Shnayim Mikra

Moshe said, "I'm 120 years old today; that's it for me. I'm not crossing the Jordan with you. Yehoshua (Joshua) will lead you..." (Continued in next aliyah.)

(Continued from previous aliyah.) "...and God will destroy the nations who oppose you, just like He did to Sichon and Og. When He does, be sure to follow his instructions for conquest. Don't worry; He's got your back."

Moshe called Yehoshua and charged him to be brave in the face of adversity. He would be the one to lead the nation into Israel and divide the land among them. Yehoshua was never to despair because God will also be with him.

Moshe wrote down the Torah up to this point and gave it to the kohanim, the spiritual leaders of the people.

Moshe told the kohanim that in the first year of every Sabbatical cycle, on the holiday of Succos, when everyone comes to Jerusalem, the king was to read publicly from the Torah. Everyone should hear it: men, women, children, converts. This will inspire them to keep the Torah - especially the kids. (This mitzvah is called hakhel, “the gathering.” You can read all about it in Talmud Sotah 41a-b.)

God told Moshe to get ready because his end was rapidly approaching. He had Moshe bring Yehoshua to the Mishkan, where He caused His Presence to manifest in the pillar of cloud.

God told Moshe that after he was gone, the nation would stray into idolatry. God will then "look away" and allow the Jews' enemies to conquer them. They'll ultimately realize that they brought this on themselves by alienating Him.

Moshe was commanded to write down the song that appears in parshas Ha'azinu and to teach it to the Jews. They should familiarize themselves with it because it would serve as a witness for them.

God said He would bring the Jews into the land, where they would live comfortably. Nevertheless, they'll abandon Him in favor of unliving idols. When they are afflicted as punishment, the song will testify on their behalf. Trust Him; God knows what the people are like.

So, Moshe wrote down the song and taught it to the people. God told Yehoshua to be strong, since He would be with Him. Moshe finished writing down the Torah.

Moshe gave the original Torah manuscript to the Levites to keep with the Aron. It would serve as a witness for the Jews and Moshe knew they would need it, since they tended to rebel against God even in his presence. He could only imagine what they'd be like after he was gone!

He called for the elders and the officers so that he could teach them the song since, again, it was obvious they were going to need it.

(When Netsavim and Vayelech are read separately, Vayelech is Shabbat Shuvah.)

This being Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur, when Jews are busily trying to repent all their sins so as to avert the judgment of pure justice, the haftarah opens with Hosea’s call for the Jews to return (the literal meaning of shuva; teshuvah, repentance, could be translated as returning to God).

Pesikta Rabbati 44 suggests Hosea’s reprimands in the earlier chapters of his work lay the groundwork for this one. Without those, the Jews of his time would not have seen why they needed to repent, an implicit lesson about our possible blindness to our sins. Rashi thinks Hosea is telling Judah (the Southern Kingdom) to realize its sin(s) before it meets the same fate as the Northern Kingdom. Shuva, then, means now, before it’s too late, both in terms of avoiding exile, but also, when God is still acting with the Attribute of Mercy.

Yoma 86b cites Resh Lakish, who notes our verse’s speaking of returning “ad,” until God, implying some remaining distance after doing so. Other verses speak of a return that makes our sins into merits; Resh Lakish suggests Hosea was speaking of repentance out of fear, which does not restore our relationship with God as fully as does repentance out of love.

Verse 3: The Effectiveness of Words

Verse 3 famously calls for us to use our words to return to God, closing with the phrase, “and our lips will make up for the bulls.” Aside from this verse providing a source for the belief that prayer can partially substitute for our lost sacrifices, Yoma 86b says that God takes our verbal repentance as a favor; in return, He allows it to replace sacrifices. The image of God “longing” for our repentance, taking it as a favor (helping Him not have to punish us) is a useful counterbalance to the (also appropriate) focus on God as punishing, even harshly, when necessary.

The rest of the section gives us a sense of the underlying nature of all repentance, the awareness that we are dependent on God for salvation or sustenance. Were we only to realize that fully, Hosea implies, sin would be a long-forgotten part of our past.

Verses 9-10: Exasperation Helps

Verse 9 has Hosea saying in the name of God, and now, Ephraim, what am I doing amidst all this idol worship? Verse 10 comments that the ways of God are “straight,” meaning good and proper, the righteous thrive in them, while sinners stumble. The statement is inherently difficult, seemingly dooming sinners to stumble even further, but its connection to verse 9 is also problematic.

Ran, in the sixth of his famous Derashot, says Hosea is singling out the ease of repentance as the factor that helps the good and trips up evildoers. By rights, repentance should involve making exact amends for each sin (such as tracking down and apologizing to all those whom one slandered, for one example).

