it is a bad sign or a good sign. But it is permitted to look back at events and say this event was a good sign for what happened after or this event was a bad sign for what happened after. According to this Eliezer was testing God in a way that’s forbidden. Eliezer was trying to discover if his future actions are being blessed by God and are the right actions or are they not blessed by God and are not the right actions. In other words, to discover if this woman should be brought back to Isaac because God has selected her for Isaac or not.

The underlying reason for this prohibition is that you are supposed to use your own rational faculties to decide what to do and not request a sign from God. I would add that there’s an especially big problem when you pray to God, ‘Please give me a sign’. You are forcing Gods hand, so to speak.  God cannot opt out of your test. For example, if you say, ‘If I am meant to do this thing, then let this coin be heads and if I’m not meant to do it let it be tails. When you flip the coin it must be either heads or tails, which you will then interpret as a sign from God.  But perhaps God doesn’t want to play your game and wants you to decide based on your intelligence.  You will have no way to know if the heads you threw is a message from god or just the laws of physics working.  

At every football game they flip a coin to see who starts with the ball. But what makes that permitted is that you’re not involving God in it. You know that this the 50% chance of either alternative and you are not investing this event with any Divine meaning, although of course God may decide to get involved. But you are flipping the coin because there’s no fairer way to decide between the two teams. The problem arises when you presume God’s involvement in your coin flip. For example, if you say, ‘God if we’re meant to go to war with this nation then let the coin be heads and if not then let it be tails.’ Now the coin will definitely be either heads or tails. So whether God decided to give you a message or didn’t decide to give you a message you have decided that this is a message. That is the biggest problem with predicting the future in this way. You will think God condones certain behavior, certain actions and if they go wrong, if they don’t go well you’ll say God misled me; you’ll blame God when God had nothing to do with it. He was not maneuvering that coin one way or the other. You cannot make an event that may be a random event into a non-random event simply by asking God to be involved. And that is exactly what Eliezer did. He prayed to God that God would send him a sign through the behaviour of Rivka at the well and whether she offered water for the camels.

Those commentators who wish to defend Eliezer’s actions say that he was not simply making a random sign for the future and deciding his behavior based on that but he was looking for a certain compassionate quality in Rivka. She should be not only generous but self-sacrificing. To draw enough water to give to several camels of a guest is not merely generosity, it is also a lot of work and a high degree of self-sacrifice. These are good qualities for the wife of Isaac. Recall that God describes Abraham’s mission as being to practice “charity and justice” (Gen. 18:19) לַעֲשׂוֹת צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט. To partner with Isaac in this mission Rivka should demonstrate charity. Therefore Eliezer was not asking for a sign but looking for an indication of her good qualities. Even if God was not involved in the events that transpired, this was still an intelligent way to discover the girl’s character.

If we look at the blessing that Rivka’s family gives to her before she leaves: (24:60) “Our sister, be thousands of myriads. May your seed inherit the gates of those who hate him.” (An echo of 22:17) On the surface this sounds like an aggressive militaristic blessing, that her children should conquer their enemies. This seems a very strange blessing to give a young girl who from the story seems to be a very generous and caring person. Why have they given her a blessing to be a conqueror? I think this can be understood when we realize that conquering the enemy is not for the sake of revenge or destroying those who are nearby but is to create a better society for them. If we look at the people around the Middle East in those times we’ll see that they place a very low value on life. There’s a certain cruelty in their hearts much as people in the Middle East today believe in unavoidable destiny and martyrdom. Perhaps possessing the gates will save the enemies from themselves.

The literal meaning of the blessing is that her offspring should inherit the gates of its enemy. We know that in the Bible the gates are the place where the elders sit and judge the people. So the blessing is not simply that Rivka’s offspring should destroy their enemies but that they should sit in their enemy’s gates and judge their enemy and in so doing elevate the culture and ethical norms of the society by bringing “charity and justice” into the gates and towns of those enemies. The Jew’s mission in the world is not to destroy the enemy but to enlighten the enemies. We see this in a straightforward way in the Torah that conquering is a mitzvah, first and foremost to remove idolatry which is to remove unethical and unrighteous cultural norms from those enemies. This is the mission God describes in Gen. 18:19, to do charity and justice.

