Dvar tora parshat Devarim by Martin Brody. And the Lord said “Thou Shalt Study History” Actually, He didn’t say that, but it’s certainly implied. The first four books of the Torah, which we completed last week, have a format. It starts with a history lesson, although mostly allegorical. First the universal, with the Creation story, the development of the Earth, the ascent of man, and then to a particular family, Abraham and his descendents. This is followed by a legalistic section, with the giving of the Torah and the building of the Tabernacle, and the myriad of laws regulating a Jew’s life, and concluded with blessings and curses and a bit more history. This historical prologue causes Rashi to ask his first and famous question in his commentary on the Torah, why should it be so? A book of Law should commence with laws, not stories, he poses. Rashi answers, to paraphrase, it is to teach us that if we are going somewhere, we have to know something about where we are coming from. In this case, about the Creator and His promise of the land of Israel to the Jews. It is clear from the narrative that the study of history has such import that it is included in Torah, and that, rudimentary as it is presented, it is as much our job to research and uncover the details, as it is with the laws themselves. This format is repeated in the final book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, which we begin this week with the Sedra of Devarim, starts with a review of the Jews forty year march to freedom from slavery in Egypt, to a legalistic section, detailing many laws, some not recorded previously, but appropriate for the entry into Israel and concludes with similar blessings and curses, and a tad more history including Moses’ death. This book is one long speech by Moses, who so doubted his ability to communicate that he at first declined the job of leading the Jews out of Egypt, here delivers the greatest soliloquy ever uttered by man. The Sedra Devarim is somewhat of an orphan. As it is always read the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the intense day of mourning the destruction of the Temple and subsequent disasters, that becomes the focus rather than the content of the Sedra. I, too, will follow that tradition. Just as the Sedra of Devarim gives us a historical tour, so does Tisha B’Av itself. Whilst all other fast days, and contemplative periods have Selichot, penitentiary prayers, Tisha B’Av, surprisingly has none, instead we ask for divine consolation. Historians have noted a phenomenon. They saw that the people who gave the world history in the form of the Tenach, the Hebrew Bible which is 75% history, the people that introduced the God of history to the world, suddenly after Josephus in the 1st century, stopped writing history. Not for another 1500 years would a Jew write a history about the Jews. And they were puzzled why. But we know why. Because history to the Jew was painful. To look back at the recent past would have been too devastating. They couldn’t look back because they would have been overwhelmed. Jews looked forward. Unlike any other culture, whose Golden Days were in the past, our Golden Days have yet to come. But one day a year, Jews did look back and that is on Tisha b’Av To match the somber mood of Tisha B’Av night we recite and study Jeremiah’s threnodic Book of Lamentations, the events leading up to and the prophecy of the destruction of the first Temple. Whilst no regular Torah study is allowed as it itself is joyful, we do study Talmudic sections dealing with the period of the calamity. The story of Kamtza and bar Kamtza, a tale of a wrongly delivered party invitation, is often studied as an example of what could lead to such misfortune. This story could possibly be an allegoric reference to the foolish Hasmonean brothers, John Hyrcanus the Second and Aristobulus the Second, whose leadership dispute lead to inviting Pompeii and his Roman legions for support, but only succeeded in putting Judea and Jerusalem under foreign suzerainty, and eventually led to its collapse. The Talmud is particularly critical of the Rabbis and how on the one hand they failed to intervene in the dispute and on the other how one particular sage was overly strict on points of Jewish law that led to Roman anger. The prayer service is itself is then followed by lengthy recitation and discussion of Kinot, elegies, a collection of prose depicting the many catastrophes that occurred on or around that day through the subsequent two millennia, culminating in the most horrendous of all, in sheer numbers, the holocaust. As the great philosopher, George Santayana, said Those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. May we soon be celebrating the Festival of Tisha B’Av rather than observing its Fast. Shabbat Shalom and have a thoughtful Fast
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 22:42:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015