Were that to have been the regimen, those who fail to repent could at least hide behind its difficulty. When God instead asks only for a sincere admission of sin, regret, and resolve not to return to it in the future, that refuge falls away, leaving those who fail to repent without any excuse. That also explains how verse 10 follows from 9--God is impatient at still being in a realm of idolatry and stubborn sin, when the ticket out is so simple.

Yoel 2:11-27—Combining Physical and Spiritual in a Complete Teshuvah

There are three parts to this rich section, which has many famous verses that could sustain their own essays. First, the text picks up in the middle of predicting a time of great disaster by saying that God is warning about it ahead of time because we can avoid it. Rashi and Radak agree, for example, that the verse “tear your hearts and not your clothing” means we can avoid having to tear clothing (a sign of mourning) by tearing our hearts (repenting).

The method of doing so comes next, a nationwide and heartfelt fast. The verses delineate the various groups of society who are to be included in the fast in another famous verse, “the groom from his room and the bride from her wedding canopy.” Properly engaged, the fast can forestall the predicted tragedy.

God goes a step further, promising not only averting tragedy, but garnering great blessing. God here says that the locusts (earlier predicted as a vehicle of punishment) will be removed from the land, the famine will be replaced by plenty, and even the losses of earlier years will be recouped). Interestingly, it is here, when God is showering blessings upon us, that the verse says it will be clear to all that God resides among us. While punishment points to God’s Hand, blessing does so better and more effectively. All lies in the power of repentance.

This is obviously a sketchy presentation, and it does not quite capture its most striking aspect, its concern with the internal experience of repentance (tear your hearts, not your clothes) and yet its continued insistence on external actions (fasting, blowing the shofar). Both external and internal components are necessary for repentance.

Micah 7:18-20: The Forgiving Side of God

Until now, the haftarah has spoken of what repentance can produce, but we now turn to a third prophet (a rarity in haftarot) reminding us of the other side of the coin, God’s willingness to forgive beyond the measure of what we deserve. This forgiveness stems from God refusing to hold on to His anger, as it were, because God prefers/wants to act kindly. These last three verses, then, echo the end of the selection from Yoel.

One last point is that this promise is only made to “the remnants of the people,” which, as Rosh haShanah 17a-b notes and Radak mentions, assumes that only a remnant of the people will merit seeing that future redemption, the time when God’s kindness can show itself fully in the world. Shabbat Shuvah calls for us to take the steps necessary to be included in that remnant, to hope and long for that day.

And now, everyone in the nation is assembled before God, from the leaders of the nation to the laborers: men, women and children! Why? To enter into the covenant with God, with all that entails.

God has made the Jews His nation, just as He promised their forefathers He would. But the covenant God is forging isn't just with the Jews present at Moshe's speech! It includes future generations as well!

The Jews saw the idols of Egypt, as well as those of the nations they encountered in their travels. Don't even think about worshiping such things! They're poison! Don't think you can invigorate your religious zeal by emulating other religions! God is NOT okay with that course of action. The Jews must serve only Him and they must do so on His terms. He will severely punish those who do otherwise. (So don't try to change the way He is worshiped to conform to contemporary trends; He says otherwise.)

In the future, Jews and non-Jews alike will wonder at the destruction of the land. What could have so angered God as to permit this to happen? Abandoning the Torah for foreign religions! That's what causes God to drive the Jews from the land in great fury.

The aliyah ends with a famous verse: Hidden things belong to God. It's up to us and our children to keep the Torah, which He has revealed to us.

In the future (from Moshe's perspective), the Jews will actually undergo the curses of exile as described. When they do, they will eventually think about what brought them to their sorry situation. They'll then return to God, Who will welcome them back. He'll gather the exiles from the lands of their dispersal and return them to Israel. When He does, they'll be even more prosperous than they were before. They'll be drawn even closer to God.

When God returns the Jews to their land, He will then punish their enemies with the afflictions they had endured. The Jews will keep the law and God will grant them an abundance of all good things. This is the reward for following His word and returning to Him wholeheartedly.

The Torah is not esoteric, hidden knowledge intended only for the elite. It's not in Heaven or across the sea, requiring great effort to obtain. It's right here - reach out and grab it!

You have a choice: you can take the path that leads to life and goodness or the road to death and evil. You know which is right. Love God and follow His instruction manual so that you can prosper in your land. You can go the other way if you like, but that leads to ruin.

Once again, Moshe calls on Heaven and Earth to serve as witnesses. This time he wants them to affirm that the Jews have been informed of their choices and the consequences of each option. He sure hopes they do the right thing because that's the only way they can survive!

This concludes the fourth and final of Moshe's farewell addresses. The Torah now resumes its more typical third-person narrative style.

(When Netsavim and Vayelech are read separately, this is the haftarah of Netsavim, and Vayelech is Shabbat Shuvah.)

