Vaetchanan 5774

By Rab Guido Cohen
A.I.M. Bogota, Colombia

Parashat Vaetchanan is always read after Tisha B’Av, once we have asked God “to make us return to Him,” so that we may return.  The Tisha B’Av fast signals the beginning of a period of exile, not just in national and historical terms, but also in individual and existential terms.  On Tisha B’Av, our feeling of remoteness from the Eternal One reaches its maximum peak and therefore, in the midst of the desolation we feel for having entered into an exile dimension, we pray to God to make us return.  And that is what He starts to do starting this week, with the succession of prophetic texts of comfort which we read in the Haftarot and which will slowly add, step by step, to the reading of Psalm 27, the sound of the Shofar, the Slichot and other rituals, until we reach the gates of the time of Teshuvah, return, and atonement.

On Tisha B’Av, the breach between the place where we would like to be and the place where we actually are, is greater than ever.  We leave “our land,” abandon the place promised to us, and feel awed.  And after Tisha B’Av we start to come back, we set out on the path to return to that place which we should never have left.

Then, perhaps it is not so strange for this week’s parashah to contain one of the few sources present in  the Torah, regarding the concept of Teshuvah.  Chapter 4 of the book of Devarim not only speaks about that very national return to the land, but also devotes its verses 29-39 to the individual return of human beings.  This concept (which will appear again in chapter 30), along with another that appears in Parashat Reeh (two weeks from now), which refers to the ability of human beings to choose between right and wrong, and therefore, their condition of responsibility for their choices and actions, are perhaps essential principles of our people’s system of beliefs.

I would summarize this in the following sentence: “We are free, and therefore responsible.  Nevertheless, even when we make mistakes, we have the possibility and duty to return.”  The chance that the Torah opens to human beings, of being able to turn back and repair that which is crooked, so as to return it to a state of uprightness, is, in my opinion, the most powerful lesson held by our tradition.

Martin Fierro, the most famous Argentinean Gaucho poem, has a phrase that says: 'al que nace barrigón, es al ñudo que lo fajen', which translated into the language of our lands means that when a person possesses certain specific characteristics, it is not worth devoting any effort to make them change.  According to the Martin Fierro, people are born with certain characteristics, which will accompany them throughout their entire life.  According to this position, when someone is a liar, evil, depraved, disrespectful, or with any other defect in their character, they will carry it for life, and struggling to change it has no meaning whatsoever.  People have a specific essence, which does not change.

This position can often convince us and, burdened by it, we can get to label our fellow beings based on a few facts, denying them the possibility of transformation.  We do not only do this with our fellow men and women, but also with ourselves.  We are convinced that we cannot overcome some flaw, and we label ourselves by one of our weaknesses.

And it is here that our parashah appears, just after our departure for exile, at a time when we long to return, when we say to ourselves that returning is possible.  Almost resisting the idea of people being branded by their faults and stinginess, the Torah teaches us that there is a chance to repair and mend what was broken.  The book of Devarim tells us this week that we can again hear the voice of God and return in our hearts, so that we may conquer the lost land once more.

The originality of the Teshuvah concept is one of the most extraordinary things created by our people.  The idea that “existential mobility” exists, that we are not static beings but beings capable of working with our character so as to continuously improve, is a wonderful thing.

This concept has occupied such an important place in our culture that the sages have taught that Teshuvah “brings redemption closer,” that “there where people stand doing teshuvah, not even the righteous dare stand,” or that an instant of teshuvah is preferable to a lifetime in the upcoming life.  In other words, our sages, of blessed memory, underline the importance of Teshuvah and place it above many other attitudes and practices.  It is possible that they knew that the idea that human beings can change, progress, improve, constitutes one of the most powerful weapons to transform the world.  It is difficult to accept when we are the ones called to change, and even more difficult when it is the time for us to accept others in their changes and understand, even if this story could have hurt us in the past, that people deserve a second chance.

Then, this week’s parashah inaugurates, not just in the Torah but also in our calendar, the period in which we have to work and polish that double virtue: that of transforming ourselves and opening up to the return of our fellow men and women, to embrace them and receive them, in the challenge of repairing that which was broken, bringing harmony back into the world.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rab Guido Cohen