Eliezer looked for a partner for Isaac who would possess the quality of charity and Rivka’s family blessed her that she should join with the Abrahamic mission of bringing ethics to the Canaanites, that she should be  the gatekeeper for the cultures that surround her family in the land of Israel. We should view our actions in Gaza not as revenge and as conquering for conquering’s sake but as a way to achieve a normal to achieve cultural normalization for our neighbors, that their culture should reflect the good values that Judaism has been teaching to the world for 3,000 years. And towards that end it is of utmost importance that Israel be in charge of the education administration of any lands that are under our administration so that the children who will be the next generation will be taught harmony and loving kindness. 

Parshat VaYeshev – The Three Loves

07 Thursday Dec 2023

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By Rabbi Nachum Danzig

26 Kislev 5784

Parshat Vayeshev speaks of Yaakov settling down to live with his family in peace in Eretz Israel. Rashi notes that the Torah has already told us that Yaakov has settled in Israel. Rashi brings a midrash about this extra emphasis that Yaakov was sitting in the land, dwelling in the land of his fathers:

ביקש יעקב לישב בשלווה. קפץ עליו רוגזו של יוסף.  צדיקים מבקשים לישב בשלווה !? אומר הקדוש ברוך הוא לא דיין לצדיקים מה שמתוקן להם לעולם הבא, אלא שמבקשים לשב בשלווה בעולם הזה

Yaakov had a hard twenty years and just wants to be allowed to dwell in peace now. But the Midrash criticizes Yaakov for trying to relax because it’s not the job of the zaddik to try to relax. And inasmuch as every Jew strives to be a zaddik this applies to us as well. We cannot relax and this is because we have a mission; we are servants of God; we are His shlichim; we have tasks and duties to perform constantly. Each person according to his ability, needs to serve God and serve the Jewish people and serve the world at large and cannot just relax. We cannot opt out.

Our thoughts of course move to our soldiers who are certainly not sitting in peace and trying to rest. They are serving God by defending the people of Israel. Protecting the people of Israel is doing God’s work. May God protect them!

We are definitely in a trying time right now. We are in a time of judgment – so many people were killed and tortured on October 7th and are still being killed and tortured. I mean of course the soldiers who are sometimes casualties in the war. I also mean the civilians being killed in acts of terror on the home front.  We are certainly experiencing a time of strict judgment. There are still hostages being held and tortured. This is a time of strict judgment.

The Talmud (Menachin 41a) describes how Rav Ketina was avoiding the mitzvah of tzitzit and criticizes him for it, saying:

בזמן דאיכא ריתחא ענשינן

The Talmud says that in times of strict judgement, then even avoiding the observance of an optional Mitzvah ( מצווה קיומית ) like tzizit can bring about the opposite of reward, ח”ו.  It can take away God’s Divine protection, ח”ו. 

The army has actually seen a great uptick in the desire of soldiers to put on tzitzit. I don’t think that most of the soldiers know this Talmudic saying but every Jew in his soul is connected to God and to Torah and intuitively knows that this is the time to wear tzitzit. 

And this reminds me of a kabbalistic idea,

ג’ דרגין אינון מתקשרין דא ברא, קב”ה אורייתא וישראל.(הזוה”ק אחרי ע”ג,) 

God, Torah and Am Israel are all one. Based on this idea, the Hassidic masters explain that the command to love God includes within it the command to love the Torah and to love one’s fellow Jew. These are called the three loves: the love of God, the love of Torah, and the love of another Jew. 

Love of God is not enough. Without the love of Torah and the love of one’s fellow, one’s love of God will not endure. But where the love of one’s fellow exists, it will bring one to the love of God and love of Torah. 

If a Jew loves God without loving his fellow Jew there is something lacking in his love of God. But if a Jew does acts of kindness to other Jews and loves other Jews this will eventually lead him to the love of Torah and the love of God. Thus loving one’s fellow Jew is the fundamental teaching of Torah.

Baruch HaShem we are seeing greater and greater love from one Jew to his neighbor. There is no greater love for one’s fellow Jew than risking one’s life to protect his fellow Jew. I think that the soldiers are teaching us to love one another better.  Just as we were exiled because of unbounded hatred.  So the redemption will come through unbounded love of our fellow Jews.