The first section of this haftarah is both long and difficult, although giving a generally positive tone. Some of the difficulty stems from Isaiah piling metaphors on top of each other, so that we have to make choices about how deeply to delve into each. I’m choosing three central ones, clothing, marriage, and planting.

Isaiah opens by announcing that Jerusalem (or, possibly, the Jewish people) will rejoice in God having clothed it (or them) in redemption. The verse then moves into a wedding metaphor, saying that these clothes will be a sign of beauty or glory, like a bridegroom, or like jewels for a bride. The next verse takes us to planting, comparing the redemption to a field yielding its plants, a garden its seeds.

Later verses revisit these metaphors. 62:3 speaks of us (or Jerusalem) as a crown of glory or scarf of rulership in the hands of God. The first verses of chapter 63 focus on clothing, viewing someone (commentators debate whom, generally either the Angel of Esau or God, who was fighting on behalf of the Jews) as coming from Edom with dirtied clothing.

Verses 4 and 5 go back to marriage and planting, promising that we will no longer be called abandoned, we’ll be known as “my (God’s) desires are in it,” and the Land will be called “husbanded.” Planting comes up again in verses 8-9, when God swears we’ll never again have to see others eating our crops, that those who gather a harvest will eat and drink it, in God’s holy places.

Clothing: Defining or Revealing

The clothing metaphor in two ways here. In the first verses, clothing seems to define the person. For example, the promise to clothe us in salvation guarantees its coming. Clothing also makes the man in the case of the priestly garments, without which a priest is considered a “stranger” to the Temple, and incurs the same liability for entering or serving as does a non-priest.

Clothing seems to reveal a person’s already-existing character, such as “the one wearing bloody clothes.” Clothing, then, can either make the man or open him to the public, and is used in both of those ways here.

The other two metaphors, planting and marriage, express God’s promise to be more involved with us in the future. We are being promised that we will once again merit the kind of attention farmers give their plants and spouses are supposed to lavish on each other, repeated care for the health and needs of the other.

The metaphor of planting offers another fruitful insight, since the prophet compares us to both a field and a garden. As Radak notes, a field (without crop rotation) has one long growing season, while a garden combines different species, and therefore always has something coming to bloom. Translated to redemption, it suggests both a single redemptive event as well as a continuing and repeated blooming, perhaps further aspects of that redemption.

End of Verse 2: A Change of Name for Jerusalem

Verse 2 speaks of the nations seeing how God will help us and, as a result, renaming Jerusalem. This change might be a way of repairing the city’s image, identifying it more fully with God, or wiping away the embarrassing reminders of her sin.

This fits well with the other metaphors we’ve seen. Just as God promised to re-clothe us as evidence of greater connection, just as God promised we would be like a field, securing God’s greater attention, Jerusalem’s name will demonstrate that as well.

Verse 6 is perhaps the best-known of the haftarah, where God announces the placing of guards or watchers on the walls of Jerusalem, all day and all night. Whether these watchers are angels or people, God is saying that He has assigned someone the task of continuously crying over and praying for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, of keeping that part of the world agenda in an active way.

Verses 10-12: Again, the Participation of the World

God next calls for His messengers to pass through the Land clearing away obstacles to travel, which may be a metaphor for the evil inclination. Once those stumbling blocks are gone, the messengers are to go to the ends of the earth, encouraging the nations who live there to tell the Jews that the Redemption has come, to call them the Holy Nation, the ones redeemed by God.

Note how once again other nations matter to this future redemption, because, in Isaiah’s vision, God “cares” about the whole world learning the truth of Creation and of the necessity of living in relationship with our Creator. Admitting that the Jews are the nation of God and redeemed by Him is a crucial first step.

Verses 1-6 of Chapter 63 have God noting that no one else was willing to join in bringing about the necessary salvation, so He will do it Himself. Like the original Exodus, grand redemptions make a point to the entire world, explaining why it would take God’s direct involvement to make it as fully and broadly as possible.

The selection ends with three verses that stress the kindnesses of God, the great goods He has done (and will do) for us. A casual look at Jewish history can make this a hard message to absorb, since we might see it as one trouble following another. Isaiah is asking us to realize that suffering is never lightly brought on us, that God only brings our sufferings in the name of a vastly more important goal.

Conclusion: Comfort Isn’t a Simple Process

As the last of the seven comforting haftarot, this and the others stress that we cannot expect our problems to magically and instantaneously disappear. Our haftarot remind us there is a blessed time awaiting us, but the road to that time takes varying kinds of effort on our part. Even if we fail to ever make that effort, God will eventually bring it about, but we will have missed an opportunity.

The truer comfort is knowing how much we can do to hasten that day, to insure that it comes as fully and beneficially as possible. A propos of this time of year, the beginning of the High Holiday season, we are reminded that worlds of bounty await us, if we only make the first and necessary steps.