Va'etchanan
Va’etchanan contains two of the most well-known passages in the whole of the Torah – the first paragraph of the Shema and the repetition of the ten commandments. It also contains admonitions to the children of Israel to keep the commandments which God had given them.
Deborah Masel Miller is a teacher and author with a special interest in Jewish mysticism. She lectures regularly for Jewish and interfaith organizations and writes for various publications. For the past six years she has conducted classes on the weekly parsha. She has presented for Limmud Oz since its inception in Australia.
“And I pleaded” Wings of Prayer [Deuteronomy 3:23 – 7:11]
Comfort, comfort My crushed, My desolate people; bring them into the room beyond comfort, where I am prayer and I am pain.
Listen Israel as My servant Moses leads you to My crying rooms; hear him plead, Oh Lord open my lips …Lord let me cross over… let my teachings fall like rain…
Generation to generation…Ears that heard God speak from fire now hear His rain fall gently on their future fields. Eyes that saw the mountain burn to the heart of heaven see the goodly land across the river; but no one hears the breaking of a heart; they do not see the face that once saw face to Face look back in wonder and ahead in anguish.
This man Moses, born to be apart, pleading for his people. I will fill the world with prayer, said he upon that other peak, before I let You flood it with Your pain. You will show mercy upon whom You show mercy, and I shall never know Your ways, yet will I not choose the cloistered Eden-comfort of a drunken Noah, nor will I let You make of me a great nation. Blot me from the book You have written. I will forge a different comfort. If they would but listen I would teach them the comfort of carving You a highway through the desert stone, of loving You with all their heart and being and might in pain and sickness, in longing and defeat…
O that I had wings like a dove, I would fly away, and be at rest, then I would wander off, I would lodge in the wilderness…I would haste me to a shelter from the stormy wind and tempest…
Enough, said the Lord to His friend Moses. Let your longing be enough; let it hover here upon the blindness of My dark night. Let your longing sing My praise from here, My wounded dove, until your people learn to carry you across upon the eagle’s wings of prayer.
from In the Cleft of the Rock: Writings on the Five Books of Moses, by Deborah Masel
Another Voice - Taste of Limmud Team
On Wednesday we will celebrate Tu B’Av, a minor festival which is likened to Yom Kippur as a joyous occasion. In ancient Israel, it was the custom that on the 15th of Av "the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed linen garments (so as not to embarrass those without beautiful clothes of their own)... and dance in the vineyards" and "whoever did not have a wife would go there" to find himself a bride (Talmud, Taanit 31a).
It seems strange to have such a joyous occasion just 6 days after Tisha B’Av the most solemn day of the Jewish year. However it is the very link with Tisha B’Av that makes Tu B’Av a time to celebrate. On Tu B’Av the generation who left Egypt, who were condemned to death after the sin of the spies (which happened on Tisha B’Av), stopped dying.
Thus we can see why the comparison to Yom Kippur holds true. On Yom Kippur Moshe Rabbeinu descended Mount Sinai with the second set of tablets signifying Hashem’s forgiveness of the Children of Israel. Likewise the joy of Tu B’Av is the fact that despite our iniquities Hashem has yet again shown us mercy.
