The centerpiece, if such a word can be used in the context of a parshah, of Vo’eschanan is generally assumed to be the Aseres Hadibros, the Decalogue.

But I think that the even more fundamental element of the parshah is the recounting of history at 4:32-36, beginning, “For ask now about the early days that preceded you…” In particular: “Has any people heard a Divine voice speaking out of a fire, as you have, and survived?” and “From the heavens [Hashem] let you hear the Divine voice to torment you…”

Every religion on earth touts a miracle or miracles as its basis. Judaism is different, something the Rambam explains in Mishneh Torah (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 8:1-2). 

While there were many miracles in Egypt and the desert, he notes, only the revelation at Har Sinai truly cemented, without reservation, in the minds and hearts of the Jews, the fact that Hashem was real and had been the author of the miracles they had experienced.  Because, the Ramban observes, any “miracle” could in fact be trickery or sorcery, engineered by a talented magician or sorcerer.

So what made Har Sinai qualitatively different from the splitting of the sea or the mon? The fact, it would seem, that our ancestors directly interacted with the Divine there. The Sinaic experience wasn’t mediated by the senses. The Jews “saw” the thunder; the normal senses were bypassed (See Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael 20:15:1). 

It was a meeting, so to speak, of the minds – or, better, minds and the Mind.

Which is what the phrase “to torment you” above refers to. The experience – “Face to face Hashem spoke to you” (5:4) – was so wrenching to mere mortal men and women that the nation, after the first two dibros, begged Moshe to continue receiving the revelation, with the people continuing as bystanders, witnesses, but not direct recipients (See 5:22-24). The need for the initial “torment” or “torture” was to establish, which no mere miracle could, Hashem as Hashem. 

And that establishment of relationship is absolutely singular. No similar claim to a mass Divine-to-mortals revelation is, or can be, claimed by any other people or faith. 

© 2022 Rabbi Avi Shafran

One of the most – if not the most – confounding laws in the Torah is that of the go’el hadam, the relative of someone who was accidentally killed, who is permitted (in some opinions commanded) to pursue the unfortunate killer and dispatch him.

So much to unpack here. Personal revenge is far from a Jewish concept. In fact, the Torah unequivocally forbids it in all other situations: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against those of your people” (Vayikra 19:18). Why the exception here? And when the offense being avenged wasn’t even intentional? That would seem to violate even common sense.

Adding to the oddity of the go’el hadam law is the fact that the pursued can find safe haven in any of the “cities of refuge”– six designated ones plus another 42 Levi’im cities that also provide the accidental killer a safe base, where the pursuer has no right to harm him.

Sefer Devarim is called Mishneh Torah – a “review of the Torah.” Although it does contain laws not found earlier, it is, in some sense, an “addendum” to the prior four sefarim. Which would make Bamidbar, at least in a way, the final sefer of the Torah, its conclusion.

The Torah begins its account of human history with a killing, an exile and a protection. Kayin killed his brother, but no one had ever been killed before, so he may be considered a shogeg, an “accidental” killer, even if he intended violence. Or even his intentional act, by bringing killing into the world, may have been what “allowed” for accidental death at the hands of humans.

And Kayin was a bechor, a first-born, whose role the Levi’im come in time to replace. After his act, Kayin is forced to wander, bereft of a territory. The Levi’im, the assumers of the bechor-role, are also deprived of a tribal section of Eretz Yisrael. Instead, they are to dwell in designated cities. To which a killer-by-accident can find refuge. Cities force people to interact interpersonally. An antidote, perhaps, to the Kayin-attitude of “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 

There is much more to explore here, but let it suffice it to say that the elements of the first killing in history seem to echo in the law of go’el hadam at the “end” of the Torah. Might the law’s import be not in its actual use but rather (as various tannaim hold in the cases of the bayis hamenuga, ir hanidachas and ben sorer u’moreh – see Sanhedrin 71a)) on another level? 

Certainly worth deeper thought.

© 2022 Rabbi Avi Shafran

I’m not entirely sure why eyepatches are often associated with dangerous characters like pirates. But the only character in the Torah who is described as having a single eye is Bilaam (Bamidbar 24:3, although, according to Rashi, his missing eye was unpatched).

The significance of that physical trait is the subject of considerable commentary, much of it focused (forgive me) on two eyes representing two ways of seeing things.

What occurs to me is something else, namely, that having two eyes doesn’t just afford a broader field of vision; it allows us to perceive depth, something beyond the two-dimensional picture we perceive with one eye shut.

That, of course, is because each of our eyes sees a slightly different image (demonstrable by alternating closing each eye while looking at an object; the object shifts), and our brains miraculously combine the two images into a much more informative three-dimensional scene. We see not just a picture but the entirety of the object of our view itself.

Chazal tell us that there are three partners in the conception of every human, a father, a mother and Hashem (Niddah 31a). Bilaam’s monovisioned state, the Gemara, later on the same page, relates, resulted from his disapproving reaction to Hashem’s role during the act of conception:

[Bilaam] said: “Should Hashem who is pure and holy, and whose ministers are pure and holy, peek at this matter?” Immediately his eye was blinded as a divine punishment (ibid).

What was lacking in Bilaam’s purview was an appreciation of the deeper meaning that can be part of a physical act that, if viewed only “two-dimensionally,” or superficially, can seem carnal, even profane. He showed a lack of being able to perceive something beyond the shallow in the physical manifestation of something sublime, a meaningful relationship of love. What he lacked might well be described as depth of vision.

And the result was, in his purely physical life, a physical impediment to seeing anything three-dimensionally.

© 2022 Rabbi Avi Shafran