Two Sinais, Parashat D’varim/Shabbat Hazon

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Parashat D’varim/Shabbat Hazon
Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22

Moses begins his personal and especially powerful review of Israel’s history and destiny, along with a review of the Divine directives to help Israel on their path. Each review is connected to the other. Our history and our Torah of laws and values are interdependent and mutually influential.

As Moses sets the stage for his extended set of orations, he begins by acknowledging the point at which these words are spoken – at the threshold of entering into the Promised Land. And he reminds the people that they are here, in this place, at this moment, because of a failure of nerve that condemned them to wander in the wilderness for forty years. Their present moment and location are not what they might have been. The people could have entered the land at a different moment, from a different place. Instead, the change in place and time has been determined by their own actions a generation ago. But pointing out this sad fact is not necessary to Moses only to set the stage for his main point.

His main point is to create a review of the Torah (a “Second Law” – Deuteronomy). Moses will repeat the story of the giving of the Torah in great and inspiring detail (beginning in the next Torah portion). Why? As Robert Alter, an excellent translator of and commentator on the Torah, says, “Moses’s valedictory transmission of God’s commands to Israel is a second Sinai, and the written text that records his final discourses is in turn to be understood to be the permanent vehicle through which the approximation of the Sinai experience can be reenacted…”(The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, p. 873) This reenactment throughout the generations will insure that the Torah will always remain alive as a possibility for Jewish living.

If, then, Moses offers us, in his way, “a second Sinai,” then we may perceive his introduction, in our Torah portion, as corresponding, in its way, to what preceded and led to the first Sinai. I mean, the enslavement in Egypt. The first giving of the Torah was meant to reverse the bondage that Israel suffered in Egypt and to free us from it. But it worked, if at all, only briefly. The “second Sinai” is meant to liberate us from a “second enslavement.” We may say that Moses presents the story of the spies and the disastrous reaction of the Children of Israel as that “second Egyptian enslavement.” And the “second Sinai” is meant to free us from this second enslavement. But why should it work any better than the “first Sinai”?

The power of Moses’s admonition rests in the stark comparison of these two historic developments. Our original bondage in Egypt was foisted upon us through a convoluted set of circumstances. But our second enslavement is freely chosen by ourselves alone. In the first instance we go down to Egypt against our will, in search of food. Ironically, the beginning of our first bondage occurs with the children of Israel being falsely accused of being spies. (Gen. 42:30 etc.) But our second enslavement begins with our willingly becoming spies. And it is these spies who turn their own people against their destiny. It is we who hanker to return to Egypt rather that accept God’s gift. Our forty years of wandering is our self-imposed bondage.

But, just as surely as our first bondage was imposed upon us, so was our first, short-lived liberation imposed upon us by God. Moses’s anguished hope is that, this second time around, if we could choose bondage ourselves, we might also be able to choose, ourselves, the Torah as our liberation. And, as before, we have come to this place, at this time, and we are again facing this choice.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein

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Photo: collage of image by Seif Amr on Unsplash, used with permission

Thank you to John Lasiter for suggesting the title and selecting an image for this Torah Sparks – Rabbi Greenstein

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