Baal Worship: Fertility Gods and Leviticus 26

21 Friday Aug 2015

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Parshat Bechukotai starts in Leviticus 26 verse 3.  We read the promises God makes if we keep His Torah and and then the threats of suffering if we do not.  But if we backup to the end of Parshat Behar (25:50 – 55) we read about the fair treatment of slaves, and are reminded that we were once slaves in Egypt.  Ending this section is a command not to worship idols.  (26: 1 – 2) .  Coming as it does after these laws of slavery it seems like just another place where the Torah tells us not to worship idols.  The Massorah which is the traditional division of paragraphs in the Torah clearly connects verses 26:1 -2 to the end of chapter 25.  But the Christians place them at the beginning of a new section, chapter 26.  According to the Christian division, based on the Septuagint, the idol worship prohibition is directly connected to the promises God makes.  I.e. Don’t worship idols, instead do my laws and you will get blessings.  And what are these blessings? First and foremost it is rain.

Let me quote the relevant verses:

“1 Do not make for yourselves gods and a statue and an upright stone do not stand up for yourselves and don’t put a covering stone in your land to prostrate upon because I am the Lord your God.2  My Sabbaths shall you keep and my Temple shall you fear, I am the Lord. 3 If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them,4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.5 Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely.”

Read this way, the connection between verses 1-2 and verses 3-5 is that instead of worshiping idols you should keep God’s Laws and then you will receive blessings.  Baal was the primary Canaanite deity.  He was the god of storm and fertility.  In the hilly land of Canaan there are no rivers. Agriculture is completely dependent on rain (compare Deut. 11 : 10 -11). Baal was worshiped as a fertility god, the storm brings rain which drenches that land and makes it fruitful. The rains should come and come in the right time of year so as to be useful for the grain harvest. When the people are told not to worship Baal they will naturally fear that the rains will then cease to come.  So the Torah reassures them that by keeping God’s Law, they will get the blessing of rain and so much abundance that “the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing”.

Verse 1 contains a strange list of idols.  At first reading we might suppose that the verse is simply listing various different kinds of worship all of which are forbidden.  But after a close reading we will notice the use of the word and not or.  It seems these items were worshiped together all at once.

In the ancient city of Hazor a collection of items for the worship of Baal were discovered. They are currently on display at the Israel Museum.  We find a semi-circle of smooth upright stones, the middle one is a slightly larger stone which has worshiping  hands and a crescent moon carved into it . In the center of the semi-circle is one flat stone which is unhewn.  There is also a statue of a seated Baal, its head having been severed at some later point, probably by Israelite monotheists.  Baal worship seems to have required all these elements.  The carved stones are the gods (elilim, “idols”)  from verse one.  The stone bearing the hands and moon is the upright stone.  The unhewn stone is the covering stone used for prostration and the statue is the seated Baal statue. All of these pieces were brought together to make a kind of ad hoc temple to worship Baal. Thus the Torah is listing the specific elements of Baal worship and telling the people not to worship Baal and instead promising fertility in the land based of adherence to God’s Laws.

The Massorah disconnects the prohibition of idolatry from the promises of agricultural success perhaps because idolatry was no longer such a threat.  In the absence of current idolatrous practice, it was better to simply emphasize the success that will come from Torah observance, without offering it as an alternative to a no longer existing practice.

-ND

Leaving a Good Imprint (From Heel to Toe)

21 Friday Aug 2015

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Parshat Ekev (Deut. 7:12 – 11-25) starts off using the Hebrew word ekev to mean “if” as in “If you will listen to these laws…” But the word has another meaning in Hebrew and that is heel. We can understand how the word heel can lead to the the meaning if when we consider the phrase “on the heel of” meaning as a result of. So instead using the word if, we can translate the sentence as “As a result of your keeping these laws … God will keep you”.

If we turn to the end of the parsha we find the words “sole of the foot”. So we can say the parsha starts at the heel and goes to the sole. This verse 11:24 reads “Every place which the sole of your foot will tread will be for you, from the desert and the Lebanon, from the River, the Euphrates until the Sea behind will be your territory.”   This might be taken to mean that the more places the Israelites walk on and conquer so will their homeland be greater in size. So it is a kind of encouragement to walk on and conquer more territory. But why wasn’t the all the territory they had previously conquered in trans-Jordan also to be theirs? Because that wasn’t Israel.  So then there are definite boundaries to the Holy Land. It is not something that can be expanded by the success or failure of military campaigns.  So the verse probably shouldn’t be understood as an imperative, go out and conquer, but more of a welcoming.  Know, that from now on , the places that you will be wandering about in are really yours.  You are home now. Once you cross the Jordan, any place you walk, is justly yours already.

