ספר דברים

Deuteronomy 1,3. “Moses spoke to the Children of ‎Israel in accordance with all that Hashem had ‎commanded him concerning them.” ‎This verse will ‎be better understood when we look at the Zohar III 149.where the ‎‎Baraitha of Rabbi Yishmael at the beginning of Torat ‎Kohanim, states ‎כל דבר שהיה בכלל ויצא מן הכלל וגו'‏‎, “anything ‎that was included in a general statement, but was then singled ‎out to teach something, was not singled out to teach only about ‎itself., but to apply its teaching to the entire generality;” When ‎applied to the Holy Torah, we have to distinguish between ‎matters treated by the Torah as “more profound than ‎immediately visible after a superficial reading of the text, i.e. ‎פנימיוות וסוד‎, “something mystical, buried deep inside,” and ‎between matters that every reader can understand at once, such ‎as references to places, dates, such as when the Torah relates ‎details of the lives of Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov. When the ‎Torah reports about their respective dealings with Lavan, or ‎stories told about the matriarchs, Bileam and his ass, these are ‎not to be understood only at face value, but they contain deeply ‎hidden aspects, such as that we are to learn from the excerpts of ‎Avraham’s life how do practice loving kindness with our fellow ‎man. From the details revealed about Yaakov’s life, we are to learn ‎about the righteousness of Yaakov; similarly there are many ‎human attributes practiced by our matriarchs which we are to ‎learn to emulate by immersing ourselves more deeply in the ‎stories of the Torah than one does by reading a novel. Proper ‎reading of these “stories” helps us understand that we are till this ‎day benefiting by the merits accumulated by our forefathers, ‎some of which, we, as their descendants, are being rewarded for. ‎Rachel’s foregoing marriage to her betrothed, Yaakov, in order ‎not to publicly shame her sister Leah, is one of the outstanding ‎examples of selflessness from which we are to learn, according to ‎our sages, when they comment on Jeremiah 31,14 ‎קול ברמה נשמע ‏נהי בכי תמרורים רחל מבכה על בניה מאנה להנחם על בניה כי איננו‎, “a ‎voice is heard in Ramah- wailing, bitter weeping- Rachel weeping ‎for her children she refuses to be comforted for her children who ‎are gone.” In its introduction to megillat eychah, ‎Lamentations, the author, quoting above verse from Jeremiah ‎interprets it as G’d’s promise to bring redemption to Rachel’s ‎descendants on account of her merits.If the Torah took the trouble to relate fragments from the ‎lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs to teach us to emulate their ‎virtues, it wrote of Bileam’s conduct in order to teach us not to ‎emulate the abuse Bileam had made of his freedom of choice. ‎Anyone reading of how boastful Bileam had made a fool of himself ‎and left Balak after having become totally discredited, will surely ‎learn a lesson from this. Avot 5,9 points to the difference ‎between the disciples of Avraham and the disciples of Bileam. ‎Avraham’s virtues are worth emulating, whereas Bileam’s great ‎intellectual gifts, due to their being abused by their owner, must ‎be shunned. In other words, although we are able to derive much ‎value from just reading the text superficially, what is hidden ‎behind such superficial reading of the text is even more ‎illuminating. Similarly, with the parts of the Torah that on the ‎surface purport to teach G’d’s commandments; although we ‎must, of course use the text in order to know which ‎commandments to perform and when and where, the text ‎contains many hidden nuances that are discovered only when we ‎apply ourselves with the intention to discover them.‎This is what the author of the Baraitha of Rabbi ‎Yishmael that we quoted earlier meant when it stated that ‎‎“any matter that was part of a general statement, etc,” the ‎general statement is the Torah as a whole, whereas “the ‎statements singled out,” are the specific details about critical ‎moments in our patriarchs’ and matriarchs’ lives, as well as ‎critical details in the lives of other personalities the Torah has ‎singled out from the millions it could have chosen. The words in ‎the Baraitha “but was then singled out from a general ‎statement to teach something only about itself,” refer to specific ‎attributes possessed by the persons mentioned, which are meant ‎either to be emulated or to be shunned. The words: “was not ‎singled out to teach only about itself,” teaches that the attribute ‎emphasized in that example is not to be treated as an exception ‎but is to be applied generally.That Baraitha also hints ‎by its wording that we must not only look for something beyond ‎the bare text in the stories the Torah tells about outstanding ‎personalities, but search for deeper meaning in the text teaching ‎the commandments. There is a lesson to be learned not only ‎regarding how to perform the commandments, but also regarding ‎moral/ethical lessons to be derived from each ‎commandment.This latter idea is somewhat elaborated on in ‎the Zohar. It is interesting to note that the fifth Book of the ‎Torah is known also as ‎משנה תורה‎, [loosely translated as ‎‎“review of the Torah,” although it is much more than that, ‎containing commandments that did not appear previously at all. ‎Ed.] In this Book, the emphasis is not so much on the ‎attributes of outstanding human beings, but on the attributes of ‎the Creator, and His relationship to His chosen people under ‎various circumstances.Knowing the manner in which G’d ‎relates to His people is the key to all the warnings issued by ‎Moses to the people concerning their deviating from the right ‎path and the consequences which this would bring in its wake ‎sooner or later, whenever G’d’s patience in waiting for the people ‎to repent would come to an end. Since the Book of Deuteronomy ‎was addressed (at the time) to the generation of Israelites who ‎had not been adults at the time of the Exodus, or who had not ‎even been born yet at that time, they did not need to have ‎everything spelled out for them by means of the stories in the ‎Torah, i.e. parables, as according to Moses’ own testimony in ‎Deut. 29,3 they had become a generation that could use their ‎eyes and ears (not only physically). This was a generation that ‎was not tainted by the ritual pollution it had taken out with ‎them from Egypt.This is how we must understand Bereshit ‎Rabbah 12,3 that wherever the Torah commences a paragraph ‎with the words: ‎אלה וגו'‏‎, “these,” etc., it signifies that conditions ‎that had existed prior to this point had become completely ‎irrelevant. In the line in Genesis 2,4 where we find the word ‎אלה‎ ‎for the first time, this signals that anything that the Torah had ‎written about the state of the universe before the creation of ‎light, i.e. the state of ‎תהו ובהו‎, utter chaos, had by now become ‎totally irrelevant. When we apply this Midrash to the Book ‎of Deuteronomy, it means that rules that had been relevant to ‎the people who had left Egypt as adults no longer had any ‎relevance. The present generation was on a spiritually so much ‎higher level that Moses could speak to them without having to ‎use parables. This is also what Rashi had in mind when in his ‎commentary on the words: ‎אחרי הכותו את סיחן וגו'‏‎, “after He had ‎smitten Sichon, etc.” (1,4) he says that Moses waited with his ‎words of rebuke for the people until G’d had begun the ‎fulfillment of His promise to give the land of the Canaanites to ‎Israel by giving them vast territory on the east bank of the ‎Jordan. That important victory had concluded the 40 years of ‎wandering in the desert without meaningful progress. At that ‎point Moses became able to speak to the people in the manner ‎G’d had commanded him to do (end of verse 3).‎