Rabbi's Sermons

Shabat Shalom!

Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian writer, Nobel Prize for Literature, in his book "Vivir para contarla", wrote: "Life is not the one you lived, but the one you remember and how you recall it". With this phrase, we are confronted with a fact that is not always convenient for everyone, since what is important for us and for our lives, is not a list of historically verified and exact facts, but the way in which we describe them. For an historian, history is the presentation of precise facts, but the historical account from an individual, is a significant memory in his life, according to what he/she lived it, and what he/she remembers.

This week we open a new Torah book, the book of Deuteronomy, in which Moshe gives a long speech to the children of Israel, recounting many of the events and laws mentioned in the previous books from Exodus to Numbers. It is curious that Moshe, who said of himself having a "heavy mouth and tongue” normally understood as stuttering, suddenly opens his mouth and does not stop until completing an entire book! The Midrash refers to this saying: “See how beneficial the tongue - or the language - of the Torah is, because it heals the language. And how is that? Because it is written in Proverbs 15: '⁴ A wholesome tongue is a tree of life'. And isn’t the 'tree of life' the Torah?, as we know from Proverbs 3: '¹⁸ It is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon it', so the language of the Torah sets the tongue free. R. Levy said about it: '… after all, Moshe until he did not receive the Torah, it is said in Exodus 4 that he was '¹⁰ slow of speech and of a slow tongue', and when he received the Torah, he cured his tongue and began to speak DEVARIM (which in Hebrew means THINGS or WORDS). How do we know this? Because of what is written at the first verse of the book of Devarim - ‘These are the DEVARIM, the words that Moses spoke to all Israel’”.

This interesting Midrash suggests that Torah study can release certain limitations, and help an individual to remove restrictions, with which the person has limited himself. And this happens by the mechanism of language. The Midrash makes an interesting emphasis on the importance of our ability to speak, to express our ideas freely, to tell our stories, never to stop. In today's psychotherapeutic world there is a treatment approach known as the "Narrative Approach". This approach emphasizes the analysis of how a person tells the story of his life. For example, a woman suffering from emotional problems often describes her personal story, as a long list of torments, failures, and difficulties that she has experienced in life. However, that same person could describe her life as a difficult challenge, and a long process, in which she has bravely faced difficulties and challenges and still chooses for life. The same person can describe the same events in her life, from a different perspective through a completely different story! The story of a passive victim can become a story of heroism and courage, it all depends on the approach that is given.

And what does this whole psychoanalytic issue have to do with this week's Parasha? In fact, most of Parashat Devarim is an historical speech given by Moshe in which he rebuked the people. During the speech that opens the book of Deuteronomy, Moshe mentioned five events: the appointment of the heads of thousands and the deputy heads of hundreds, the story of the twelve spies, the story of those who rebelled against Moshe, and two additional events that occurred six months before Moses' speech: The first one was surrounding the people of Edom to defeat the kings of Sichon and Og, and second, the settlement of the tribes of Gad and Reuben beyond the Jordan, outside the promised land. Curiously, the common denominator of those events is that they all deal with the relationship between Moshe and the people, and not between the people and God. In some incidents, such as the rebellion, part of the people behaved incorrectly, while the last two are exemplary of courage and especially of mutual solidarity. Just before separating from everyone and die, Moshe wants to convey to the people that the relationship between them and their leadership is complicated. The creation of a new Israelite society in the Sinai desert, or if we see it today, of a modern Jewish community, always involves problems, ups and downs. In any case, there will be those who have affected others in the congregation, but at some point they had demonstrated to act in a responsible way: fight with courage and act with mutual interest, as demonstrated by the tribes of Gad and Reuben, who despite not wanting to enter the Promised Land, they helped their brothers, in the efforts of conquest, to later return to their territory. Moshe's story could have mentioned a hard-hearted people, forced to do good, who failed again and again. However, his story is different: it is the story of a people that sometimes failed and other times succeeded and that, in the months prior to the speech, showed maturity and solidarity. This is the story that Moshe wants to tell people. This is the memory that he wanted the Israelites to carry with them.

This Shabbat of Parashat Devarim is always Shabbat "Chazon", named after the vision of the prophet Isaiah, that is read in the Haftarah before Tisha BeAv. Tomorrow night, Ninth of Av is a difficult day, it is a day to remember the destruction of the Temples and the destruction of a society. During this period mourning customs are usually practiced, to prepare our hearts for this day. But if we stop for a moment and think about the parallelism between personal grief and national grief, a considerable difference stands out. When we carry personal mourning, we sit Shiva - seven days after the death of our loved one and we mark the day of his death every year. If it is especially important for us to determine mourning for those generations, would it not be more appropriate for us to mark seven days of mourning after and not before the day of the destruction? Just the other way around! on the 9th of Av we stop the mourning and we will even celebrate the 15^th of Av in a happy festivity!

Apparently, it does not make any sense, or, as it often happens in Judaism, there is a message behind it. Apparently, the story that the sages want to tell us is not a story of mourning, otherwise the grief would be seven days later. The idea is not to mourn the destruction of the temple itself, because in the end, and as history has shown, if the first Temple was destroyed, the second one was created soon after! What is the problem? Let us build the third Temple! In theory we could already do it. No, the story is another. Like Moshe, our sages tried to tell another story, and to emphasize the process that led to the destruction: the social and moral disintegration of the values ​​of a people. The sages want us to do a period of collective Teshuva, of appreciation of our values ​​as a Jewish people, in Medinat Israel as a country, and here at Agudath Achim, as a congregation. We must remember and learn from this historical events, to what extent it was human behavior, that led to the almost absolute destruction of a people, not a building.

So, how will we tell our children, grandchildren, or our friends, the story of the destruction of 9^th of Av? How is our story going to be? Will we emphasize mourning over a destroyed temple building, which, to be honest, many are not really interested? Or should we tell the story differently? Analyze the decline that we face nowadays in Israel, or the lack of interest in our congregations, or even in our families. Perhaps we should tell our own Devarim, our own story analyzing social disparities, the failure of leadership, moral distortion, injustice, which are the reasons that history shows us again and again, that lead to the destruction of a nation. This week's Torah portion teaches us that the way we tell the story has great power and great responsibility for the narrator. We must know how to tell our story in a responsible way and act with all our strength so that no other destruction (God forbid) ever occurs, neither of a building, nor of a nation, nor of a congregation. Moshe teaches us in his speech that our story must be told with responsibility, courage, and pride. In the face of injustice, inequality, poverty, hatred, let us not remain silent! Let us raise our voices, in the end, it is only up to us.

Shabat Shalom!

Rabbi David Laor

August 1^st, 2025