On February 2nd of this year, Punxsutawney Phil peeked out of his burrow, did not see his shadow, and went back to sleep for forty-two days. This works out to be one day for each Israelite camp-site in the desert after Sinai, a consequence of Israel’s failure to obey God’s command and trust in him to take her immediately and safely into the Promised Land. The same day, I woke up, had a meeting with three rabbi’s, took a bath and changed my name. It was a choice – and a continuing series of choices -- in word and deed, made each day. This brings me to a certain view of today’s parasha, an introduction of sorts to all of Deuteronomy.
D’varim – these are the words: And Moses said “The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying: You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Start out and make your way to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors … See, I place the land at your disposal. Go, take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them.” The writer must have been in a hurry as I see HE omitted “and your mothers Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.”
This mitzvah, and the rest of Deuteronomy, means, in part, taking possession of the traditions and values of Judaism – of the Israel of these words – and to cherish, safeguard and transfer them to the next generation so that they may be shared with all peoples in all lands.
We are told during Pesach that we re-enact the Exodus because we are there. I think we also must “be there” for all of what happens in Deuteronomy, the ultimate teachable moment by a teacher unlike any other. Here is how a country boy -- born and raised in the high desert plateau east of the Rocky Mountain divide -- connects with the Sinai event and the culmination of that wilderness education on the threshold of entering Israel.
I began to think and write about today’s parasha 40 days ago, just before the Fourth of July – another day about a covenant published – although it was among 13 tribes – not 12. If documents have descendants, a straight lineal line connects Sinai circa 1280 B.C.E to Philadelphia circa 1776.
On July 4th, my bride and I were at the base of Lone Mountain, an 11,166 foot snow capped peak in my native Montana. It’s a place called Big Sky, a ski resort, on the edge of several wilderness areas – Coulter’s Hell to the south, Metcalf Wilderness to the North and the Redrock Canyon of the Yellowstone to the East.
My bride and I went to Lone Mountain for a destination wedding of the oldest daughter of a close friend from childhood. She was marrying her own childhood sweetheart, who she first met in a Montana Bible camp. They are now both teachers near Golden, Colorado, which looks a lot like Moab, (Utah), a kind of jewel in the high desert plateau, quite distinct from Edom, Texas, down south where the land has a reddish hue.
It started as an outdoor wedding. The guests gathered next to the main ski lift. Lone Mountain made an awe-inspiring backdrop. The wedding party went to the summit in the early afternoon, where it is said you can touch the face of God. More or less on time, the bride and groom came down from the mountain peak on a ski lift, her white bridal gown, at first a distant speck, billowed out as they neared. Dark thunderheads suddenly scudded up from behind Lone Mountain.
With a sense of urgency, the pace picked up. The minister, a friend of the father of the bride, had also married her parents 30 years before in a little town south of Jordan, Montana. His was a youth ministry. With an anxious look at the sky, he urged all to be seated and said, “Enough. It’s time to get these two hitched.” On cue, a lighting bolt struck the top of the mountain, with a loud sharp thunderclap, followed by a deep bass rumble that rolled down the mountainside and bounced back again off the mountain range across the valley.
The 200 guests gasped and flinched. The minister quickly got to the point where the bride accepted her groom as her “lawfully wedded husband, for better or worse” when the heavens opened. We all ran for shelter.
With those words spoken, let’s get back to the words of D’varim.
The commentators have often described all of Deuteronomy as something akin to a very large commencement exercise. In this view, it is Moses’ valedictory, a monologue on monotheism. It is a five course, five week summation and clarification of the teaching in the first four books. And the teaching during the forty years wandering in the howling wilderness.
But maybe those five weeks on the eastern banks of the Jordan – and the forty years before -- were really part of the first and a very large destination wedding. Instead of thinking of Moses as a valedictorian, perhaps we should think of him as a marriage counselor preparing Israel for her wedding to God. In this view, D’varim is a prelude to a marriage vow, an assessment of the courtship and the relationship to date before the final vows are spoken with all that they entail. Moses reviews the evidence of that commitment – God to Israel and Israel to God -- and asks the bride to make a choice that will decide her fate and the fates of her future generations. The stakes are high and so is the dramatic tension.
