Shabbat Slichot - Nitzavim-Vayelech

Deuteronomy 29:9-63:9

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Expanding the Covenant

At the edge of the Promised Land, Moses convenes his people one last time, to draw them into the covenant between them and their God. This great gathering of the masses evokes the last great gathering, forty years earlier, when the people of Israel were encamped at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Then, in the Book of Exodus, God instructed Moses:

"Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothes . . . Moses came down from the mountain to the people and warned the people to stay pure, and they washed their clothes. And he said to the people, 'Be ready for the third day; [the men among] you should not go near a woman' " (Exodus 19:10, 14–15).

The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised Edition, 1 added the (corrective!) phrase in brackets, [the men among]. The Hebrew reads simply, "You should not go near a woman." This startling direct address to men calls into question who is being covenanted at Mt. Sinai. To whom is God (or Moses) speaking? It is possible to read this formative narrative of the Jewish people in a way in which only men are brought into the covenant, and indeed, many still do.

Deuteronomy, however, offers a different read:

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Ki Tavo

Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

The Power of a Story

Long ago, in the days when we were farmers and shepherds in the Land of Israel, the Torah taught us that when we harvested our crops, we were to put the first fruits of our harvest in a basket and bring it as an offering to God. In this passage, the Torah recounts the only prayer of antiquity of which we still have a record. It is as eloquent as it is simple:

"The priest (hakohein) shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of the Eternal your God. You shall then recite as follows before the Eternal your God: 'My father was a fugitive Amamean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us. We cried to the Eternal the God of our ancestors, and the Eternal heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The Eternal freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents, bringing us to this place and giving us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, Eternal One, have given me' " (Deuteronomy 26:4-10).

This is certainly not a prayer in any conventional sense: it doesn't beseech God, it doesn't ask for anything, praise anything—no Hallelujahs or blessings of the Lord. It's just a story. A simple story:

When you harvest your crops, put the first fruits of your harvest in a basket and place it on the altar, and recite this prayer; tell this story:

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Ki Teitzei

Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

We Are What We Remember

The last paragraph of Ki Teitzei is the maftir reading in non-Reform congregations on the Shabbat before Purim. Its opening word, zachor, "remember," names that Shabbat.

"Zachor, Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Eternal your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Eternal your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!" (Deuteronomy 25:17–19).

I was present on a Yom Kippur morning many years ago when Rabbi Harold Schulweis asked his congregation if they could name members of Hitler's SS. And the names came pouring out from all corners of the sanctuary: Himmler, Eichmann, Goering, and on. And then Rabbi Schulweis asked the community to name the people who tried to save Anne Frank and her family. Silence.

Blot out the memory of Amalek, of all those who have tried to destroy us. But, he asked, whose names have we blotted out, and whose names have we remembered? In focusing on our suffering, we have chosen to see ourselves as victims, to see in others the potential hater.

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Shoftim

Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Breathing New Life into Ancient Teaching

One of the joys of Jewish life in the Land of Israel is the way ancient texts can be used in ordinary moments of daily life. A rabbinic colleague tells the story of a Jerusalem traffic jam: traffic had come to a complete halt, and drivers were leaning on their horns in frustration. The taxi driver (who was driving my colleague) finally stepped out of his car and reprimanded the driver behind him, with a full, verbatim quote of Exodus 14:15, in its original Hebrew:

"Why are you yelling at me? Speak to the people of Israel and tell them to move!" (The translation here is meant to reflect the use of the text.) Never mind that in the original context it is God speaking to Moses at the Sea of Reeds.

At another moment of Israel's story—a moment neither joyous nor quotidian—members of Israel's judiciary community brought a different Torah text to bear on Israeli society. It was 1982. Israel was in control of southern Lebanon when Lebanese Christian Phalangists attacked the predominately Muslim refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and many were killed. Huge protests in Israel against the killings forced the government to take action, resulting in its convening a commission to assess the responsibility of the Israeli government and army. The Kahan Commission,1 established by the Israeli government, was chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel's Supreme Court. It concluded that the Gemayel Phalangists bore direct responsibility for the massacres in the refugee camps, and that Israel was to be held indirectly responsible. It is to this second charge, that of indirect responsibility, that we turn our attention.

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R'eih

Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Food and Covenant

God blessed the first humans, told them to multiply and increase, and then instructed them: "Look, I have given you all the seed-bearing plants on the face of the earth, and every tree that has in it seed-bearing fruit; these are yours to eat" (Genesis 1:29). In the utopian vision of the Garden of Eden, human beings are created vegetarian.

The vision of the garden collapses, however. God created human beings to struggle with good and evil, but alas, they chose evil all the time. "When the Eternal saw how great was the wickedness of human beings in the earth, that the direction of their thoughts was nothing but wicked all the time, the Eternal regretted having made human beings on earth, and was heartsick. So the Eternal thought, 'I will wipe the humans whom I created from off the face of the earth—the humans, [and with them] the beasts, the reptiles, the birds of the sky—for I rue the day I made them' " (Genesis 6:5-7).

Following the flood, God again blesses human beings and tells them to multiply and increase. But this time, God does not set the bar so high regarding food. "God then blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. . . . Any small animal that is alive shall be food for you, like green grasses—I give you [them]' all" (Genesis 9:1,3). Human beings may now eat anything at all—with one proviso: "But flesh whose lifeblood is [still] in it you may not eat" (Genesis 9:4). Human beings are granted unrestricted access to the flesh; the life, symbolized by its blood, does not belong to us. In the Torah's framework, this law applies to all of humanity—to Noah and all his descendants.

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Eikev

Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

"All the world needs is love." We hear that refrain in our music, in our theologies, in conversations prosaic and profound. While there is no denying the power of love as the essential and irreplaceable core of our lives, there are also other things we need: a home, sustenance (food), and meaningful work—among others. And even love is multilayered and often complicated.

While the Hebrew prophets often use the metaphor of love and marriage to describe the relationship between God and Israel ("I will betroth you to Me forever," Hosea 2:21), the Torah uses different metaphors to describe that relationship. Deuteronomy 5:2–3 provides one of many beautiful examples:

"The Eternal our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our ancestors that the Eternal made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here today."

How this covenant is understood forms the center of the conversation about what it is to be a Jew. What is the nature of this covenant? Is it binding? Who is included? What are its obligations—upon us, and upon God? Are there consequences for violating the covenant, and if so, what are they?

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Shabbat Nachamu - Va-et'chanan

Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

Do Not Make Yourself a Pesel, Lest Torah Become an Idol

In the next parashah, Moses will tell the Israelite people: "Thereupon the Eternal One said to me, 'Carve out two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain; and make an ark of wood. I will inscribe on the tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets that you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark.' . . . . After inscribing on the tablets the same text as on the first—the Ten Commandments that the Eternal addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the Assembly—the Eternal gave them to me" (Deuteronomy 10:1-4).

Our parashah, Va-et'chanan, contains this second text of the Ten Commandments. One would expect a perfect replica of the first set, an exact repetition, as Moses and God both promise. It is startling and wonderful to see that the texts are not identical. Traditional commentary,1 encoded in L'cha Dodi, tells us that both versions of the commandment to observe the Shabbat are uttered in the same instant by God (shamor v'zachor b'dibur echad); the single Divine word shatters into countless sparks as when a hammer strikes the anvil. Biblical criticism 2 teaches that the (edited) text we have before us is made up of different versions of our sacred narratives. Either way, the Torah pushes back against the notion that there could ever be a singular version of Divine truth. Divine truth is always beyond human grasp; the pure light of the Divine is necessarily refracted by human experience into countless colors.

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