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Parashat Va-etchanan
August 4, 2012
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg
Parashat Va-etchanan is an amazingly rich Torah portion, and it is full of paradox. In it, Moses recalls pleading with God to let him go into the Land and getting the harsh response from God that he should just shut up and stop whining!
Moses also spends a lot of time reminding the people to follow the mitzvot that they are to observe in the land. He reminds them of the awesome experience of Sinai – that this experience should continue to echo in the People’s consciousness, calling them to continue to worship the One God whose voice they heard out of the fire. Moses is quite concerned that the people will be lured to worship other gods.
As part of the remembrance of Sinai, Moses repeats the 10 Commandments. And he frames his exhortation to adhere to the commandments with the powerful, enduring words of the Sh’ma. We are to love YHVH our God with all of ourselves – mind, spirit, and strength.
In the final chapter of this parasha Moses instructs the Israelites to wipe out the 7 nations living in Canaan and to destroy all of their religious places, idols and pillars. This section concludes with another beautiful passage about how God chose us from among the peoples out of love.
As I read the parasha this year I kept feeling like I was on a pendulum, swinging swiftly back and forth from messages of fear and punishment to messages of love and special treatment. We see these contrasts even in a single verse. For instance, the last few verses of the portion read, “Know, therefore, that only the LORD your God is God, the steadfast God who keeps His covenant faithfully to the thousandth generation of those who love Him and keep His commandments, but who instantly requites with destruction those who reject Him.”
This contrast echoes a much larger paradox – that of Moses’ experience of God throughout the Torah. We see again and again in the Torah, Moses appealing to God’s qualities of mercy and compassion and patience, asking God to forgive God’s people. This happens at key moments, for instance after the Golden Calf incident and the incident with the spies. Typically, God kills off some of the Israelites but forgives the People as a whole and allows them to move forward in relationship with God. But ultimately, at the end of the Torah, we have this story that opens our parasha this week – a story of Moses begging God to forgive him, and of God refusing to be moved to forgiveness.
What do we make of these sudden swings from compassion to destruction? What do we make of God’s treatment of Moses? What do we make of a tradition that tells us that God loves us - that asks us to love God with all of ourselves – and which depicts God as quick to punish a person the instant that person turns away?
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