The scene is set near the banks of the River Jordan, in my imagination, high on the hills of Moab, overlooking the Promised Land. Moses faces the assembled tribes, with his back turned to the land that all of them are looking at, longingly, as he speaks the words that condition their privilege to take possession and keep possession of the land and their identity. This is a confident and mature Moses – no more stuttering, no more uncertainty about his last remaining task as a servant to his people and to God. He knows the urgency of the message he delivers, for he will not go with the children of Israel across the Jordan. Only these words that were spoken will go with his charges, in their memories to guide their conduct from this time forward. It is an existential moment in every conceivable meaning of that word.
We might say that the Sh’ma succinctly sums up all of Deuteronomy and is the climax of the story that began with Genesis. We can thus be reminded much more frequently – but at less length -- of the essence of the teaching. In the parlance of our nation’s capitol, the Sh’ma is a “one pager,” a document typically prepared by staff to tell our leaders and deciders all they need to know on matters of utmost importance.
Now there is a good deal packed into this particular one pager, as many in our tradition have carefully noted, then footnoted and long remembered, perhaps most succinctly by Hillel and, at considerably greater length, by Maimonides. I would be remiss if I did not consult with at least one such sage before attempting to capture the thematic unity of d’varim. I turned to Billy Crystal.
I refer, of course, to City Slickers, a film about a band of brothers in mid-life crisis searching for escape from the slavery of meaningless jobs and searching for some meaningful purpose to their lives. They have a bucket list that first takes them to Pamplona to run with the bulls, an adrenaline rush for sure, but a false and empty goal. Lesson learned: it is not about a pagan ritual involving bulls.
Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch, is then persuaded, reluctantly and with much complaining, to sign up for a dude ranch cattle drive. I think the herd consisted almost entirely of red heifers. Jack Palance as Curly plays a fearsome trail boss who finally bonds with Mitch, following the birthing of a calf – named Norman -- and then imparts to Mitch the accumulated wisdom of the nomad cowboy life: “It’s about this,” he says, punctuating the air with his index finger. To which Mitch replies, “Your finger?” And, of course, it turns out to be about one thing that you pursue with passion and purpose, a choice that you make and a responsibility that you accept to your band of brothers (and sisters) and to your children, to those you care most about. Note: Don’t forget about Norman, the calf. He is the central character in this drama.
After speaking these words, Curly dies in the wilderness. Mitch and his friends are left to finish the job by driving the herd to the final destination. They dedicate themselves to the task and take responsibility to make it happen. Ironically, at the end of the drive, the herd is sold off for slaughter. But Mitch takes the calf, Norman, after he rescues him at a river crossing, back to New York, where he is greeted by his children. Extra points if you remember that his son was played by Jake Gyllenhaal.
To sum it up, we can say that D’varim conveys a sense of urgency to begin and complete the one thing paramount in Deuteronomy, and to pursue it with passion and purpose and the promise that such pursuit is a life well lived. It is promise made, a promise kept and the acceptance of a responsibility of one generation to the next generation, not only involving an historic land, but also a land and people of words, an aspirational ideal that may always lie just over the River Jordan, beckoning us to make a choice and assume the responsibility to go there – for our ancestors, for ourselves and for our children – most importantly our children.
I want to assure you that the two young teachers from Montana did complete their wedding vows, and soon resumed their life mission of teaching the next generation a set of values that are derived from the Torah that was given as a gift to Israel to share with all other nations so many centuries ago. I should also take note of the coda to the wedding event: a spectacular complete double rainbow that arched over the full extent of the valley below Lone Mountain, a gateway to the river and the land beyond the river.
Shabbat Shalom.
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