With this week’s parashah we begin the last of the five books of the Torah, what our tradition also refers to as Torat Moshe, the Torah of Moshe. The entire book is a retrospective, a re-telling (the meaning of the word “deuteronomy”) of the epic myth of the Jewish people.
We can tell it like a joke, that HaShem invites Moshe up Mt Nebo to see the land promised to the people before his death at the end of the previous Book of Numbers – and then it takes Moshe all of the thirty-four chapters of Deuteronomy to die. But when the time comes for each of us to look at our lives and consider the trace we left among our people, it will probably take each of us some undetermined – but longer than we might anticipate – amount of time, and devarim, “words” (the Hebrew name for this final book of the Torah), to come to understand ourselves.
In the second year of the Triennial Cycle, we begin the reading with Devarim 2.2-3:
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר ה’ אֵלַ֥י לֵאמֹֽר׃ רַב־לָכֶ֕ם סֹ֖ב אֶת־הָהָ֣ר הַזֶּ֑ה פְּנ֥וּ לָכֶ֖ם צָפֹֽנָה׃
Then ‘ה said to me, “You have been skirting this hill country long enough; now turn north.”(Dev. 2.2-3)
It’s as if we are being told to stop beating around the bush. “Skirting,” avoiding, taking the long way around, is usually the way of putting off something both inevitable and unwanted. The prophet Jeremiah, who lived through those terrible days, warns, “From the north shall disaster break loose upon all the inhabitants of the land” (Jeremiah 1.14)
As we near the end of the Three Weeks that bring us to Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of Av upon which, 2610 years ago, the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, our ancient tradition urges us to face it: not to look away any longer from the destruction, and from taking stock of how it could have happened.
“North” refers in that day to the direction from with the enemy empire’s army descended upon our people to destroy us and our home. Geographically it is the direction in which the city of Jerusalem is most vulnerable; but we are taught that the direction in which we should be looking is ethical, not topographical.
Like nothing else, the clear call of our prophetic tradition insists that destruction of a city begins with its own internal moral rot. This is as true of Jerusalem then as Portland Oregon today, where I write these words.
And we must face it: it is also true of Jerusalem today.
Many of us who come from an orientation of ahavat Yisrael, love of all things Israel – people, place, language, culture, spirituality – have been rising up to declare by our acts that the haftarah for this week is more relevant than ever:
לִמְד֥וּ הֵיטֵ֛ב דִּרְשׁ֥וּ מִשְׁפָּ֖ט אַשְּׁר֣וּ חָמ֑וֹץ שִׁפְט֣וּ יָת֔וֹם רִ֖יבוּ אַלְמָנָֽה׃
Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow. (Isaiah 1.17)
The leadership of our U.S. Jewish community, traumatized and torn, complicit and confused, will not face it. Those who call themselves the left in the U.S. cannot discern it through the fog of their own ignorance and antisemitism. And none of us can take any comfort in what we see when we turn toward this truth (partial though it is).
Our ancestors recorded their own conclusions in our Talmud, that Jerusalem was destroyed because of “Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed.”
שְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים, דִּכְתִיב: ״וְגַם דָּם נָקִי שָׁפַךְ מְנַשֶּׁה עַד אֲשֶׁר מִלֵּא אֶת יְרוּשָׁלִַם פֶּה לָפֶה״.
With regard to bloodshed it is written: “Moreover, [King] Menashe shed innocent blood very much, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another” (II Kings 21:16). – BT Yoma 9b
On this Shabbat Hazon, a time of apprehension for so many generations, we also find ourselves caught up in fear of evil from the north, this time Iran. We also are dismayed by bloodshed carried out by the rulers of Israel today. We, also, may find ourselves like Jeremiah, eyes streaming with tears for the people and land he loved, as it is brutalized by those who thrive on hate and fear.
It is not easy to face. But “facing it” in our English language should remind us of the Hebrew, panim, a word often encountered in relational terms, with HaShem: panim el panim, face to face.” This stance facing HaShem is a way to speak of undeniable, in-your-heart knowledge. The kind you don’t want to know, and will do anything not to admit.
It’s easier to lose oneself in anger, to deny complexity, to skip over facing and feeling and go directly to blaming. Even easier than that would be to avoid thinking about it altogether. But haven’t we been skirting this hill country long enough? Mourning must be faced; all that has been lost must be grieved. Only then might we together find a way forward toward redemption.
This is the hope our ancestors eked out of the horrors of their own day, building upon the final verses of that same prophet Isaiah, whose words will offer some small consolation next Shabbat:
כׇּל הַמִּתְאַבֵּל עַל יְרוּשָׁלַיִם — זוֹכֶה וְרוֹאֶה בְּשִׂמְחָתָהּ,
Whoever mourns for Jerusalem will merit to see her future joy. – BT Ta’anit 30b
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 