Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parasha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well. I'm sorry I missed you last week. I was feeling a little bit under the weather and a combination of the pressure of bringing everyone back from camp.
[00:00:17] Um, so I had to skip for last week's parsha or parshios. It was a double parsha and it was a Chazak. I'm sorry, I hope you forgive me. But we're back at it for this week for the fifth book of the Torah, Parshas Devarim. In the Book of Devarim. Right, The Book of Deuteronomy. And it begins with Parshas Devarim. And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, would like to just reach out to say hello. Don't be shy, send me email at rabbi shlomo kon kohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you. This week's Parsha is Parshas Devarim.
[00:00:58] And just to give a quick overview on the weekly Parsha, Parshas Devarim and really starts off the Book of Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, which is really a last will and testament of Moshe Rabbeinu of Moses.
[00:01:15] The whole entire book of Deuteronomy takes place five weeks before Moshe Rabbeinu dies, you know, getting closer and closer to his death with the last few parshios, the last few Torah portions on the day of his death. And really the parshios have a common thread that throughout this book, you know, which is also referred to as Mishnah Torah, sort of like a review.
[00:01:43] Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses is preparing the Jewish nation to enter into the land of Israel, which after 40 years in the desert of miraculous existence, being sustained by the Mun and the well of Miriam, the Jewish people are about to have a new existence. They're going to have to conquer the land. And after they conquer it, divide it, work it, and establish, you know, courts, kings.
[00:02:11] And it's just going to be totally different from now going forward.
[00:02:16] And Moshe Rabbeinu is compiling into the Book of Devarim.
[00:02:22] He's giving over this message of inspiration, of hope, um, reminding the Jewish people of where they have gone wrong in the past so that they don't do it in the future as well.
[00:02:37] And this is the Book of Devarim, really just, you know, every week a little bit different, you know, and it's a continuation of this speech where the entire Jewish nation was there. And the commentaries explain that the book of Deuteronomy was written in Moshe's words. I mean, based on since Moshe Moses was a prophet of God, he was the prophet of Hashem, right? God made that clear to the Jewish nation, to the world. This book was Moshe speaking directly to the Jewish nation through his words, through his understanding, and in essence, according to some commentaries, they understand that this was the beginning of the Oral Torah.
[00:03:16] And through God's command, it became part of the written Torah when it was commanded by Hashem by G D to be written down in the Torah. In this week's Parasha, it begins with Moshe Rabbeinu giving a veiled rebuke to the Jewish nation.
[00:03:34] He continues with Moshe Rabbeinu talking about the appointment of the judges, how their system of judges was appointed. And obviously that would be needed for the Jewish nation as they would enter into the land of Israel and establish a nation for themselves. Additionally, the Parsha tells us about the failed mission of the spies, uh, where the spies were sent, but came back with a slanderous report, uh, against the land of Israel. The Parsha continues with the battles of Seir of Moab and the commandments there of not provoking Moab and the commandment from Hashem to march toward the land of Israel. And finally, the Parsha tells us about the conquest of Og as well as the inheritance of the tribe of Reuven Gad and half of the tribe of Manasseh, as they had a deal with Moshe Rabbeinu that their inheritance, their portion, would be on the eastern side of the Jordan. But Moshe was reminding them of their commitment to join the battle with the Jewish nation when they would cross the Jordan river to conquer the land. And only after the land was conquered would they go back to their families on the east side of the Jordan River. The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the Parsha.
[00:04:54] Now the Parsha is called Parshas Dvarim. Now, literally the word Dvarim devarim mean, like, these are the words.
[00:05:05] These are the words. Ela advaram hashadiber moishe el kol yisrael beharodaim bemid barava mose beIN, paronu beIN toifel vilavam v' chatzerais vidizahav.
[00:05:16] These are the words that Moshe spoke to to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan. And, um, concerning the wilderness, concerning the Aravah opposite the Sea of reeds, between Paran and Tophel and Lavon and Achatsiros and Dizahav, Right? So what does it mean, devarim? These are the words.
[00:05:36] What is that referring to such a, you know, such a mysterious name, you know, for a parsha to be given. And if you look at Rashi, Rashi explains to us that what the word devarim, these words that Moshe spoke to the Jewish nation are. So as I mentioned before, Moshe was giving a sort of like this last will and testament. He was giving instructions to the Jewish nation. And part of those instructions was reminding them where they've come from, where they made mistakes and where they are going. So Rashi says as follows. Lafishe and divre tois.