I would like to suggest a different meaning in the spirit of the Hassidic style of explanation.  The verse doesn’t just mean the wherever you walk the land is yours, rather it tells us that wherever we go in life we should view that place as our own and treat it that way.  So if we are renting an apartment, we should leave it in a better state than we found it.  We should fix things and improve things.  The sidewalk in from of our house may not be ours, but we can view it as ours and keep it clean.  So too in social matters.  If there in injustice in our locale we should go about setting it right.  The Torah it telling us the we need to view our greater surroundings as our own and therefore treat them better.

-ND

Yitz Greenburg on Sukkot and Covenantial Responsibility

06 Monday Oct 2014

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Here is what I heard from Rabbi Yitz Greenburg today:

In the Guide for the Perplexed III 32 (see also III 24) Maimonides discusses Exodus 13:17. There God says he will take the Jewish people to Israel in an indirect route. Maimonides says this is to improve the nation and transform them from a slaves into brave soldiers capable of conquering the Philistines.

Rabbi Greenburg asks, God could have changed the nature of Jews or He could have changed the Philistines to be weaker.  In short, He could have achieved the goal of getting the Jewish people into the Land of Israel through miraculous means.

But God’s way is to give people what they need now, not coercing them but having them grow and internalize values.

This is central model of Judaism.  It carries over not just from desert to Israel but from Egypt to Israel. Coming to Israel the Jews faced the challenge of creating a society based on common values, justice, equality, and of covenantial responsibility. This is the journey we are on: to evolve toward this society through our own action and through our self-transformation.  That went on for a 1000 years, then they were exiled, then again they came back.  And is some way the they succeeded in that they survived, but they didn’t transform the world.  And this journey continues from ancient times to medieval times, to modern, to post modern times. And at each step in this journey we need to refine our society and bring it closer to that ideal state we seek.  And now we again have challenge of power.

Journey requires maturation.  And it must be over the course of generations.  One generation change leads to Stalinism, a non multi-party system, coercion, violence. And you get a society that is supposedly living by this ideal standard, but it is full of coercion and injustice.  So too today where people try to create an ideal Jihad based society overnight. You end up with a not perfect society, but one with a lot of killing and oppression. The price we need to pay for the slow transformation is to give legitimacy to the opposition.  So the journey is to deal with reality and to transform over time.  This is what the halacha is doing, the next best thing to the ideal, not total equality, but using taxes and tzadakka and shmitah to bring society closer to equality.

The Torah ideal is veganism. I Gan Eden (Gen. 1:29) even the animals are vegetarian, there is no predation. But we are not in that ideal state today, we need to compromise with real world, so the halacha allows only certain animals, a very limited number of species, killing is swift, can’t eat blood, i.e. I acknowledge that I don’t own the animal’s life, its blood,. No milk with meat to recognize that life and death is are in opposition, there is a penalty of eating meat, you must wait 6 hours to have milk.

In the real world, women are bought and sold.  There is a covenantial change. Look at Exodus 21.  It limits slavery:  6 year limit, and six day limit (on the sabbath slave are freed from work). Regarding women, only a father can sell his daughter, a stranger cannot, this prevents trafficking in women.  If the buyer doesn’t marry her, she is free, again this prevents trafficking.  But another covenantial step was taken regarding slavery, the Rabbis added restriction of hours, and comforts. They removed economic incentives.  The Rabbinic ketubah guarantees money in case of divorce. How does married life look if woman is afraid to be kicked out and destitute? The ketubah creates and equal relationship in the marriage.  This is the rabbinic role. Tikkun Olam

Best guarantee for a good loving marriage is a communal property law! So the rabbis pushed things toward a more ideal state.

But, if you can’t get there, so what to do? You have children, or teach other people’s children.  You pass on the covenantial responsibility. You convince the next generation to take on the task.

