
You can begin to sense the change. Within a few weeks Rosh Hoshonnah will arrive. The new year 5784 will be upon us and so this week’s Torah again remains timely. The themes of much of the reading will again be that of choice, blessing and curse and the call to follow God’s word. We meet Moses’s realization, affirmed by God, that his death is near. Sadly, as the portions end, Moses speaks his truth that he knows that even after he is gone the people will turn from God’s ways (31:29). There is a sadness to these verses. Moses knows he will die, and he fears/knows that the people will not be true to the path which he taught.
There is so much to unpack in these verses. One issue that may rise to be discussed in your Torah study sessions is this tension, one played out as a constant theme in Torah, of following God’s path versus the tendency to not do so. Was society so challenging that the people just could not obey, despite the promises of blessing? It can beg the question of what may hold a society together, a question even more meaningful in today’s world, where there seems to be no moral foundation. So, we can ask, as many colleagues will do from their pulpits, where can we turn to create or find a moral foundation for life?
Rarely have we needed to ask this question more than now, for we live in a society that seems to equate morality with what I wish, and what is good for me. Have we lost the simple acts of kindness? David Brooks asked this question in a recent article in The Atlantic when he wrote “We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration…In a culture devoid of moral education, generations grow up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.” (How America Got Mean: “The Atlantic” September 2023.)
The fact of the matter is that we inhabit a religious tradition that does teach a moral foundation for life. We just have gotten away from teaching it. It is way beyond social justice work. It, at its heart is human justice work, relational justice work. We can see a one-chapter review of this foundation in Leviticus 19, and, to channel the first of this week’s portion, it is not too far from us, but close to us, as seen in this week’s Nitzavim (Deuteronomy 29 and 30). Indeed, we pray for this regularly in the morning service. Look at the morning prayer called Elu D’varim. What can a moral foundation for a society be based on? That prayer outlines it perfectly. It lists a range of mitzvot that are obligatory for us to perform, everything from visiting the sick, to rejoicing with the wedding couple to accompanying the dead, from performing acts of kindness and welcoming the stranger, praying with sincerity and what leads to them all but Talmud Torah: the study of Torah. Think about this prayer as a formula upon which to base a moral society. What if we focused our education on actualizing these values? The choice, as this week’s portion will remind us, is ours.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Richard F Address
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