Making sense of the sedra: Devarim

Close to the end of his life Moses gives a sermon marathon which is several weeks’ worth of Torah reading. This week in Devarim we begin reading that trilogy, which recounts key events in the duration of Israel’s 40-years’ wandering in the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula and south of Canaan.

Moses rebukes his people for their restlessness, misconduct and lack of faith. He encouraged them to adhere to the Torah as it will be their heritage which will accompany them into the Promised Land after he passes away. Moses points out that he set up a court system to dispense justice, and took the brunt of Divine anger for the rebellion of the spies. He mentions that God decreed that he was barred from entering the Promised Land but avoids mentioning the reason. He also speaks of the settlement by the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Menashe on the East Bank of the Jordan and the plan for future battles to be led by his successor-in-waiting, Joshua.

In this way, Moses highlights his own successes near the end of his own life, against the background of failure to coalesce as a people and face their fears in the first 38 years of desert travel. Moses was unable to lead militarily until this point because the spies who negatively reported their scouting mission to Canaan years earlier prevented him from taking full charge of the people.

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Therefore, in the short two-year window prior to his death, a very elderly Moses led intensive battles and prepared the way for Joshua. Thousands of years later came the Temples and their eventual destruction by the Babylonians and by the Romans, respectively. The pain of destruction, displacement and exile kept on summarising itself in the hope eternal of return to Zion. The return to Zion is not a takeover of Jews of anyone else’s land: it was, is and always will be, a return to a land, known as the Promised Land, promised to the descendants of Abraham and Isaac. The Mullahs of the Iranian regime know this extremely well. Moses’ words to the people of Israel revolve entirely around the matter of the Promised Land: its centrality to Moses and his life’s mission.

The fact that Moses himself could not cross the Jordan was the sorest point in his long and busy life, and one which he never got over. This time of uncertainty vis-a-vis the current regime in Iran and its proxies around the Middle East preoccupies all of us. Persia were not always enemies of Israel. In 1979, the last flight out of Tehran when the Islamic revolution ousted the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was an El Al flight. At this very tense point, not knowing quite what will happen and when, we could focus on a brighter reality than the previous 45 years of oppression in that country. The outcome of all the confrontation can be a better future, for which we pray in earnest.