Two Keys to the Future

Parashat Va-et’chanan, Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11

Dr. Daniel Nessim, Kehillath Tsion, Vancouver

One of the remarkable characteristics of Devarim is that it provides both a retrospective and a prospective view. Speaking to a new generation that did not experience slavery in Egypt, Devarim looks back at what God has done and looks forward to what he will do. For Moses at this late point in his life, there is no discontinuity between the past and the future. He has lived the past. This people whom he is teaching now may not remember it, but to him they are the same people he has been leading for forty years, even though their parents have all died in the intervening years.

Facing Failure

It is an almost irresistible tendency for us to think that we are not like previous generations, and that we can start out afresh without addressing the past. Perhaps that is a good thing, and Moses makes it clear that we are not bound to repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before us. But we have choices to make.

Moses himself wanted to undo the mistakes of his past. He himself recorded his humiliating failure when he struck the rock that God had told him to only speak to, so that God would be magnified before all the people. God told him in Bamidbar (Numbers) 20:12, “Because you did not trust in me, so as to cause me to be regarded as holy by the people of Isra’el, you will not bring this community into the land I have given them.”

Understandably, Moses was distressed. If only he could undo the past! So in 3:25 he asked to cross over and see the land, but God denied him, as he did in our previous parasha. “Rav lecha!” God said, which probably means “too much!” or “let it suffice you,” as Rashi says—“If you keep praying like this you’ll make yourself appear obstinate, and make your master appear too harsh.” Moses had to accept the decree. He wouldn’t get to cross over and see what the other side was like.

Sometimes we would like a preview too. When we are young we might want to know what God wants us to do with our lives. Who to marry? What career to choose? When we get older we might wonder what is on the other side of the river that all must cross someday. “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble,” our great Teacher tells us. “Do not worry about tomorrow” (Matt 6:34). This was a lesson Moses had to accept.

Facing the Future

What God did tell Moses to do, after promising him the opportunity to see the Promised Land from a great distance, was to prepare the next generation. He was to take Joshua and command him, encourage him, and strengthen him. Like Moses we have enough to know, and enough to do, today. Not knowing the future doesn’t mean that we don’t prepare younger generations to face it.

God wanted Moses to face the future. We might extrapolate that he expects us to face the future too. Our parasha teaches that facing the future requires two things: Remembering the past, and Listening to, obeying, our God.

Remembering the Past

Remembering the past has become a trait of our people. In a recent interview Prime Minister Netanyahu emphasized the importance of reading good histories above (not to the exclusion of) any other kind of reading. Through Moses, the nation was told to “be careful, and watch yourselves diligently as long as you live, so that you won’t forget what you saw with your own eyes, so that these things won’t vanish from your hearts” (4:9).

Today we are facing a future full of fears. What will happen to Israel now that the Judiciary’s power is being constricted? Will Israel become a dictatorship? What will happen to us now that Artificial Intelligence has made its big debut? Are we headed for a dystopian future? The Israelites had their fears to face. Will the Canaanites destroy us? How can we face their walled cities? Will we end up living in the desert forever?

The solution to all of these fears and the many others that we face in our lives is to remember the past. In Devarim 4:3 Moses tells them not only to remember, but to identify with the past. To a generation that had never been to Ba’al-P’or Moses says, “You saw with your own eyes what Adonai did at Ba‘al-P‘or.” A few verses later in 4:10 Moses makes it clear that this generation, the one that could claim that the Torah was simply given to the previous generation had themselves “approached and stood at the foot of the mountain.” It was this new generation that Adonai had spoken to out of the fire (4:12) some forty years before. It was this generation to whom Adonai proclaimed his covenant (4:13). “He proclaimed his covenant to you, which he ordered you to obey, the Ten Words; and he wrote them on two stone tablets.”

For Israel, remembering the past was not to be mere memory. It was participation in the past, just as at the Passover Seder each one is to identify with the Exodus as if we had personally been delivered from Egypt.

Hearing the Lord

 Facing the future required a second thing. Hearing the Lord.

Variations of the word “listen,” from the root “shema,” occur numerous times in Parashat Va-et’chanan. In 4:1 Moses tells Israel to hear God’s laws and judgments. In 5:1 he again tells them, “Hear O Israel the laws and judgments,” and emphatically adds, “Adonai did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us—with us, who are all of us here alive today. Adonai spoke with you face to face from the fire on the mountain.” Hearing is now bound up with remembering. The two cannot be separated.

It is this command to “hear” in Devarim 5:1 that prefaces the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments of Deuteronomy, just as in the Ten Commandments of Exodus, the commands begin with the recognition of who God is, a memory, if you will. The first command begins: “I am Adonai your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you lived as slaves.” Here the very core of the Torah, the Ten Commandments, is directly connected with the past—the Redemption from Egypt. To face the future, Israel is required to remember what God has done for them in the past, and even more so, to view themselves as personally having been brought out of the land of Egypt.

Having twice told Israel to hear, Moses again tells us—and I think now we should say “us” after learning the lessons about identifying with our people and our common history of redemption—Moses tells us “veshama’ta.” “Veshama’ta” means “and you shall hear.” Once again, this hearing is connected to the past—to the promise of Adonai, the God of [our] ancestors” to give us “a land flowing with milk and honey” (6:3)

Conclusion

And so it is that we are brought to the Shema, in Devarim 6:4: “Hear O Israel, Hashem our God, Hashem is One.” And here is the plot twist.

All of a sudden, after this declaration, in the strongest possible terms, we are commanded to love our God. You shall “love Adonai your God with all your heart, all your being and all your resources” as David Stern of blessed memory translated it. Perhaps because we pray this up to three times a day we forget how revolutionary this command is. So far in the Torah, love for God has only been mentioned twice, and not as a command but as a sort of promise connected to the second of the Ten Commandments. God lavishly bestows “chesed,” or unmerited and kind love toward those who love him.

When we love God, even love him with all of our heart, being, and resources, God’s promise is that he pours out his “chesed” to the thousandth generation.

We remember. We hear God’s commands. Responding to his love, we can have assurance that just as he has always loved us so he will to the thousandth generation. Rashi summarized the Shema and its future ramifications for not just Israel but all peoples by quoting Zephaniah 3:9: “For then I will turn to the peoples a pure language that they may all call upon the name of the Lord,” and again from Zechariah 14:9, “In that day shall the Lord be One and His name One.”

Even so come, Lord Yeshua.

 All biblical citations are from Complete Jewish Bible.