[00:06:12] Because Moshe is about to give some admonishment to the Jewish nation, right? And it mentions here the places that mention the verse, right? These cities that we're talking about in the desert, right? Aravah, Sea of Reeds, Paran, Topher, Lavan, Chaseros, Diyazav. These are all the places where the Jewish people sinned.
[00:06:42] Says therefore, you know, the Torah is protecting the honor of the Jewish people.
[00:06:48] It's protecting them from embarrassment. And therefore doesn't delineate the actual sins that the Jewish people committed in these places. Rather, it's just an inference to the sins by listing the different places where the Jewish people made those mistakes.
[00:07:06] So the devarim, the words that we're talking about that Moshe is about to say is about. He's about to give a tochachah and admonishment. He's about to give reproof to the Jewish nation.
[00:07:17] And therefore there's an indirect reference to what he's about to do. It doesn't say it directly. Why? Because of protecting the honor of the Jewish people. That, uh, the Jewish people shouldn't feel embarrassed, shouldn't feel, you know, like, um, maybe turned off, shouldn't feel hurt.
[00:07:33] But he's doing it in a more sensitive way. He has to deal with it. He has to speak to the Jewish people directly. But the Torah begins here of the agenda of what Moshe Rabbeinu is about to do with a little bit more of a reference.
[00:07:47] Now, the question that begs to be asked is that we see in later in this speech that Moshe Rabbeinu is making to the Jewish nation, which is, you know, two partials from now. And in other places in the book of Deuteronomy, in the book of Devarim, we see very clearly that Moshe Rabbeinu, that Moses invokes clearly the sins of the Jewish nation. Even in this week's Parasha, he talks about the spies, the sin of the spies directly, very clearly and openly.
[00:08:15] Right? He talks about the sin of the golden calf. He talks about all the. He talks about the story of Korach where there was, uh, you know, different sins that Jewish people made.
[00:08:26] We see very clearly in the Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu is not afraid to address it directly. He even refers to the Jewish nation at a point as, oh, rebels.
[00:08:37] That they are rebels, right? So why suddenly are we getting so sensitive? Why is the Torah so worried about the honor of the Jewish nation when we see, at other points, Moshe Rabbeinu is making this direct statement as to what the Jewish people did and what they should have done, Right? How do we reconcile these two, um, you know, these two places or these different. These different scenarios or different verses in the Torah? One place we seem to be more sensitive to the, you know, the embarrassment of the Jewish people. And on other places, Moshe Rabbeinu is direct and very clear about what happened and. And what they should have done and what went wrong.
[00:09:23] There's a famous idea that we know the Torah doesn't have extra words. There's no extra letters, no extra words. Everything is exact in the Torah. And in fact, you know, the Talmud, you know, the Oral Torah, when we expound verses to teach us different halachos, most points in Jewish law have a verse that is derived. A lot of the verses are used to teach us different points in halachah, uh, different ideas, different.
[00:09:51] Different things that we do.
[00:09:52] Even from extra letters, we learn out what to do and what not to do.
[00:09:56] And the Torah, we see that when it comes to the ark, when the Torah, when there's a commandment for Noah. Ah, for Noah, uh, to bring in all the animals, the Torah uses an interesting wording. It says all the animals that are Torah, all the animals that are pure, and all the animals that are not pure.
[00:10:18] Right. It goes through the extra, you know, the extra words.
[00:10:24] And the commentary is explained over there that the reason why the Torah uses extra words is a Talmud, I believe, to teach us the importance of having clean speech that the Torah doesn't want to use, you know, uh, the word tame. So it says that the animals that are not pure, instead of just saying the impure animals. Right. Saves words. The Torah is exact. Right.
[00:10:49] So it's teaching us a lesson here that to be careful with our speech, that we should have clean speech, we shouldn't defile ourselves with what comes out of our mouth. But the question that's asked that we see clearly when it comes to the laws of kosher, of kashrus, of what animals are kosher and what animals are not kosher. And it delineates clearly for us, the Torah, which animals we could have and which animals we can have. It says, you know, the chazir, it says the animal, these are the animals that are tame. And it lists the different animals that are impure, right? The pig, the horse, all these different animals that are not kosher. So what happened to our whole, you know, this whole idea that we said before, earlier in the Torah by Parshas Noach, that we said, where we're careful with our speech, we don't want to say the word tame, we don't want to say the word impure.
[00:11:41] So the idea, the answer to that is that when there's just a reference, when there's a reference to something which is impure, and it's not intrinsically needed to teach us something, so therefore we'll say the extra words. So therefore we're careful with our speech, we're not going to say the word tame, we're not going to say the word impure. We're going to say the animals that are pure and the animals that are not pure. But when it comes to halacha, when it comes to which animal is kosher and which animal is not kosher, there cannot be any ambiguity as to what the Torah is referring to. So therefore, even if it's quote, unquote, even if it's a word that is not the cleanest word, right? It's the animals that are the words that are impure.
