Parashat Vəzot haBərakhah: יִשְׂרָאֵל | yisra’eil

in

I believe the task that we have as humans in the present moment is to become more comfortable navigating a world of ambiguity and contradiction. To learn how to hold at the same time explanations that pull in alternate directions, without being held ourselves. We must cultivate our ability to stay nimble, to learn broadly, to tangle with sources working at cross purposes. To wrestle, as it were, with the world, and to win, or at least bring it to a stalemate.

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Parashat Ha’azínu: הַ | ha

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Yet I do find myself compelled by the link between these two verses. But rather than a refutation of Bəreishit’s doubts, I can’t shake the notion that Dəvarim is a confirmation of them. If the small hei at the beginning of the world is a tiny nagging doubt that maybe this whole Earth thing isn’t the best idea, the big one at the end of the Torah is a loud, honking “I told you so!”, a baleful recrimination that this whole project was mistaken from the jump.

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Parashat Vayéilekh: לְעֵד | lə’eid

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Next week, we are going to read a very long poem; this week, we only read about it.

In preparing the Yisra’eili to receive next week’s verses, G-d tells Mosheh to tell the people that the poem תִּֽהְיֶה־לִ֜י . . . לְעֵ֖ד בִּבְנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל | tíhyeh li . . . lə’eid bivnei Yisra’eil | “will be . . . a witness for Me against the children of Yisra’eil” (Dəvarim 31:19). In fact, over the course of this rather short parashah, three times we’re told that a scroll of Holy words is being written to serve as a witness against subsequent generations who fall short of the mark — a witness testifying that they knew the laws they were breaking in advance; no one will be able to plead ignorance when the day of judgement comes.

These three repetitions call to mind, of course, the three Shabatot of Admonition leading up to Tisha bə’Av, but they also have a subtle message in their cumulative effect. In gematria, lə’eid has a value of 104. Multiply that by three, and you get 312, which is the value of חָדָשׁ | ḥadash | “new”. These three admonitory witnesses, then, combine to create the possibility of a clean start, the possibility of becoming new all over again.

If we are accosted and challenged by our holy texts, then, if we are forced to reckon with the ways we have fallen short, it is not to obliterate us but to unlock us, to grant us the possibility to return and begin once more from scratch. Heaven and earth will be there to see us thru.

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Parashat Nətzavim: וּלְבָנֵֽינוּ | ulvanéinu

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Several other commentators suggest that the wayward eleventh dot is a hint: The dots don’t actually belong over the words they’re printed over — by rights, they should be printed over “HaSheim, our G-d” to cast doubt on the idea that hidden sins are solely G-d’s responsibility, but they couldn’t be written there because these dots also imply that maybe the words they’re on should be erased, and the scribes found the thought of erasing G-d’s name unconscionable. In some way, then, G-d’s responsibility has been shifted onto us. There are weights we “shouldn’t” have to carry that we must make our peace with all the same.

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Parashat Ki Tavo: מְשֻׁגָּע | məshuga

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The word for going mad here, məshuga, has cognates in related languages that refer to the cawing of birds and the whinnying of camels. A cognate in Assyrian means simply “to howl”. In an etymological sense, then, the threat is of a devastation so great the human mind cannot hold it without breaking. Language is insufficient to express it; all that will suffice is an animalian onslaught of asemantic noise.

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Parashat Ki Teitzei: תָחוֹס | taḥos

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The project of halakhic discourse has never really been about unearthing some impossible pristine viewpoint-independent reading of Tanakh; the project has always been building a livable and just system of religious law, and that necessarily depends on what you find livable and just. You values always shape the project, however much the project may recursively shape you in turn.

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Parashat Shofətim: וְרַךְ | vərakh

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Vərakh haleivav is often translated something like “fainthearted” or “cowardly”, but as an adjective, rakh primarily denotes softness, tenderness, delicacy. A child’s skin is said to be rakh, as are the words that Proverbs 15:1 says can defuse wrath. A soft heart is a vulnerable heart, a heart not walled off from the sorrows of the world, a heart that is marked by the humanity of those our governments tell us to hate, to disregard, to kill. A soft heart refuses to let “enemy” become a shorthand for “undeserving of moral reckoning”.

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Parashat Va’etḥanan: הַדְּבֵקִים | hadəveiqim

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Clinging is a slightly unexpected word here. We might more typically expect something like following or loving or obeying — we just had going after used a verse earlier to talk about following other g-ds, and elsewhere in this very parashah, we get, in short succession, the Shəma’s iconic insistence on obedience and the Və’ahavta’s command to love. But here we get none of those and find clinging instead. Which is a little odd, since Dəvarim is normally so insistent on an intangible, non-material G-d. How do you hold fast to something that has no substance?

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Parashat Dəvarim: אֵֽלֶּה | éileh

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How many moments like this are there in the multi-layered text of Torah? How many parallel stories in Genesis were preserved by this desire to keep alive the unreconcileable stories of neighbor and friend? How many incompatible lists of leaders in Numbers maintain the memories of real people long since lost to us? How many fragments are stitched in with all their contradictions out of a furious refusal to let anyone go without a fight? How much love this represents! Every seam, every doublet, every revision an active choice to prioritize inclusion over homogeny, community over rhetorical purity, building together over winner-takes-all.

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