Devarim 5774 - English

By Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik
Kol Shearith Israel -Panama

Could it be that Moses is, after all, just like anyone of us?  Like all those experts who specialize in blaming others?

These questions seem to arise from a passage that appears in Parashat Devarim.  At the beginning of his long “racconto” to the young generation, Moses mentions the event of the scouts and the resulting divine punishment, which established that no adult of that generation could enter the Promised Land (Num. 13).  And surprisingly enough, he then adds:

 “Because of you the Lord was incensed with me too, and He said: ‘You shall not enter it either.’” (Deut. 1:37)

Here, we find two modifications to the story as we know it.  The first one is that Moses’ punishment was a result of the incident with the rock in Meribah (Num. 20:12), and the second, that God stated very clearly that the one responsible for the misdemeanor was Moses and not the people (Id.).

 Then, it would seem that when Moses tells the story, he “rewrites” the events, omitting his responsibility and transferring to the people, in the same way he does a little later on:

“Now the Lord was angry with me on your account and swore that I should not cross the Jordan and enter the good land that the Lord your God is assigning you as a heritage.” (Deut. 4:21)

Commentators try to explain the actions of our character.  In his interpretation of this passage, Ramban (Nachmanides, Spain, 13th century) affirms that Moses knows perfectly well that these are two separate events (the scouts on the one hand, and the incident with the rock, on the other), but decides to mix them because they both have the same consequence:  his inability to enter the Land of Canaan.

Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain, 12th century) maintains that Moses makes a sort of parenthesis, when he mentions Caleb (Id. 1:36) and before naming Joshua (1:38) – the only two adults who entered the land – explaining that he will not enter; thus, the reference to his punishment is recorded in the story of the scouts.

Saadia Gaon goes a little further and affirms that, in truth, the people are indeed guilty for Moses’ not being able to enter the Promised Land.  And how is that?  If the scouts hadn’t forced the people to transgress and, therefore, to wander 40 years through the wilderness, Moses would still have been the leader of the people on their entering the land of Israel, just two years after leaving Egypt.  In other words, without the event of the messengers, the Meribah episode, almost 40 years later, would never have happened.

Let us put all these interpretations aside for a moment, and focus in Moses’ human side.

Like anyone of us, his mind builds up defense mechanisms. He could get angry with God for such an excessive punishment; he could get angry with himself for that fit of doom before the rock, but the thing is that in the end, consciously and unconsciously, he chooses to blame the people:  “because of you.”

Just for once, Moses stops being a statesman and becomes a simple leader.  And as if that was not enough, his attitude remains on display due to a “dirty trick” of the Jewish calendar.

Parashat Devrim is always read on Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat prior to Tisha B’Av, festival in which we commemorate the destructions of the First and Second Beit Hamikdash (Temple of Jerusalem), among other tragedies that occurred.

When the Talmudic sages wonder why it was that the First Temple was destroyed, they answer:  “Because of three evils in it: idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed.  But why was the Second Temple destroyed…? Because… hatred without rightful cause prevailed” (Yoma 9b).

The sages could have very well claimed that geopolitical reasons were what caused the fall of Jerusalem.  Babylonians were devastating everything from the north and, in their passing through Egypt, they conquered the Kingdom of Judah and destroyed the First Beit Hamikdash (year 586 bCE), as did the Romans later on: to the purpose of ending the violent revolt of the Jews, begun in the year 66, they destroyed the Second Temple 4 years later.

To our sages, however, the actual cause of the catastrophe came from inside.  The decline and immorality of the First Temple generation, then the haughtiness and arrogance of the leaders of the Second Temple.

Unlike this Moses, who appears so human in our parashah and decides to transfer the blame to others, Talmudic sages concluded that the tragedy was an opportunity to learn some teachings, teachings that can only be learned when responsibility is accepted.

Tisha B’Av could have been a history lesson, but Talmudic rabbis preferred to bequeath us a moral.  Almost 2000 years later, the message is still in force.

Shabbat Shalom,

Gustavo