Netzavim, September 27, 2024

My grandmother was a sharp woman: Smart, strong, insightful, and capable of putting the fear of God into her four sons. Nevertheless, in her last years, some of that bright intelligence started to fade from her eyes. Some things stuck though - she had favorite stories that she would repeat, often with small variations, and we would listen because we loved her. Deuteronomy, which functions like a “reader’s digest” form of the rest of the Torah, can feel a little like my grandmother’s stories. In his four discourses, Moses sticks to a familiar structure - God did great things for us so we should worship God, we should worship God through performance of mitzvot and adherence to the brit, the contract, between God and Israel, and we’ll receive blessings if we do well, and curses if we don’t.

It’s… a little repetitive.

In Deuteronomy 29, right at the end of last week’s Torah portion and the beginning of this week’s, we’re finally given a reason for the repetitiveness. Picture the scene: all of Israel stands before Moses, from their tribal chiefs to the woodchopper and the water drawer. The text clarifies a few verses later that men, women, and children all stand arrayed listening to Moses.

There is a rhetorical tool being used here that I want to draw out a bit – tribal chiefs and water drawers: society’s opposites are used to illustrate the whole of the Israelites. This is the same idea as “There was evening and there was morning: the first day,” from back in Genesis. Evening and morning includes all the hours between. Land and Sea includes all the weird marshy and tidal areas. The text here is using layered merisms – the naming of opposites to encompass the spectrum between and including the two, a common grammatical and rhetorical tool in both Biblical Hebrew. We use it today in English as well: think of the phrase “I searched high and low” to mean that you searched everywhere in between, not just on top of the bookshelves and under the sofa.

Read through the eyes of the merisms in the texts, elders and chiefs, woodcutters and water drawers; men, women, and children, we see that all this group includes all socio-economic statuses, all genders, and all ages: the whole of the Israelites together. 

Moses tells them that even to this day, after what their parents saw at Sinai, and all the miracles experienced in the wilderness, they do not have “a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.”

And what’s more, Moses tells the people the covenant made between Israel and God would bind not just those present, but also all those who are not there - their children, their descendants, and those who would join the tribe in future generations. Although our tradition tells us that we all metaphorically stood at Sinai, in truth we did not witness the miracles, we only have these stories.

I suppose, when all we have are stories, a little repetition makes sense. But what does it mean that we do not have “a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear?”

I think of those who come on Saturday morning for our weekly Torah study, some of whom have been coming for years and yet they, we, return to the study of Torah time and again because our hour together is never enough. There is always more to learn, other verses to explore or ideas to delve into more deeply, or new voices that offer a perspective we hadn’t previously considered.

But it’s not only the people of the room that change - we change and we are changed by our lives’ experiences. As we do so, the lenses - the eyes to see and ears to hear–  that we use to engage with text change our understanding. Ben Bag Bag, one of our earliest sages and a disciple of Hillel the Elder, used to say, “turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it, reflect on it and grow old and gray with it.” In telling us to reflect on it, reflect on Torah, Ben Bag Bag acknowledges that meaning is not in the text itself - meaning happens in the space between us and the text. As we bring new eyes to the text, the text offers us new understandings. 

In hearing that we do not have the mind to understand, the eyes to see, and the ears to hear” we know that there is always more to learn, more to perceive and discover both in Torah and in the world around us. It takes the shame out of learning.

You know the flush I mean, the one that stains our cheeks when someone starts a sentence with, “Everyone knows….” but you don’t? 

“Everyone knows what happens when you put mentos in a bottle of diet coke!”

Or “everyone knows that Michigan won the 2024 Rose Bowl” (I didn’t - I definitely had to Google that, but don’t worry - Google also tells me that Ohio State is one of the favorites this year).

Or “everyone knows about that weird scene back in Exodus where God attacked Moses, and Tziporah circumcised her son and painted his thighs with his blood to save him.” (Exodus 4:24-25). I genuinely hope this scene is new to you and piques your curiosity, and that I get to share with you in the joy of learning.

That flush of shame at not knowing can stop us from seeking new knowledge. But here’s the thing: the concept of “everyone knows” is a lie. We don’t - but when we fall for that common deception, we lose the joy of learning something new or celebrating when someone else has the opportunity to do so.

In reading Torah over and over, year after year, we all become eternal learners - we learn the text, we learn more about ourselves, and we find new and different meanings in the spaces between. We let go of shame and embrace the joy of learning.

Only a few verses later, we are reassured that Torah is not some mystery hidden in the heavens, rather “No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart to observe it.” (30:14). There is more to learn, always, but we are fully capable of the learning.

In Deuteronomy, we are told over and over to choose blessings OR curses, light and life OR darkness and death. During the High Holy Days, we ask God to inscribe us in the Book of Life. My mental image for this has always been a giant book full of names, laying - in opposition or apposition - to the Book of Death.

You’re in one book or the other. Blessing, life, goodness, OR curses, darkness and death.

But we know that we cannot perform all the mitzvot, despite our best intentions to live the values of Torah, we all sometimes miss the mark. We are human, and by definition, imperfect.

There is always more to learn, more to understand, and how could we be perfect without perfect understanding? Sometimes we get it wrong. Even witnessing the miracles of deliverance and revelation were not enough to ensure perfection in the generation that lived through them. We have only heard the stories. All we can do is try to be the best of ourselves, knowing that even in that we will sometimes fall short.

What’s more, we know that there is no simple correlation between how good we are and what our lives hold - there will be moments of unexpected light and undeserved darkness. Sometimes wickedness is allowed to persist beyond all reckoning, and even the best of us will someday die - perhaps much too young.

Rather than thinking of good and bad, blessing and curse, life and death as binaries, let us read them as merisms, containing all that is in between, because reason, reality, our lives, and Hebrew rhetorical tools suggest it must be so.

If we think then of the Book of Life, we know this book is, in truth, the Book of Life and Death, or perhaps the Book of Lives. Rather than an unfeeling list, this book contains the stories of our lives from beginning to end, just as the Torah contains those of our ancestors.

The good and bad, the blessings and curses, and all those moments in between. Like an epic novel, the Book of Lives contains the ways that our stories are woven together, affecting each other, lifting each other up, or missing the mark. When we ask to be inscribed for good, we ask that our story be a good one - filled with growth and depth, something new on every page - a new insight, new learning, great character development, perhaps a love story, or a cozy mystery. And we recognize that much of that goodness, that growth, comes from recognizing what we don’t know, from enduring and overcoming difficulties, and counting our blessings. We ask that when our arc in this story ends, as it inevitably will, we will see an impact that ripples through the pages for years to come in all the lives we have touched.

My grandmother's stories may have become a little repetitive by the end of her life, but her story - the story of her life - was a good one, filled with epic romance, adventure, heartache, loss, meaning, a deep love of learning, and bookshelves that I am still envious of. Life goals, those bookshelves.

As we prepare to enter the Days of Awe, may the stories written of us in Book of Lives be filled with growth, learning, and blessings and all that comes between.