Deut. 26:1-29:8
Précis: The parasha contains numerous
religious mandates regarding the formation of a civil and moral community
(including tithes of first fruits and tithes to support the Levites). The
People are promised that if they follow God’s instructions, they will be transformed
into a “holy people.” They are further instructed that they have a choice in
their own destiny: there are blessings and curses (the “Admonition”), and they
must to choose between the two, and take the consequences. The parasha ends
with Moses reminding the People about all that God had done for them in
bringing them from Egypt, providing sustenance, defeating their foes, and
giving them the Land.
Deut. 29:1-5 “Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that
Adonai did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt…the wondrous feats that
you saw with your own eyes, those prodigious signs and marvels. Yet until today
Adonai has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. I
led you through the wilderness forty years; the clothes on your back did not
wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet….”
An entire generation has witnessed God’s
blessings and miracles, but fails to appreciate the source. The implication: God
will protect us, just as he protected our ungrateful ancestors, despite their
inability to learn from the past.
These days, it seems that not learning
from the past is not the real problem: we seem unable to learn from what
happened yesterday, or earlier today! The text tells us that our ancestors were
not able to appreciate God’s support because “until this day” God had not endowed
them with the kind of self-awareness needed to appreciate His gifts or to learn
from the past. But we have inherited this awareness. Our own sin is our failure
to utilize it.
As we approach the Yamim Noraim,
perhaps we should add this to our confessional: for the sin we have committed by
failing to learn from our errors.