Devarim 29:  Losing Moses is a crisis. Nitzavim lists from the elite to the marginal member of the nation. They are entering the covenant. Covenant is not a one time event. “But with those who are not with us here this day.”  i.e. us! Not that our souls were really there back then but that we need to make the covenant now again in this generation. The verse is not saying that we were actually there, but that we can be there again now by reaffirming this covenant in this, the next generation. And by passing it on.

Kaddish, God’s kingdom will be established, that is universal equality.  So kaddish is a summery of all Judaism. The journey toward the ideal society. But why is it a prayer for the dead.  In my life I expected to complete the task.  But I didn’t. My life was a failure.  It was all useless.  But the answer is, no, it was not a failure if first of all I did as much as I could to move us toward goal, but also if I found someone to continue the task.  The one saying the kaddish is my continuation. He has taken up the mantle of covenantial responsibility. That my be my son or my student. Believing that I have to complete the journey means I am saying those others out there are jerks and won’t do it.  Have some trust in others, you are not the only one who has a vision of a better world. Depend on them, even on the future people you have never met. Respect other people’s capacities.  Covenant, the task, is open to future generations.

Joshua 24: My neighbors are saying that the only way to get a good crop is the worship Baal.  Maybe they do get better crops, I am tempted.  So Joshua recounts Jewish history. This is the journey. Verse 13: You inherited towns, you relied on the previous generation.  Now you must chose to take on the covenant.  Make a choice. Continue work of your predecessors.

Skip 800 years forward.  Coming back from the Exile in Babylon, the nation celebrated sukkot, Nehemia 9:6. Why does Nehemia open with ‘God created all’? To embrace the entire story, not just the Jewish people, but all of creation. The human being is seen as a partner with God.  We will complete the ideal started in create.  We are part of humanities journey, and we have our own journey as well.

Nehemia 10:32, God never gave up on us, now write down covenant.  And all signed it.  Sense the journey journey. I as a Jew experience that I am carrying on a journey, the rituals are not the goal, but are signs of a covenantial life.  I am doing my stretch of the journey. I am carrying on, doing my part.

Covenant respects people and helps them grow   This covenant is not static. It is attuned to the capacities of the people (ref. Guide of the Perplexed 3:32).  When the people’s capacity changes, the rule, the roles of the covenant change. After 1800 years, the people are a capable of higher level of participation.  For example, the Biblical God who intervenes , send miracles is no more. There is no longer a open God. God becomes more hidden.  A self limited God, referred to as the shchina, can be closer to the individual. The term shchina is not found in the Tanach. It is more feminine, mothering.  Now you can meet God in your home. Any meal can bring the shchina to you.  When you visit the sick, the shchina is there at the head of the bed. When making love, when feeding the poor, praying, shchina is there.  There is no more prophecy, but we can speak to God now. He is closer to us.

How can we know what God wants from us? Study, use our minds. We can look at the past record of God’s communication and interpret. That means it has many levels of meaning,  we can uncover meanings that are uniquely for us.  How else can we use are minds? We can use past advice from the Bible and apply it differently. The ketuba of old was meant to ensure women’s dignity in marriage by putting them on a firm financial standing. How can we ensure women’s dignity right now? How can we draw an analogy?  Maybe a halachic prenuptial.  Maybe with greater equality in communal decision making, leadership roles. We can study God directly, but we can also study the past behavior of covenantial community, look to the goals they sought and apply their thinking to our times.

Blu says equality does not mean identical function.

We are now in another zimzum. God is completely hidden. We are completely responsible.  There are dangers and opportunities in this.

The journey is an unfinished journey.  Celebrate not just that journey, but that it continues and that I am taking responsibility to be a part of it. This is sobering, but the consolation is that just as there are setbacks there are gains. Sukkot is the holiday of happiness.  This is not a simple-minded glee, but happiness that comes from the fulfillment I get out of being a part of this journey and task.

