The Torah reading this week includes a great deal about forms of government and leadership. It ends with the law of what happens when you find a corpse and no one can find any evidence to convict the killer or killers. In our world that is the end of the story, no evidence, no case and no conviction. But the…
Sefer Devarim
False Prophet
From the start, Judaism has been plagued by false prophets. From within and without. Every major Biblical prophet had enemies and opponents, some of whom claimed to be speaking in the name of God. And amongst the non-Jews there have been an endless stream of men including Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammad who claimed that their gods told them that they…
The Place
The Torah here in this week’s reading, mandates a specific “place” where the Israelites were to sacrifice to God. Originally whenever anyone wanted to eat meat they had to bring it to the sanctuary where it was sacrificed, its blood, fats and inedible parts removed and then divided up between the owners and the priests. During the wilderness period the…
Paganism
So much of this week’s reading is devoted to warning the Children of Israel not to follow the religion and fashions of the Canaanites they were coming to displace. The Israelite mission was to live a considered, thoughtful life, not the random, superstitious, loose and indulgent life of the pagans. What characterized Canaanite paganism was the disguising of one’s true…
Blessings and Curses
This week’s reading from Torah starts with an amazing statement, that the Torah can be both a source of blessing and a curse. Surely that can’t be correct. If one keeps the Torah there cannot be any way in which it can be bad. And yet the fact is that Torah can be misused and abused. The Torah is great.…
Sweat the Little Stuff
The Torah continues, this week, with Moshe’s long oration to the Children of Israel before he dies. In it he highlights the issues that he thinks are going to lead to a loss of faith and the danger that they might abandon their faith. Without someone as strong as he was to keep them together and to impose discipline, he…