Parshat Devarim: Living Informed by Historical Memory

Unlike the previous four books of the Torah, Sefer Devarim (the Book of Deuteronomy) reads like an entirely different text. Here, in the final weeks of his life, Moshe speaks on his own behalf, recounting the preceding forty years of wandering and tribulation, success and failure, disappointments and frustrations, all in a final, valiant attempt to permanently instill the values of Torah and allegiance to God in the hearts of a recalcitrant Bnei Yisrael.

We are so used to hearing the familiar formulation וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר (“God spoke to Moshe, saying…”) throughout the Torah, that when we encounter the opening words of this parsha: אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־כׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל (“These are the words that Moshe spoke to all of Yisrael…”), the sensation is one of disrupted continuity; a jarring awareness that this moment in the journey of Bnei Yisrael, and the arc of Moshe’s leadership itself, is somehow different. 

Sefer Devarim is, in this sense, really more “Moshe’s book” than “Hashem’s book”. It is a deeply human re-examination, as well as a re-litigation, of a life lived as comprehensively as a human can possibly hope to live. To this day, we bless others that they should live עד מאה ועשרים — to the age of 120, the exact age at which Moshe died (he died on his birthday, the 7th of Adar, making him life exactly 120 years long), as if to say that this is the full measure of human capacity and achievement. 

So what does Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our Teacher, a man not known to waste time, do with the remaining 37 days of his life? הוֹאִ֣יל מֹשֶׁ֔ה בֵּאֵ֛ר אֶת־הַתּוֹרָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את — “He took upon himself to clarify this Torah” (literally, “this Teaching”) (Devarim 1:5). Knowing that his death was imminent, that he himself would not enter the Land, and that the era of his teaching and leading the people was drawing to an end, Moshe committed to transmitting to Bnei Yisrael a version of their own history they themselves could use as a tool for navigating their impending future without him. 

Upon crossing the Jordan, there would be no further Revelation at Sinai, no more clouds by day and pillars of fire by night to follow, no additional manna from the heavens. Bnei Yisrael would need to transition from a life of living within a historical moment to living informed by historical memory.

The Torah, Moshe knew, would serve as the vessel for stepping back into the sensation of standing at the foot of Sinai, into the intimate dance of initial courtship between God and Bnei Yisrael — חֶ֣סֶד נְעוּרַ֔יִךְ אַהֲבַ֖ת כְּלוּלֹתָ֑יִךְ לֶכְתֵּ֤ךְ אַֽחֲרַי֙ בַּמִּדְבָּ֔ר בְּאֶ֖רֶץ לֹ֥א זְרוּעָֽה, “The devotion of your youth, your love as a bride — how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown” (Jeremiah 2:2). As the rigors of living in the Land and the later ruptures resulting from our expulsion from that Land - ruptures from which we still greatly suffer to this day - multiplied, our sense of the eternality of that Divine dance might come to feel increasingly fraught and tenuous. Not just Torah, but a clarity of the purpose of the Torah for future generations who did not personally witness the events recounted within it, would serve as a fitting antidote to that sense of untetheredness. 

Moshe understood this fundamental truth, and acted upon it in the waning days of his life: the past is a story we tell ourselves in the present to make meaning of and inform our future. Without this essential link to our historical past, a sense of continuity, and therefore purpose, fades hopelessly away beyond the horizon, never to be recaptured and impossible to fully reconstitute. 

This is why Sefer Devarim, the 5th book of the Torah, is essential. It actualizes the ongoing utility of the previous four books by making Jewish historical memory transferable, both spatially and temporally.

As historian Simon Schama teaches, “The Jews invented a portable religion in the shape of the Bible, the Torah, and eventually the Talmud, and with other portable forms of writing. So it's now possible to carry the religion that is embedded in that writing away from the ruins of political and military power.” Carry it we have, through 3,300 years of the past, and into innumerable years of the future. May we merit to continue carrying the Torah through journeys in new wildernesses, and may we merit to have the Torah continue to carry us.

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Artwork by Hillel Smith.