The Exodus pattern: the 10 commandments are the basis of our relationship.  “I am the Lord, God who took you out of Egypt.”  Exodus is a core teaching.  What us the historicity of the Exodus?  If believe it never happened, how can I live through it, by it? We cannot predicate the Torah’s authority on its historicity. Creation too is not scientific. But the story is shaped by our capacity to hear.  Moses at Rabbi Akiva’s beit medrash.  It is a paradox. The revelation was there all the time.  R. Akiva created a receiver that could capture it. So the story is not a story of history, but a story of narrative. Existence is bigger than we are.  We are the latest show on that stage.  But we can join in and use our godlike capacities. Do it because you understand why God wants this, not because simply because God’s will in absolute morality. If we keep the Torah because God says to, you remove your personal responsibility. This is the danger of appeal to Torah on the grounds of absolute morality.

(This a very soft sell of halacha, merely as a sign of covenant. A Reform Jew can also be part of this kind of covenant.  This is unlike a hard sell that ethics can only be based on an absolute, the will of God.  That is an all or nothing approach.)

Nitzavim Kids – Stand Tall

18 Thursday Sep 2014

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Do you ever stand together with your class in school?  Or maybe at assemblies? How do you feel at those times? When I am standing together with a group doing something or saying something together I feel very connected to everyone in the group. I feel like they are all my friends. Maybe I feel connected because there are no desks and chairs separating us. Connected because I can move around and be near someone I am not normally near. In this weeks parsha, Moshe had all the Jewish people stand together. We can only imagine how they must of felt in that huge group standing together.

And what were they doing? They were all promising to Moshe that they would keep the Torah.  Moshe wanted everyone to stand together and shout out all at once that they promised to always keep the Torah.  He wanted them to stand so that they would feel like one nation and one person. They should feel connected to each other.  And that is also why he brought together not just the adults but also the children. All Jewish people no matter their age are part of the Jewish nation.  Moshe wanted the whole nation with one heart like one person to promise to keep God’s Torah because he knew that he was going to die soon and would not be there anymore to remind the people to keep the Torah. Only their promise would be left to remind them.

Has someone ever promised you something or told you that if you do something he will do something for you – and then he did not do what he said he would?  A person can feel pretty angry and frustrated when that happens. Your brother promised to play Legos with you if you would play checkers with him first.  And then after the game, he decided not to play Legos with you.  You were excited to play Legos with your brother and now you feel cheated.  It is not fair. Promises must be kept.  So you get angry and tell him you are never going to play with him again.  And you are still sad. So it did not really help. But since we know how bad we feel when people break promises to us, we should always keep our promises to others.

I bless you and me that we should always keep our promises – our promises to each other, our promises to God –  our promises to ourselves.

Shabbat Shalom

-Nachum

Nitzavim – I Swear!

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

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The Land of Israel is in sight and the nation is about to enter and conquer it.  Moses and the people know this mean that Moses must die very soon. And so Moses is giving his last speech to the nation to encourage them to keep the commandments when he will no longer be around. The speech begins with Moses saying, “Today you are all standing before God your Lord… You are thus being brought into the covenant of God your Lord, and [accepting] the dread oath that he is making with you today.”(D 29:9-11)  The word used to mean “standing” is nitzavim.  This is not the normal way to say standing.  The normal word would be omdim.  And in fact, this word is use later, in verse 14 . So why does Moses use this unusual word here to tell the people they are standing before him?

And there is even a more essential question that needs to be answered, there have been several previous events where a covenant was made between God and the Jewish people (not counting the pacts between God and the forefathers), why the need to do this again?  There was the communal pact of the Pascal Lamb in which blood was use as a sign of the pact. There was the pact at mount Sinai.  And now there is this pact which is referred to as brit arvot moav. What is it’s purpose? It cannot be a pact to keep the commandments, that was already done at mount Sinai. And our being His people was already established with the Pascal Lamb. Commenting on verse 12, Rashi offers an answer to this question:

‘He will be your God’: He spoke with you and swore to your forefathers that He would not exchange their progeny with another nation, therefore He makes you take these oaths so that you do not provoke Him to anger [knowing] that He is not able to abandon you. This is the literal explanation. In the Midrash it is asked, why is this section subsequent to the curses? Because the Israelites heard 98 curses (not counting the 49 in Leviticus)  they turned pale, saying ‘who can withstand these [curses]?’ So Moses began to comfort them:  You are standing today even though many times you have angered Him. He has not destroyed you. You still exist before Him. [So too in the future if you anger him, you will survive.] – Rashi

The Jews’ covenant with God that has now gone through 3 phases and intensifications is an unusual pact.  Even if the Jews break their side, God will never leave them for another nation.  They might take advantage of this situation and ignore their side of the agreement knowing full well they will face no consequences.  Hence the preceding curses and blessing are integrally tied into to this pact. Since God cannot throw them out, and He is stuck with them, He makes the Jewish people swear not to violate his covenant.

