Making sense of the sedra: Devarim

This week begins the book of Devarim, the last of the five books of Moses. In it, Moses begins a very long speech in which he explains to the Jewish people the reason they had to wander in the desert for such a long time until they finally entered the Promised Land.

Moses goes into detail concerning the story of the 12 spies – how they were sent to bring back reports about the land of Canaan, and how as a result of their negative reports being believed by the people, they were destined to wander in the desert for 40 years.

At the end of this description, Moses says, almost in a throwaway statement, that God has decreed: “You too shall not go there.” This statement of “you too” implies that somehow Moses’ fate is tied together with the fate of his people. The people believed in the lies of the spies, who spoke badly about the land. In the words of Psalms, “they scorned the land of desire”, and their lack of faith in God’s description of the land being filled with “milk and honey” is the source of their downfall. However, where is Moses’s sin? Why should he be punished for the sins of his people?

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The Abarbanel proposes an astonishing insight. When God asked Moshe to send out spies in the book of Numbers, he commanded him: “Send out for yourself spies, and they shall spy out the land.”  The command has no details whatsoever as to what the spies should look for. Moses, in an earnest and honest desire to prepare the people for what they are about to face, adds to the words of God. He asks the spies to look out for the fortifications and for the relative strength and weakness of the people. This was not part of the brief that was given to him.

In adding these specifications, Moses inadvertently plants ideas in the minds of the spies. If our leader Moses believes that this is what we must look for, they reasoned, it must be that this should be our focus. Instead of focusing on the beauty of the land and the land alone, Moses’ unintentional command made them focus on the strength of their future enemies, which facilitated the negative reports, fuelling the fear and anxiety of the people to boiling point.

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God therefore tells Moses: “You too shall not go there,” and indeed this is exactly what happens. We know that Moses dies on the edge of the promised land. He gets to see the land, but will not enter, just as the generation who believed the spies did not enter the land.

This deeply human and tragic moment reminds us of the tremendous responsibility of leadership. Even the most righteous and devoted of leaders can generate unintended consequences through well-meaning words. Moses’ addition may have come from a well-intentioned place, but it subtly shifted the people’s perspective from faith to fear, from trust in God’s promise to reliance on human calculations.

As we begin the book of Deuteronomy, we are reminded that our words, our tone, and our framing—especially in positions of influence—carry great weight. Whether as parents, teachers, friends or leaders in our communities, we shape the way others see the world. Like Moses, we may never fully see the impact of our actions, but we must always strive to align our speech and guidance with values of faith, hope, and trust.

Rabbi Steven Dansky is at Cranbrook Synagogue