Shabbat Table Talk
Helen R. Graham, M.M., PhD Institute of Formation and Religious Studies, Quezon City, Philippines Bat Kol alumna 2002, 2005, 2006 e-mail: grahamhelen37@
yahoo.ca
Week of July 20-25, 2009
Torah Portion: Deut. 1:1-3:22
Haftarah: Isaiah 1:1-27
Readings for Sunday
“Across the Jordan in the land of Moab did Moses undertake to expound this teaching…” (Deut 1:5. Alter)
This Shabbat is the third and final of the “Sabbath’s of Warning” before Tisha B’Av, which falls on July 30th this year. Its name Shabbat Hazon (“Sabbath of Vision”) is taken from the haftarah reading for the week (Isaiah 1:1-27) which begins: “The vision (hazon) of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw . . .” The weekly Torah reading cycle is intentionally structured so that Parashat Devarim, along with its haftarah passage, will occur on the Shabbat preceding Tisha B'Av, a fast day commemorating the destruction of the Temple. It is significant that the Hebrew word ’eikah (“how,” or “where”), which is the standard opening word for a dirge or lament, appears in both the Deuteronomy (1:12) and Isaiah (1:21) passages, and it is also the first word of the Book of Lamentations which is chanted in synagogues on Tisha B’Av.
This Shabbat we begin eight weeks of reading from the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy (Devarim), leading up to the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah, Days of Awe, and Yom Kippur) beginning in mid-September this year. Deuteronomy takes its English name from Deut.17:18 mishnei hatorah (‘repetition of the teaching’), which is tò deuteronómion (‘the second law’) in the LXX or Greek Bible. During these weeks we shall be reading the three speeches (Deut. 1:6-4:49; 5:1-28:68 and 29:1-31:29) and two poems (Deut. 32 and 33) that Moses addressed to Israel in Moab on the other side of the Jordan shortly before his death.
Parashat Devarim opens with an introductory heading (Deut.1: 1-5) detailing the historical and geographical setting for the “valedictory address” of Moses which constitutes the major portion of the Book of Deuteronomy: “Beyond the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound (bē’ēr) this torah as follows. . .” (Deut. 1:5 RSV).
Of particular interest here is the unusual verb bē’ēr which appears in only two other places in the Hebrew Bible (Deut 27:8; Hab. 2:2) and which is translated “expound” or “explain” in most English translations. What exactly was the nature of Moses’ expounding or explaining? Was Moses simply repeating what was said before? Or was he reinterpreting the tradition for a new audience and new circumstances? According to Rashi “he explained it to them in seventy languages.” Arthur Green adds, “Torah as God speaks it is beyond any language; that includes the Hebrew of our own Torah-text. The written Torah itself is thus already commentary, the interpretation that Moses or ancient Israel gives to the transverbal utterance of God” (Green, 184). In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel since revelation itself is “an event in the realm of the ineffable,” the Bible, as a report about revelation, is itself a midrash, or interpretation. (Heschel, 185).
The Sefat Emet connects verse 5 with a verse from Proverbs “Drink water from your cistern (bor), flowing from your well (be’er)” (Prov. 5:15). Because be’er, as a noun, means “well.” Arthur Green expands on the Sefat Emet saying that the Torah is the cistern to which “we turn to discover the hidden speech of God” (Green, 284). But even prior to the Torah-text “is the silent turning inward, toward that silent wellspring out of which all words and interpretations ever flow” (ibid.). In his introduction to the Book of Deuteronomy in the Jewish Study Bible, Bernard Levinson adds a further dimension to this understanding:
“Deuteronomy . . . does not permit itself to be read literally or passively. It challenges its readers actively to confront the problem of the relation between divine revelation and human interpretation, even as it breaks down the conventional boundaries between Scripture and tradition. There is, finally for Deuteronomy, no access to God in the covenant without joining this debate. The reader of Deuteronomy must become, like the authors of Deuteronomy, an interpreter (Levinson, 361-62).
Thus the process of “explaining” and “expounding” the text begins already within the textual corpus itself. “Revelation and Tradition were thickly interwoven and interdependent, and therefore the received Hebrew Bible is itself, therefore, the product of an interpretative tradition” (Fishbane, 18). At the conclusion of his deeply reflective and insightful book, “God was in this Place and I did not know,” Rabbi Lawrence Kushner speaks of each person having a Torah that is unique to them, their “innermost teaching.” But God too has a Torah, which is eternal. Echoing the comment of Rabbi Heschel he writes, “what we call the Torah is itself only a midrash on some as-yet-undiscovered Ur-text of God’s Torah . . . . the Jewish people’s three-millennia-long guess at how to evoke God’s torah with human words” (Kushner, 178).
Haftarah: The haftarah reading is directed toward the Book of Lamentations, which will be read on Tisha B’Av. Michael Fishbane notes that “the multiple resonances between Isaiah 1:1-27 and the Book of Lamentations transform the haftarah into a prologue of woe, a prophetic ‘vision’ of destruction confirmed by later experience. On Shabbat Hazon, anticipation and memory fuse” (Fishbane, Haftarot, 277).
Gospel: The Gospel selection for this Sunday is the Fourth Gospel’s version of the feeding of the Multitude (John 6:1-15), the only miracle story appearing in all four Gospels. It actually lends itself to our weekly parashah since the entire well-crafted sixth chapter of John narrates the self-revelation of Jesus, who in turn is the Word of God enfleshed in human history (John 1:14). The popularity of the story among the early Christians was due to its Eucharistic overtones. The narrative depicts Jesus himself as a Jewish host distributing bread and fish unlike the Gospel accounts in which the disciples do the distribution. The reference to Passover in verse 4 recalls the Exodus-Wilderness generation, to the offspring of whom Moses delivers his “valedictory address” in Deuteronomy, and confirms that we cannot understand the Gospel without a sufficient grasp of the TaNaK.
For Reflection and Discussion: Reflection: [1] As you engage in the interpretation of texts, do you experience yourself as part of a long process stretching back for centuries? [2] Does this realization lead you to take very seriously the interpretive task to perform it well, especially if you are a teacher or a preacher? In this connection, Pope John Paul II wrote in Dies Domini (May 31, 1998) “Clearly, much depends on those who exercise the ministry of the word. It is their duty to prepare the reflection on the word of the Lord by prayer and study of the sacred text, so that they may then express its contents faithfully and apply them to people’s concerns and to their daily lives” (#40).
Bibliography: Bibliography: Alter, The Five Books of Moses (New York 2004); Fishbane, The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Indiana, 1989); The JPS Bible Commentary: Haftarot (2002); Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (Harper Torchbooks, 1955); Kushner, “God was in this Place and I did not know” (Jewish Lights, 1991); Bernard M. Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” The Jewish Study Bible: Berlin and Brettler (New York 2004); O’Day, “The Gospel of John: Introduction, Commentary and Reflections” (NIB 1995); Rashi, The Torah: With Rashi’s Commentary Translated, Annotated, and Elucidated (1998).