[00:12:28] We have to say it because we have to be clear. The Torah is here to teach us what to do and therefore has to teach us which animals are kosher. These animals are the kosher ones, and these animals are the not kosher ones. They're impure. You can't have them, right? And I think a similar idea when it comes to this idea could perhaps help us reconcile the attitude of the Torah and Moshe Rabbeinu when it comes to the different instances of the Jewish people. When Moshe Rabbeinu here is referring to the Jewish nation, he's talking in Parshas Devarim right here. These are the words. There's a certain.
[00:13:03] He's laying out the agenda of what's about to happen. The Torah is about to tell us what's going to happen in this book. You know what the scenario, it's playing out the scene here, and what Moshe Rabbeinu is about to do. So there's no practical reference for us to tell us what, you know, what happened and what the Jewish people did. But when it comes to actual Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe giving the criticism to the Jewish nation, to help them be better people, to help them be a better nation, to make sure that they don't fall again, there cannot be any ambiguity.
[00:13:41] He has to be direct about what happened, where they went wrong, and where they could be better in the future.
[00:13:48] I think this is really, uh, this idea to bring it into our own lives.
[00:13:53] I think we need to have both of these traits.
[00:13:57] I think we need to be sensitive with people.
[00:14:01] Um, obviously, whenever you're in a position of management, I think there's a balance here. And it's not even a management as a parent, as a friend, as someone who could be in charge of something. We're all in charge of things. And sometimes we have to give criticism to others. So I think we have to have both traits here at the same time. We have to know when to not, you know, we have to be careful with people's feelings to make sure that we're not going to be embarrassing people, putting, uh, them down. But at the same time, when it comes to criticizing, and I don't want to say the word, it's a strong word to helping people be the most they could be, to helping people perform the best they could be, or correcting people when they made a mistake, we have to be direct and we have to be clear about what we're talking about now. It doesn't mean you could just, uh, have to be clear. We could blast people and I could tell them, tell them what's on my mind. It doesn't work like that. You still have to be sensitive, but you have to be direct and clear as to what you're referring to. And I think there are other times, though, where you don't have to keep reminding people about what they did. You could just be more sensitive. I think that's a balance we need to have. We see from Moishe Rabbeinu, from Moses, how he dealt with the Jewish nation. Now in this inspirational speech that he's, uh, giving to the Jewish nation, that at sometimes he was much more careful to, um, watch out, to not embarrass the Jewish nation. But at other times when he was, you know, he knew he had to say what he had to say. He had. He had to be direct and clear to make sure that his point came across so that the Jewish people would be the best they could be. And not make the same mistakes again and again and again. The second idea I want to share with you today takes us to an interesting verse. As Moshe Rabbeinu is going into his speech to the Jewish nation, Speaking how it became necessary for him. And G D instructed him to set up a court system. And this interesting verse that's listed in the Torah, it says, eicha esol avadi tira torahem umloh sachem.
[00:16:10] And it's translated, how can I.
[00:16:13] How can I alone carry your contentiousness, your burdens, and you'd quarrels.
[00:16:19] And the parsha. The verses go on to say how, you know, men were established as judges.
[00:16:27] And from that became the court system in the Jewish nation.
[00:16:32] Now, Rashi says something very interesting here.
[00:16:36] Rashi says that when Moshe Rabbeinu there was, you know, the Jewish people. It says, we're a stubborn people, right? We're, um, the. We're a stubborn nation. And actually, that stubbornness has helped us keep us as a nation, as a people for thousands of years. You know, stubbornness can be used for good, and it could be used for bad. But either way, Rashi points out for us that on this verse, he explains that when Moshe Rabbeinu would come out late, the Jewish people would say. Or there would be a group of Jewish people that would say, ah, why is Moshe Rabbeinu coming out late? Like, what's going on over here? And if you come early, they would say there would always be a negative, uh, association with whatever he was doing.
[00:17:22] And, um, you know, he says, why is Moshe early? Perhaps he's having family problems at home. And if he came late, they would say, moshe stays home longer. In order to make, uh. To devise negative plans against us, right? So whatever he did, it seemed that it was getting to Moshe Rabbeinu as a leader. He could do no, right? Everything was negative.
[00:17:42] And I think this idea is that there's an important idea here. Which I think ties into the. The time of year that we're in. And actually, it's very interesting because this verse in Parshas Devarim, it's read right, Parshas Devarim usually falls out on the Shabbos before Tisha Bav. Uh, on M. The Shabbos before the 9th of Av. The 9th of Av is the day that the Beis Hamikdash, the temple, was destroyed.
