Followership In the last month of his life, Moses gathered the people. He instructed them about the laws they were to keep and reminded them of their history since the Exodus. That is the substance of the book of Devarim. Early in this process, he recalled the episode of the spies – the reason the […]
The Teacher as Hero Imagine the following scenario. You are 119 years and 11 months old. The end of your life is in sight. Your hopes have received devastating blows. You have been told by God that you will not enter the land to which you have been leading your people for forty years. You […]
The Effective Critic The first verse of Devarim, the fifth and culminating book of the Torah, sounds prosaic. “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan—in the wilderness, on the plain opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahav.” There is no hint of drama in these words. […]
The Book of the Covenant As we begin reading the fifth and final book of the Torah, I would like to discuss three questions. First, why does the book of Devarim have the structure it does, a mix of history, law, recollection and anticipation? The sages knew that Devarim had a clear structure. Elsewhere in […]
To 120: Growing Old, Staying Young On 27 March 2012, to celebrate the diamond jubilee of the Queen, an ancient ceremony took place at Buckingham Palace. A number of institutions presented Loyal Addresses to the Queen, thanking her for her service to the nation. Among them was the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Its […]
Why are there so many Jewish lawyers? At the beginning of Devarim, Moses reviews the history of the Israelites’ experience in the wilderness, beginning with the appointment of leaders throughout the people, heads of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. He continues: And I charged your judges at that time, “Hear the disputes between your people […]
The Leader as Teacher It was one of the great moments of personal transformation, and it changed not only Moses but our very conception of leadership itself. By the end of the book of Bamidbar, Moses’ career as a leader seemed to have come to its end. He had appointed his successor, Joshua, and it […]
Tzedek: Justice and Compassion As Moses begins his great closing addresses to the next generation, he turns to a subject that dominates the last of the Mosaic books, namely justice: I instructed your judges at that time as follows, “Listen to your fellow men, and decide justly [tzedek] between each man and his brother or […]
Profits and Prophets There are few more blazing passages in the whole of religious literature than the first chapter of the book of Isaiah, the great “vision,” chazon, that gives its name to the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year. It is more than great literature. It expresses one of the […]
The Book of the Covenant Why does the book of Devarim have the structure it does, a mix of history, law, recollection and anticipation? The sages knew that Devarim had a clear structure. Elsewhere in the Torah some rabbis used the principle of semikhut haparshiyot – that we can learn something from the fact that passage Y […]