But what use is an oath? The Jewish people already agreed to the covenant. What extra purpose does the oath to keep the covenant serve? Why should  a person obey his own oath more than the original agreement to the covenant? And what is the meaning of the Midrash that Rashi also mentions? If Moses is pronouncing all these curses to scare the Jewish people into keeping the covenant, why after achieving the intended emotional  reaction would he comfort them and tell them they will survive?  He wants to frighten them into keeping the laws.  Leave them scared!

The intent of the curses was not to scare the people but was an expression of their own commitment to the laws. Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain in his book Shem MiShmuel explains what is the purpose and meaning of an oath. When a person experiences an extraordinary event he can gain new clarity about his life and his behavior. For example a smoker may visit the cancer ward of a hospital and see the patients dying from lung cancer and suffering terribly.  He then resolves to never smoke again.  He throws away his cigarettes.  He rushes home and throws away all his packs of cigarettes.  He tells his neighbors to never give him a cigarette.  He calls all the shops in town and tells them not to sell him any more cigarettes again. But several hours pass and the shock of the experience begins to wear off and his desire for a cigarette increases until at last he goes to his neighbor and ask for a cigarette.  The neighbor says, I can’t give you a cigarette, you yourself told me not to.  The smoker responds, Yes, that was 5 hours ago and now I am telling you to give me a cigarette! Do my previous words have any more weight than my current words?  Rabbi Bornsztain says Yes, they do!

The smoker had clarity of the truth and knew that some time later this clarity would wear off.  He took every precaution to ensure he would keep his commitment. In the Torah this is done by swearing an oath. In so doing, one creates a certain level of commitment that can outweigh future views and opinions. Rabbi Bornsztain compares this to the oath of marriage. You are dating someone and at a certain point you realize all your thoughts are only about them and you want to be with them always – you are in love.  So you commit yourself to this person through marriage.  Much later an outside viewer might not see any signs of love. But you know that there is a deeper you, from an earlier time that was truly committed. So even now you are love.  If you could penetrate to that previous level, you would see it. Your oath of marriage is the reminder of your true feeling even if they are not visible now.

The law in the Torah of nazir, neder and shavua are legal structures which are founded on this principle. Why is there an oath at all? If I feel strongly now I will probably feel strongly next year too. And if I don’t feel strongly next year, why should I commit myself now? Because you know that now you have a special insight that might not last till next year.  You use the oath to tell your future self that your past level of commitment outweighs any future opinions.  This same concept can be applied to a nation and its future generations.

As long as Moses was alive, the Jewish people had a high level of clarity of God and their responsibilities to Him. They knew that with Moses’ death their clarity would fade. Therefore they took these oaths to create a level of commitment that would stand for them in all future times, even when that clarity fades.  This it the reason for the use of the word nitzavim instead of omdim. Nitzavim is related to the word matzeiva,  monument.  The monument is a constant reminder of some great event or person from the past.  Even if today we don’t remember how great that event or person was, when we see the monument we realize that it must have been very significant if they built this monument.  The standing of the Jewish people here was to create a similar monument by means of taking an oath. In this way, future generations should know that at one time the presence of God was clear and that the nation’s level of commitment to Him was without fault.  Even if today we do not readily see this commitment the oaths remind us that on a very basic level we are committed to God.

The people’s fear of the oaths was a fear that perhaps future generations would be so far removed from the events that the oath would not serve its purpose and the curses would crush the people.  To this Moses comforted them and responded that the current generation is just as much lower than the preceding generation as any future generation will be lower than they are. Just as the current generation is far removed from the actual generation that left Egypt and experienced that high level of awareness of God that was a result of being involved in the great miracles first hand and yet, they are still here and committed to God, so will any future generation be committed to God.

A similar clarity and oath followed the Flood.  After such a great event, Noah committed himself to keep for himself and all future generations the 7 Noahide Laws.  The monument to remind us of that commitment from a state of intense clarity is the rainbow.

 

Nachum Danzig