Rabbi Breit's Blog

Rabbi Sacks wrote that Judaism has an “intense peoplehood dimension”. And yes, our connection to our people is intense — filled with love, empathy, demands, and bickering — as it has been for thousands of years. Our formation and development as a people, not as an assortment of individuals or an abstract moral idea, is the heart of the book of Deuteronomy. And the emotional ambivalence of peoplehood resonates throughout this week’s parsha.

We are all in it together and responsible for the Jewish world we build. Most nations make treaties leader to leader. But all of Israel has made a treaty with God here in Deuteronomy; all of Israel is responsible for upholding this pact between Israel and God. And as such kol Yisrael arevin zeh lazeh, all Jews are responsible for one another. This is a radical embrace of democracy and human dignity. We are no longer referred to as children, bnai Yisrael, as we were when following Moses through the desert under God’s protective wing. We become a people that must uphold our agreement with God on our own as the responsible ones. We have to figure out how to live in Divine law without Moses’ prophetic clear leadership. We are officially a people, deeply connected, bound by covenant, but soon without the leader who resolved our fights and interceded on our behalf with God.

But even Moses had struggled with our infighting. He remembers appointing judges and magistrates after exclaiming, “How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering!” The people constantly complain, worry, fret, and fight each other. It’s a common stereotype that as a people we are prone to argumentative discord, you know the saying: “two Jews — three opinions”. With such closeness comes bitter fights. Disagreement with a stranger is one thing, but disagreement with someone very close to you can feel like torture.

And as a people we can easily be swayed by pessimism. The stereotype of an anxious Jew resonates throughout modern American culture. And Moses retells the story of the scouts, the 12 Israelite representatives sent to spy out the land of Israel, who come home convinced we’d be defeated by the giants in the land of Israel, and how the people lost hope and “sulked” in their tents, unable to see the good in this new land and convinced it would be better just to return to Egypt and die there.

Moses tried to address these problems for us — building a system of courts and judges and rule of law to resolve disputes and insisting that the land is good, that what God gives us is good. But they are never quite solved. This Shabbat let us learn from the echoes of Dvarim’s warning to our people — don’t dissolve into bickering or pessimism. See the good in our blessings and don’t let arguments distract you from who we are or where we are going. Shabbat shalom!