Devarim - Shabat Jazón 5776 - English

By Rabbi Guido Cohen

Asociación Israelita Montefiore Bogotá, Colombia.

Devarim

This week’s parashah marks not only the beginning of the last book of the Torah, but also the beginning of a new stage in the life of Moses. Moses, who has been the main character in the text since his birth, is known as a man of few words. According to the sages, ever since his childhood, speaking was an issue for Moses. A known Midrash from Shemot Rabbah tells us the episode of when Moses grabbed a piece of hot coal and placed it in his mouth, forsaking some precious stones, to save his life from Pharaoh’s advisers. From there on, speaking was always difficult for Moses.

This was so harmful that when God chose him to liberate his people, among the many objections raised by Moses was the difficulty he would have communicating with the Hebrews and with the Pharaoh. He had a ‘heavy tongue’, ‘uncircumcised lips’, meaning that talking was not his thing. However, God promises him that this would not be an impediment: his brother Aaron will be his interpreter and spokesman, and the difficulty to express himself will not be an obstacle for his leadership. Beyond solving Moses’ doubts, God was setting an important precedent regarding the qualities that a leader must have to guide the people. A man who is not a great public speaker, but who accepts his defect and accepts help seems to be God’s perfect candidate for the job. We might ask: if Aaron was such a good speaker, why did he not lead the people? The answer is probably in the episode of the golden calf, where public speaking did not help Aaron save the people from their worst fall.

But the book of Devarim opens with a different Moses. A Moses that begins speaking in the first verse and continues all the way to his death. The entire book of Devarim is a great speech from the leader, where he scolds the people, promises, teaches, blesses them, and even offers them a farewell chant. Moses, the heavy-tongued, the one who could not speak, at 80 suffers from a verbal incontinence that does not match the personality we knew.

I have always found this transformation surprising: from timid stuttering public speaker to eloquent verbose leader that only death manages to silence (and not even). With this change, the Torah is giving us a powerful message regarding how and when leaders must speak.

We live in a world where access to positions of power is essentially based on public speaking. Political campaigns are basically people talking and promising things, and to a considerable measure, they are elected based on what they talk about and how. Then, after much talking, they take up the

positions where they are supposed to ‘do’, without necessarily feeling committed to do what they said they would.

The Torah proposes to invert the order in this process. First, Moses does by defending the Hebrew slave being whipped and intervening in the fight between two Hebrews. After doing, he claims that speaking is not his thing, and still God confirms his leadership. Evidently, it is not his public speaking skills that make Moses the right man to lead the people. First, he has to do and that doing is not necessarily attached to any speech.

When is the right time to speak? After doing a lot of things. When he had done practically everything that he was supposed to do, already old and ready to finish his mandate, Moses begins to speak. He doesn’t begin to promise what he will do, instead in his goodbye he goes over everything he has done. Words aren’t his letter of introduction; they are his farewell message. First, he does and he does a lot. Then, when he is through doing, he says goodbye with words. Pirkei Avot teaches us to “talk little and do much,” and Moses fulfills this teaching like no other leader. Quietly, humbly, and laboriously, he does. Paraphrasing the Avot treaty, Moses loves the work and rejects the arrogance that comes with the job. He concentrates on his challenge, without making grandiose campaigns or seductive promises. He is even willing to do even when it means being unpopular. Only when he retires as an old man does he dare to speak. Maybe he wasn’t a stutterer; maybe he was just prudent. Maybe his tongue wasn’t heavy, but in his immense wisdom he knew the danger of speaking before doing.

May we learn the lesson of Moses, to do a lot, and only then, when there is nothing left for us to do, may we speak to evaluate, remember and bless those that benefited from the work of our hands.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Guido Cohen