[00:18:09] It's a sad day. It's a fast day. And now, leading up to it, we're already in the nine days from Rosh chodeshavaretti. And there's a certain level of mourning that's followed. We know we don't eat meat except for Shabbos. We don't have wine for these nine days.
[00:18:26] And the Shabbos before Tisha B'Av is always referred to as Shabbos chazon. And usually it's parshas devorim that is red. And there's always a connection to the Parasha to what's going on in the week. And actually, this verse that I just read before Eicha asalavadit Torah Musaachem is read in the intonation, in the trop, as the megillahs. Eicha is read on that the, uh, Book of Lamentations is read. This is one of the five Megillos is the Book of Lamentations. And it's read on Tisha bav. And there's a certain trough, there's certain cantillation which is used for the reading. And the verse from this week's Parsha, the custom is that it's read in the same intonation as the Book of Eicha. Because I guess the word Eicha es salavadi terachem masachem revav chem. It's a certain.
[00:19:22] It's a reference to the Book of Eicha, which will be read on Tisha B'Av. And I want to maybe talk today, maybe the connection from this verse to the Book of Eicha, to the day of Tisha B'Av. And possibly what we could take out of it going forward into our lives. And I think the idea here is we see from this week's Parasha that Moshe Rabbeinu is telling the Jewish nation, saying that it became too much for me, your contentiousness and your quarrelsomeness. And therefore this whole court system had to be set up. But there's a reference here that I think the lesson we could learn here is that there was the Jewish. Jewish people, right? As we see in Rashi. They looked at Moshe in a certain way. They had this negative eye towards him, that whatever he did, he. They saw it as bad, right? And they interpret it as something against them.
[00:20:18] They didn't look at it in a way that Moshe Rabbeinu was, you know, the greatest leader of the Jewish people ever had. And everything he did was for their benefit. He was. He was doing everything for them. He was ready to risk himself and to give up of himself for the sake of the Jewish people. As we see many times, Moshe Rabbeinu. Moses goes to Bat for the Jewish nation. Famously, when Hashem says to Moshe Rabbeinu, you know, you're going to be the new leader, uh, we'll get rid of the Jewish people. He says, you know, if you get rid of the Jewish people, you get rid of me. Right? He always defended Jewish people. Right. So why didn't they see that? So we see a, um, powerful lesson here that there's always, you know, two ways to look at things. You could look at the glass half empty or half full, and even the most positive things a person can be doing for you.
[00:21:09] If you have those negative eyes on, if you want to, if you have that negativity in your heart or in our heart, you look at it bad. They could be giving you everything. They could be giving you love.
[00:21:23] They could be doing everything for you. But if you have that negativity, um, it's bad. And I think it's very important for us, especially during this time of year. And we're talking about the destruction of the hays, um, Hamikdash, the destruction of the holy temple, which. The sin of the holy. Of the destruction that caused the destruction of the holy temple has not been rectified. It still needs to be rectified. And what is that sin? It's sinas chinam. Um, it's, you know, hating people for no reason.
[00:21:50] The sages tell us that because people could not get along with each other, they had this burning hate in each other, this jealousy, this hate towards each other. It caused the Jewish nation to unravel to the point that God had to destroy the temple and send us into gallus, into the diaspora, to be spread out throughout the entire world. And I think coming down to this verse gives us, uh, a hint, gives us direction as to how we fix that hate, that sin up. And I think it's having a positive eye. You know, I was speaking to a friend of mine this past week. We were talking about a situation, and he was telling me that he knows someone who, you know, who.
[00:22:34] He doesn't feel the love. Everyone feels love in different ways, different love languages.
[00:22:39] And he knows an individual who. Who has some issue with someone else. And this other person, he's raising money for him, he's helping him, and the other guy is spitting in his face almost. He doesn't see all the good that this other fellow is doing for him, right? He just, you know, these two individuals, right? Person one is doing good for person two. He just doesn't. He doesn't feel it in the way that he wants to be felt. But he's doing so much for him. It's just the way you look at it. And I think this is a very important lesson we see that'll help us for Tisha B'Av, especially going into Tisha B'Av, that the importance of having a good eye, of interpreting things in a positive way, of looking at the good and trying to find the good in everything, having that optimism. And when we look to find the good in things, we're going to be more positive. We're going to cause the love between Jewish people to become greater, to become more. And God willing, that merit should help us rebuild the temple speedily in our days. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomo konkohnmail.com have a great day.
