ספר דברים

Deuteronomy 1,1. “These are the words which Moses ‎spoke to the entire people of Israel in the desert, facing the ‎wilderness near Suph between Paran and between Tophel‏ ‏‎ ‎and Lavan.” It seems reasonable to see in the word ‎ערבה‎, wilderness, a reference to the first time the word ‎ערב‎ ‎appears in the story of Creation (Genesis 1,5) where the meaning ‎is “evening,” a transition from day to night. At the time of the ‎creation the evening preceded the first morning, as before the ‎creation of light the universe had been in darkness, as we read ‎there in verse 2, and as the Talmud points out in the beginning of ‎tractate B’rachot, when discussing the times for reciting the ‎‎keriyat sh’ma. If we take our cue from that paragraph in the ‎Torah, the early years of our lives would be described as ‎ערב‎. ‎Having this in mind, the Torah, i.e. Moses, alludes here to the ‎need for every human being from his earliest youth to focus all of ‎his activities on the aspect of G’d familiar to us by the name ‎‎Shechinah, “G’d’s Presence.”‎The deeper meaning behind the words: ‎בין פארן‎, is that this is ‎the site on earth from which the ability for living creatures on ‎earth to become fruitful and to multiply is derived. As to the ‎words: ‎ובין תפל‎, we follow Rashi, who quotes Rabbi Shimon ‎bar Yochai who claims that no one has ever been able to find ‎these two locations. He therefore concluded that these names are ‎similes, used by Moses to rebuke the Israelites who had spoken ‎derisively of the manna (Numbers 1,7), which was white, ‎לבן‎. The ‎word ‎תפל‎, [possibly as root of: ‎תפלה‎ “prayer”. Ed.], ‎according to Rashi, is another word for “speech” ‎‎(presumably Israel’s accepting the Torah with the words ‎נעשה ‏ונשמע‎, “we shall do and we shall listen (to instruction).” Moses’ ‎address teaching the Israelites to make G’d their focus at all times, ‎and to observe these covenants meticulously, covers the period ‎between the covenant of circumcision made with Avraham and ‎that of the Ten Commandments made with the assembled Jewish ‎nation at Mount Sinai.‎