Va’eschanan – What it means to be human

Moshe gives over the עשרת הדברות this week, and although they only take up a few פסוקים, I think the entire פרשה is riddled with hints of a message that the עשרת הדברות are supposed to teach us.

In a פרשה full of inspirational recounts of what happened at הר סיני and how we are a special and chosen nation, there are two specifically dark pieces of texts. First, in middle of warning the people not to sin in the land we hear foreboding words. כי תוליד בנים ובני בנים ונושנתם בארץ והשחתם, when you have children [in the land] and you will be in the land a long time and you become corrupt. This is not a warning, Moshe is prophesizing here of what will happen. There is no השמר or פן here which would indicate that this is merely a warning, rather this is news of what will be in the future. But the ending is more encouraging, ובקשתם משם את יהוה אלהיך ומצאת כי תדרשנו בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך, you will search from there for Hashem your God and you will find Him because you searched with all your heart and all your soul. But why would Moshe give such a bad report in the first place? Even if it will certainly happen, what would it help for them to know now? And, the language of בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך tells us that searching is not enough, you need to search with your whole heart and whole soul.

Second, we hear how Moshe sets aside 3 ערי מקלט on the east side of the Jordan river. This was done after we defeated סיחון and עוג, which happened in פרשת חקת. So technically the details of these 3 cities could have been anywhere from חקת until the end of דברים. And what’s worse, Hashem tells Moshe the הלכות of unintentional murderers in פרשת מסעי, so the perfect place for this piece of text from our פרשה would have been right there in מסעי! Why sandwiched in all this talk of getting the Torah? And further, the story of the ערי מקלט isn’t great. The specific act in the story was done without intention but the גמרא tells us that the characters in this story weren’t the best of people. Both of them have murdered previously, one intentionally and one unintentionally, and both either ran away or were not able to be charged by a court of law.

So, we have 2 pieces of text which openly discuss sinners in middle of the פרשה of the עשרת הדברות. What could this mean for us? To answer I’d like to share a fairly well known גמרא from מסכת שבת.

The גמרא tells the story of what happened when Moshe went up to שמים to get the Torah. The angels were furious! “what is this human – born from woman – doing among us?” they cried. Hashem tells them that he has come to accept the Torah, they contest the idea of sending the Torah down to Earth, and Hashem tells Moshe to answer them as to why humans deserve to have the Torah. Moshe, using the עשרת הדברות, shows how the Torah is meant for those with a yetzer hara. He asked the מלאכים, do you have any temptations to serve idols? To honor your parents? To kill? To adulterate? To kidnap? Obviously, the Torah can only be for humans, and the מלאכים agree with his statement. As an aside, this is what חז”ל mean when they say לא ניתנה תורה למלאכי השרת. It means that the Torah was specifically not given to angels, rather to humans that struggle with right and wrong.

I think this is the deepest and most transformative message that we can know about the Torah. To know that Hashem and the Torah embrace our yetzer hara. That we are in a war with our יצר הרע and that even victorious wars have lost battles. Hashem loves us, and he loves our mistakes, because that gives us the opportunity to come back from it. I think therefore the stories of future generations straying and the ערי מקלט are in this פרשה. To show us that mistakes happen, and people go astray. But when we search for Hashem with all our heart and all our soul, i.e. with both our yetzer hara and our yetzer tov, that is where the magic happens and where we connect to the point of the עשרת הדברות.

I think this also explains a contradiction in what Moshe says regarding our Sinai experience. First, he says השמר לך … פן תשכח את הדברים אשר ראו עיניך, be careful lest you forget that which your eyes saw [at Sinai]. Then he says, ונשמרתם מאד לנפשתיכם כי לא ראיתם כל תמונה, be very careful with your soul since you did not see any picture. And earlier he also says, God spoke to you, a Voice of words you heard but you did not see a picture, only voice. Did we see or not?

We know it says that they saw sounds and heard sights at the mountain. But that was only at the mountain when Hashem came into the world and senses were intertwined into an inseparable experience. When Moshe is telling the people afterwards, he wants them to remember that as far as their reality is concerned now, all they experienced were sounds. What’s the difference between sight and sound? Sight is whole, and sound is fragmented. When I see something, I am looking at an entire picture and my brain processes the whole picture at once, and then will break it down into elements if I continue to analyze. But when I hear something, I only get tiny bits at pieces at a time and my brain collects them all and slowly builds them into something I can understand and analyze. And if the source of sound goes away in middle I won’t be able to get the full experience. Moshe was imparting to the people that although the original experience was all senses intermingled, what your take away is that you are meant to live in a fragmented world. Where the sum total of battles fought make up the war, and each lost battle with your יצר הרע is all part of the bigger picture that you are constructing. Even our failures are cherished in the hopes that we will be able to see them as a new opening that we can now access Hashem from.