Rabbi Claudio Jodorkovsky
Asociación Israelita Montefiore
Bogota, Colombia.
Parashat V’zot ha-Brachah does not always receive the attention it deserves, just because it is never read during Shabbat. However, as the last parashah of the Sefer Torah, our rabbis assigned it as the reading for one of the happiest days in our calendar, Simchat Torah, the day in which the actual celebration of the end of the Torah's yearly cycle does not often allow us the time and opportunity to study its contents in depth.
But although it is not commonly known, V’zot ha-Brachah contains the text that served as the basis for one of the most famous stories in rabbinical literature. It is written in our parashah: “The Lord came from Sinai” (Deut. 33:2), and our sages ask themselves in the Midrash: “If the Torah says God’s words ‘came’ from Sinai, where did they go from there?” (Sifrei Devarim 343). And they answered by teaching that before God gave the Torah to Israel, He offered it to other nations as well.
At first God went to the children of Esau. He asked them: Will you accept the Torah? They said right to His face: What is written in it? He said: “You shall not murder.” They replied: Master of the universe, this goes against our grain. Our father, whose “hands are the hands of Esau” (B’reishit 27:22), led us to rely only on the sword, because his father told him, “By your sword you shall live” (B’reishit 27:40). We cannot accept the Torah.
Then He went to the children of Ammon and Moab, and asked them: Will you accept the Torah? They said right to His face: What is written in it? He said: “You shall not commit adultery.” They replied: Master of the universe, our very origin is in adultery, for Scripture says, “Thus the two daughters of Lot came to be with child by their father” (B’reishit 19:36). We cannot accept the Torah.
Then He went to the children of Ishmael. He asked them: Will you accept the Torah? They said right to His face: What is written in it? He said: “You shall not steal.” They replied: Master of the universe, it is our very nature to live off what is stolen and what is got by assault. Of our forebear Ishmael it is written, “He shall be a wild ass of a man; his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him” (B’reishit 16:12). We cannot accept the Torah.
There was not a single nation among the nations to whom God did not go, speak, and, as it were, knock on the door, asking whether it would be willing to accept the Torah.
At long last He came to Israel. They said, “Naaseh ve Nishmah”, “We will do and we will hear” (Shemot 24:7). (Sifre Devarim 343)
This passage, bequeathed to us by our sages and based on our parashah, shows us a specific facet of the giving of the Torah: the people accepted it freely and chose to receive it. Nevertheless, when contrasting this story with another famous text in our tradition, our sages pose an apparent contradiction. The Talmud, on the Shabbat Tractate (88a), tells that when the people were preparing for the meeting at Sinai, God ripped the mountain from the earth and raised it, holding it over the heads of the children of Israel. “Do you accept it?” He asked. “If you do, perfect; if not, this will be your burial place.” The message, in the case of this Midrash, is the opposite. The people do not chose the Torah freely; rather, it is imposed on them, perhaps to show them that the survival of the Jewish people cannot be guaranteed if they remove themselves from the values of the Torah.
We have here two stories from our sages, full of symbolism and great lessons. By confronting them, however, and as of the apparent contradiction between them, I think the matter of the constant tension that exists in each one of us concerning what it is that makes us Jewish, is clearly raised. We are Jews by mere imposition (due to the simple fact of having been born in a Jewish family) or we are Jews through our personal choice (because we have decided, beyond any family ties, to actively and conscientiously identify with our own tradition).
Every year, the holiday of Simchat Torah gives us the same challenge. By completing the Torah reading and renewing its cycle of learning and study, we Jews remember that it is not enough to be born Jewish to receive the Torah and be heirs to its message. We must choose it freely and conscientiously as well, committing ourselves to observe it and study it day in and day out, week after week, because that is the only way for us to get to know its message and enrich our lives with it.
Chag Sameach!
Rabbi Claudio Jodorkovsky
