I have recently started a committee at our Shul (along with our Cantor) to attract young members (25-35 years old) and encourage their active involvement in the Shul, and in Jewish life. Tonight we hold our first event, a Shabbos Dinner. This was supposed to take place in the Cantor's home, but the response was so great, that we needed to move to a larger space!
I will be delivering the Dvar Torah. What follows is my planned speech.
-----------
Public speaking is often listed among the activities people fear most. While I regularly engage in public speaking at work, I’m still not completely comfortable with it.
However, this small discomfort is magnified when I’m preparing a Dvar Torah. During the preceding week, I’m truly anxious. But the anxiousness is not in anticipation of the speaking, but because of the desire to convey a meaningful message in the time I have.
Winston Churchill is considered to be one of the great orators of modern time. He once said; “Ask me to speak for an hour, and I’ll start right away. Ask me to speak for 5 minutes, and I’ll need time to prepare.” A speaker can ramble for an hour on any topic, but when you only have 5 minutes, you need to make sure you use them well.
And since I’m sure you’d all prefer that I talk for 5 minutes as opposed to rambling for an hour, I’ve chosen my topic carefully.<>
This week we start the book of D’varim (Deuteronomy), the fifth and final book of the Chumash. The book is Moses’ farewell address to the people in the days before his death, and just before the people enters the
Promise Land. The book is written in the first person, Moses speaking directly to the people. The other four books are written in the third person; “G-d spoke unto Moses saying, ‘speak to the people and tell them…’.”
This change in style has been noticed by ancient and modern readers. While modern scholars are quite comfortable using this information to suggest a different “source” or author for this book, traditional Jewish opinion, both ancient and modern, insists that the entire Torah is the word of God. So strong is that insistence that the Talmud teaches (Sanhedrin 99a) that if a person claims the entire Torah is written by G-d, except for one word which was written by Moses, that person has denied the entire Torah.
But the Talmud itself says that the first four books came from G-d through Moses, but the words of D’varim came directly from Moses. How does traditional Judaism resolve this issue?
Before we get to that, we need to ask “why do we care?” What would be the big deal if the first four books were written by G-d and the fifth by Moses? It’s a matter of authority. Judaism is Torah. If all or part of the Torah is man made (even if that man is Moses), then it has less authority that if it were written by G-d. Less authority for the Torah means less authority for Judaism. Judaism is Torah. Even if we say that the ideas come from G-d but the words come from man, that has less authority and if the words were to come from G-d.
But the Torah is full of places where the words don’t come from G-d. “And Pharaoh spoke to Moses…” These words clearly come from Pharaoh. Yet we still say that those words are just as divine as the ones describing the giving of the 10 commandments.
What gives those words their authority is that G-d told Moses to write them down. Even if the words come from man, they become divine when G-d decides they need to be included in the Torah and tells his scribe, Moses, to write them.
That’s what happens in D’varim. Moses writes his own speech and delivers it to the people. At the end of the speech, G-d tells Moses “I couldn’t have said it better myself. Now right it all down”, and then proceeds to dictate back to Moses everything that was just said. When the speech was given it did not have divine authority, it got that authority when G-d told Moses to write it down.
This is captured (cryptically) in the Zhoar when it writes that the entire Torah are the words of G-d, but the book of D’varim are also the words of Moses.<>
The book of D’varim is always started on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av. One reason for this is that a major theme of the first parashat of D’varim is the retelling of the story of the spies. That tragedy occurred on the 9
th of Av. On that day G-d told
Israel that because they cried for no reason, that G-d would give
Israel many valid reasons to cry on that day in the future. In addition, Parshat Devarim is a record of Moses' speech of chastisement to the Jewish people, an especially appropriate prelude to the historic day of Divine chastisement. This connection is too powerful to ignore. Parshat Devarim and the 9
th of Av clearly belong together.
The story is told that Napoleon was walking through the streets of Paris one Tisha B'Av. As his entourage passed a synagogue he heard wailing and crying coming from within; he sent an aide to inquire as to what had happened. The aide returned and told Napoleon that the Jews were in mourning over the loss of their Temple. Napoleon was indignant! "How come I wasn't informed? When did this happen? Which Temple?" The aide responded, "They lost their Temple in Jerusalem on this date 1,700 years ago." Napoleon stood in silence and then said, "Certainly a people which has mourned the loss of their Temple for so long will survive to see it rebuilt!"
When we loose a loved one, we cover the mirrors, we sit on the floor and we mourn for 7 days. Then every year we light a candle, say Kaddish and drink a L’Chaim, but we don’t reenact the mourning. So why do we continue to mourn a loss that occurred 2000 years ago?
When the Temple was destroyed, we lost more than a building; we lost the ability to practice normative Judaism. Normative Judaism requires a Temple, High Priest, alter and sacrifices. We will not be able to return to that until the Temple is rebuilt. The Jerusalem Talmud makes an astounding statement: "The generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt is to be regarded as though the Temple was destroyed in that generation." The explanation is simple. When we mourn for the Temple, we are not mourning for a building that was destroyed 2,000 years ago. Our mourning must be directed to the realization that each generation is obligated to rebuild the Temple and that our failure to do so has little to do with politics, the debate over who has control over the Temple Mount, or the threat of the Arab nations to go to war if we disturb the mosques that sit atop the Temple Mount. The Temple will be rebuilt when a sufficient number of Jews make a commitment to Judaism. When will the Messiah come? As the Torah says, "Today, if you hearken to My voice."
That’s why we’re here today. The trends suggest that commitment to Judaism is declining with each generation. These problems are in no way unique to Judaism, but they are uniquely important to us. The continuity of Shaar Shalom and the Conservative movement is in jeopardy. Cantor Ben and I started the Young Members Committee in order to address this problem, because the solution lies with our generation. We need to stem by tides of assimilation and secularization. We need to foster our love for Judaism, keep Jewish homes and pass our traditions on to the next generation. That is what has sustained us through 2000 years of exile, and that what is needed to sustain us in the future. We’re starting with a Shabbat program, because there in lies the key to continuity.
More than the Jews kept the Shabbas, the Shabbas kept the Jews.
B’H’, May we all live to see the day when continuity is no longer an issue; a day when the entire Jewish world turns its attention away from internal politics and towards the Almighty.
Shabbat Shalom
No comments:
Post a Comment