Always Happening

Friday, September 4, 2009
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

     The Book of Deuteronomy consists mainly of three long sermons preached by Moses before his death. This week's portion, Ki Tavo, includes the end of Moses' second sermon and a snippet, a few verses, of the third sermon. Next week's portion, Nitzavim, continues Moses' third sermon. You could say that, for some reason, the beginning verses of Moses' third and last sermon have been deliberately orphaned.

     Yet these first words have special meaning for us and for every generation as the High Holy Days approach. To get a handle on this, let's look at only the opening words of all three of Moses' sermons in Deuteronomy.

     Moses begins his first sermon by saying that God sent the Israelites away from the holy mountain to enter the promised land. As God promised, the people were as numerous as the stars in the heavens. So numerous that the burden of leadership was too great for one person. So Moses appointed heads over the people: elders and leaders.

     Moses begins his second sermon by reminding the Israelites of the covenant they made at the sacred mountain and all its laws.

     The third sermon, which many consider the greatest speech in the Bible, is built on a familiar Jewish theme: God has set before you life and death, good and evil, therefore choose life that you and your children may live. But it begins with a contrasting, diametrically opposed proclamation that the fate of human beings is always in God's hands. Which is it?

     Are we marked by our God-given ability as human beings to freely choose between good and evil, to choose life over death? Or, are we more like the worm in the grass -- guided entirely by God's will -- able to move this way and that but with hardly any understanding; unable to conceive of any truly significant choice? Is our life in our hands or is it in the hands of God? Which is it?

     Now Moses was a law-giver, not a philosopher. In this, his most eloquent sermon, he does not seek to answer this pressing question. The majority of his sermon is about choice and the importance of the choices we make. And, looking back at the division of the sermon, the rabbis obviously decided to place this little piece of it in the portion of Ki Tavo -- this little piece that poses the question of whether fate controls our lives. By separating these verses from the rest of the sermon, they obviously meant for us to focus only on the issue of choice -- that what we choose makes all the difference in our lives--and they avoided dealing with the critical influence of destiny -- that everything is dependent on what God chooses for us.

     We face this dichotomy every High Holy Day season. We look back on our choices through the year and weigh them in the scale of right and wrong -- choices we wish we had not made; and choices we made that were life-affirming. But we also know that in heaven, according to the metaphor, God opens a book of life and judges us, determining whether we shall live or die in the coming year -- what will be our fate?

     What is so shocking at the beginning of the sermon that the rabbis attempted to hide it from the rest of the sermon? Here are the words:

Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that Adonai did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt ... the wondrous feats you saw with your own eyes, those prodigious signs and marvels. Yet to this day Adonai has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear [Deut.29:1-3].

     It is not strange to hear that the people have not appreciated the marvels performed for them by God. It was for this reason that the Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness, allowing the generation of those born into slavery to die off. Moses now speaks to those who are of the new generation -- those over forty years of age remember the plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the sea of reeds; the younger may remember the wonders performed at God's Holy Mountain, but none of these Israelites ever served as slaves. And, yet, there is a defect in even this new generation.

     Moses says, "To this day, Adonai has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear." If the reason that the Israelites were not awakened to God's service by all of God's signs and miracles is that God did not give them the ability to comprehend, to see, or to hear, then it is not their fault. The fault is God's. And the fate of the generation of slaves was tragically sealed before they had a chance to choose for themselves. They were never given the ability to be moved by God's many mercies to them. They were doomed from the start to die without understanding. Yet, if this is true, of what use is it for Moses to keep on speaking, to talk about how God gives us choice and commands us to choose life?

     It cannot be right that the rest of the sermon is a lie. So we have to look at what the commentators have done with the problem of how the sermon begins. Some say Moses was not making a statement, but stating a rhetorical question, as if to ask, "Why can't you see or hear or understand what God has done for you? Didn't God give you a mind, eyes, and ears?" Some say Moses meant that God is responsible for our failings only in the most ultimate sense -- since it was God who placed human limitations on our abilities. And some say that Moses only meant this as a figure of speech, only to emphasize our human failings.

     In our time, Nechama Liebowitz commented that Moses was actually expressing the disappointment of every aging man. In his eyes, all the wonders of God revealed in this world were all too obvious. Moses just could not fathom why, if he could perceive God's wonders so clearly, the people who followed him could not see them or hear them or comprehend them.

     A little later in the sermon, though, Moses ties this statement that God did not give us a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear to another verse [Deut. 30:6] that states that if you repent, God "will open up your heart and the hearts of your children to love Adonai your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live." The rabbis of the Talmud also said, "When you seek to purify yourself, you receive help in doing so." So the commentator, D.Z. Hoffmann, claims that we must first choose to obey God, and only then will God help us to do so.

     As we each prepare for the High Holy Days, we need to keep this in mind. The evidences of God's presence are all around us. They did not happen only as we left Egypt or only at God's holy mountain. The miracles and wonders happen before us every day. We see them in the birth of a child; in the celebration of a marriage; in the rainbow after a storm; in the struggle of those who are ill or dying to keep on breathing just a few more moments, just a few more days, just a few more months; in the eyes of those we love and those who love us; in the appreciation of the needy who receive help from us; in the sunrise and in the sunset; in the blossoming of a rose; in the stars at night; even in the cheers of the crowd at a sporting event. All these are the wonders and the miracles of God, if only we choose to see them clearly. And, if we make the conscious choice to see them as wonders, then God opens our hearts and our minds, opens our eyes, and opens our ears, so that we can see more and more of the miracles of our existence.

     The lesson here is that God does not choose to make the perception of God in the universe an automatic thing. Nevertheless, seeing evidence of God's wonders in the universe is a choice that we can make. Every time we shut out God, our certainty that God does not exist grows stronger in us; and we shut our eyes and ears and perceive no wonders and miracles around us. But every time we open our eyes to God's presence in the world around us, God helps us to make the same choice over and over again -- we come to see, hear, and feel God's presence all around us. Then, indeed, we are able to say with one voice, "Look around you. Something sacred is always happening."

     And let us say: Amen.