Va-Ethannan 5766: Deconfounding the Torah
| Va-ethannan Deuteronomy 3:23 – 7:11
This week’s parashah contains the verse said when the Torah is taken out of the Ark: “This is the Torah which Moses placed before Bnei Yisrael” (4:44) [to which we append "at the word of YHWH by the hand of Moses"] Its usage implies that the verse is talking about the Five Books of Moses (specifically “4:45 these are the decrees, laws, and rules that Moses addressed to the people of Israel, after they had left Egypt, 46 beyond the Jordan, in the valley at Beth-peor, in the land of King Sihon of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, whom Moses and the Israelites defeated after they had left Egypt”), when it is really using Torah in the sense of law/teaching. This confounding of meanings is what I will here discuss.
Fundamentalist Christians place great importance on the Decalogue, which they call the 10 Commandments (in Hebrew it is 10 utterances). They want to place it in schools and courthouses, to remind everyone, presumably, to keep the Sabbath. What they may not know and certainly don’t mention, is that Jews count the commandments differently. Moreover, the version in Exodus 20 is different from the version in Deuteronomy 5. Which of the four varieties do they want to post? I have written an article for a friend’s blog which deals with one of these differences. Is Shabbat a day of remembering that God rested on the seventh day of Creation (Exodus), or is it a day to keep holy because we were freed from being slaves in Egypt(Deut.)? In other words, is Shabbat a day to be kept (Shomer Shabbat, Deut.) or remembered (Zokher Shabbat, Ex.)? In separating out the different strands of how the Torah approaches Shabbat, I will attempt to deconfound part of the Azeret haDibrot (10 utterances). See how I work with the Shomer Shabbat system of Halakha to create a system Zekhirat Shabbat HERE. |
