{"id":60778,"date":"2019-08-08T11:51:34","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T08:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=60778"},"modified":"2022-09-08T15:41:38","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T12:41:38","slug":"devarim-moses-takes-control-of-the-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/devarim-moses-takes-control-of-the-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"Devarim: Moses Takes Control Of The Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[444,397],"acf":{"old_id":"60778","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36663,"related_cahpter":"1056","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"On reading Moses' farewell and Tisha B'Av","content":"

Moses is not in control of his fate.\u00a0He will not be crossing over the river Jordan into the Promised Land with the rest of the Israelites but will die still on the other side.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He will continue to admonish and instruct the people he has been leading all these 40 years of wandering.\u00a0He will rehearse the events of the past, explain and order them in a way that will ensure the Israelites have the tools to continue on the path he has set out for them.\u00a0One of the names for Deuteronomy is Mishneh Torah,<\/em> the “retold Torah,” that is, the discourses of Moses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The very process of writing this history, retelling, re-inscribing, re-authoring the events of the past is a way to assert control over both a past and a future for which Moses is not the guiding force.\u00a0In fact, the first time Moses is asked\u00a0to write something\u00a0is in Exodus 17:14, when he is instructed to write down what Amalek has done in a book, in part to overcome the evil Amalek represents.\u00a0Organizing thoughts in a book becomes a significant way to wrest power from the forces of evil and chaos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And now Moses is writing, or retelling, to give lasting instruction (Torah means “teaching”), educate the people and help himself cope with the fate he can no longer plead with God to control.<\/p>\n

This portion, Devarim, is always read on the Sabbath before Tisha B’Av, the day on which the calamities of Jewish history have become concentrated (Mishna Taanit 4:6 lists five disasters that occurred on this day).\u00a0One of the literal connections of our portion to Tisha B’Av is the word eicha <\/em>(“how”), the Hebrew name of the book of Lamentations, and that appears also in Deuteronomy 1:12.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I see the book of Deuteronomy, Moses\u2019 retelling the history he no longer has any control over, and the structure of Tisha B\u2019Av, the telling of the gloomiest moments in Jewish history, as parallel.\u00a0The essence of Tisha B\u2019Av is that we cannot control what has occurred in the past, only how we speak of it and the meaning that comes out of it. Moses too, aware that the past cannot be changed but that it can be remembered in a manner of his choosing. As Megillah 31b states, these are the words \u201cMoses spoke on his own,\u201d not channeling a message of God.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFear not and be not dismayed\u201d (1:21).\u00a0 Knowing these words of Moses have been spoken by him on his own and that they are directed as much at himself as at the people he has been leading, infuses them with more impact.<\/p>\n

Retaining control over a narrative, a life, or a long and painful history, can best be done by trying to live without fear, is Moses’ central message here, and throughout the book to the moment of his own death at its end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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