Va-ethannan: What do you get the parsha that has everything?

If you want one parsha that hits practically every theme of Jewish tradition, you can do worse than go for Va-ethannan.

You’ve got Moses, begging The Lord to enter the Promised Land, and reporting back that “The Lord said to me ‘Enough! Never speak to me of this matter again!’” (Deuteronomy 3:26).

You get God promising that observing the laws will be “proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples...” (4:6) and there you have it, the tradition of exceptional Jewish intelligence.

You get plenty of warnings to “Never Forget” ; for example: “But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live.” (4:9)

You get your Ten Commandments (one version of them, anyway...), you get your stone tablets, you get your Lord who “spoke to you out of the fire; you heard the sound of his words but perceived no shape -- nothing but a voice.” (4:12)

You get your advance warning of and explanation for the Diaspora:

When you have begotten children and children’s children and are long established in the land, should you act wickedly ... I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you that you shall soon perish from the land ... The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a scant few of you shall be left ... There you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, that cannot see or eat or smell. ( 4:25-28)

Well, sort of. It probably wasn’t really advance warning; scholars figure Deuteronomy was written mostly after there’d already been some scattering.

Did I mention the Ten Commandments? Cue the thunderclouds.

Devarim

Yes, late again. Maybe I should make it a policy to be one week behind. Then I wouldn’t be late all the time.

Devarim is the first parsha in the Book of Deuteronomy. The entire parsha is an extended recap of Exodus and Numbers, like that hour-long special they showed before the Lost series finale. Much of it is told in first person by Moses. It’s an extended monologue: “And then God said this, and we did that, and I said this, and you did that, and ...” “And I said to you at that time, saying, 'I cannot carry you alone.’” (1:9) “ How can I bear your trouble, your burden, and your strife all by myself?” (1:12) And then you pissed God off, and He punished you like so, and I pissed God off, and he punished me, and these are all the people we displaced, and so as to justify our exterminating them I’ll mention how those peoples were in the land because they’d come in and exterminated the people who lived there before them, who had done the same to the people who lived before them. And here we are, back in the bloodbath.

Matot and Masai

A day late and a dollar short yet again, folks. Matot and Masai were last week’s double-header parsha game, ending last night, when the rest of my family did Havdalah and I lay in a tranquilized stupor in my tempurpedic bed. Two parshas, I guess, for those pesky calendrical reasons I can’t wrap my head around; in other news, did you know Hanukkah is like, the week of Thanksgiving this year? It’s a-crazy, man. A-CRAZY.

A couple of weeks ago I complained about Balak to a Rabbi teacher of mine and he said something like “maybe you should skip the next couple of parshas for your blog, because they’re pretty tough to swallow...” But no, I am de-VO-ted to my parsha project, swallowing be damned. Anyway, I ought to know what’s in those scrolls I go to shul each week to hear read out loud in a language I don’t speak. I ought to know what I’m revering as Torah when I revere the Torah. Wait, I’m getting perilously close to having an Alanis Morrisette song stuck in my head, though given what’s been stuck in my head the last few weeks, an Alanis Morrisette song is a distinct improvement, which goes to show how very badly my brain has broken.

So: Matot and Masai.