Ta Shma

The Tanakh tells us, people spoke to God, and God spoke back. But by the end of the biblical period, the line of direct divine communication had largely dried up. Instead of seeking direct dialogue with God, people began to seek guidance and inspiration in God’s teachings—that is, in Torah. Insisting that God’s will and presence could be found in Torah was one of Judaism’s greatest innovations and achievements. It was also one of its greatest gambles.

Human beings are complex creatures, capable of deep kindness and stunning selfishness. In the span of just three chapters of Genesis, one biblical character scales the heights and plumbs the depths of human behavior. Rebekah can care for her husband Isaac, but she can also play him. Rebekah’s gift for identifying people’s vulnerability is a sign of her greatness; it is also, tragically, her undoing.

It is, by all accounts, one of the most remarkable stories in the Torah. Appalled by the corruption and lawlessness of Sodom and Gomorrah, God is moved to respond. But before taking action, God makes a choice to consult with Abraham. Alarmed at the prospect of God acting unjustly, Abraham protests, demanding to know whether God will “sweep away the innocent along with the guilty.” There is much that is striking, even captivating about this story. And yet familiar as the story is, a close reading suggests that it is at once subtler and more radical than is conventionally assumed.

Genesis 13 tells the story of a family in the process of falling apart. God's bountiful blessing of wealth paradoxically leads Abram and Lot, the patriarch and his nephew, into deep conflict. Having returned to Canaan together, the two now part ways: Abram remains in the land of Canaan, while Lot departs for Sodom. But the separation between Abram and Lot is not just geographical, it is also characterological. In the hands of the narrator, Abram and Lot become paradigms for two very different ways of perceiving and responding to abundance and wealth.

Genesis famously tells us that human beings are created in the image of God. Consensus among Bible scholars is that the image of God is to be God's viceroys and stewards on Earth, appointed by God to rule over the world. The Torah asserts that ordinary human beings—not just kings, but each and every one of us—are God's earthly delegates. Does this imply that we have unlimited sovereignty over the Earth? And what is a sovereign supposed to do according to the Tanakh?

The Torah begins and ends in precisely the same way: with acts of Hesed / lovingkindness. This crucial fact teaches us what Torah is really about and what it is ultimately for, and gives us a way of understanding what lies at the heart of Torah—a God who cares deeply about human beings and acts with love and kindness towards them. But the Sages are not content to describe God as compassionate and generous; they characterize God in this way not only so that God may be worshiped but also, critically, so that God may be emulated.

Moses is the paradigmatic prophet, a model for all Israelite prophets and the greatest among them. And yet God insists that this incomparably great prophet must die before he reaches the Promised Land. The lesson of Moses' death is both tragic and redemptive. When we dedicate our lives to causes greater than ourselves, we may accomplish a great deal, but we very rarely live to see our projects completed; to live with God is to plant seeds in the hopes that they will flourish—whether in our lifetime or (long) after.

Some moments are so powerful that we yearn to keep them alive even long after they have passed. Some events—a wedding, the birth of a child, a moment of deep connection to the transcendent—carry such deep implications for the way we carry ourselves in the world that we strive to orient our lives around them. One of Judaism's central projects is to maintain a living connection to our foundational moments: to remember that no matter how much time has passed, Exodus and Sinai have always only just taken place. The mitzvah of gathering the people (hak'hel) in this week's parashah is designed to do exactly this.

Deuteronomy portrays God as a gracious giver of gifts. Yet Deuteronomy worries that these gifts could easily become snares, that the people will feel entitled to God's bounty instead of being grateful for it and that they will therefore come to forget the God who has given them so much. Deuteronomy is passionately concerned with preventing that kind of apostasy; the first-fruits ceremony prescribed in Parashat Ki Tavo is a liturgical attempt to keep gratitude from dissipating in the face of affluence and abundance.

It seems fair to say that on a day-to-day basis many of us in the Western world take our freedoms for granted. Yet shocking as it is, more than twenty-million people around the world are enslaved to this very day. What are we to make of this horror, and how ought we respond to it? A stunningly revolutionary passage from Parashat Ki Teitzei can help us formulate a response to this appalling phenomenon.