Learn to Do Good
This week opens a new book in Torah, the book of Deuteronomy (from the Greek for “second law”, referring to how Moses recapitulates many of the laws and stories we have previously heard) or Devarim (Hebrew for “words”). In many ways, the theology of Deuteronomy marks a departure from what we’d seen in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.
Professor Tamar Kamionkowsky writes: “The phrase, to love the Lord your God, appears eight times in the Book of Deuteronomy, two times in Joshua and nowhere else in the Bible! The demand that Israel fear God never appears in Torah before Deuteronomy, where the phrase occurs nine times. Following the Five Books of Moses, this demand appears only a handful of times. The phrase, to walk in his ways, is a Deuteronomic concept that is repeated only a few times in the Bible by proponents of Deuteronomic thinking. Finally, the mandate that one is to serve God with all of one’s heart and all of one’s soul is unique to the Book of Deuteronomy. In short, what God demands here is unique to this particular book of the Torah…We can thank Deuteronomy for teaching us the importance of yirat Adonai (fear of God) and ahavat Adonai (love of God), two concepts which often merge. It is this voice in Torah that compels us to bring our whole beings into relationship with God as we walk in God’s ways.”
Deuteronomy has a particular project for us. A wholeness of being and service…shleimut. It is no coincidence that all of the passages cited above are key texts in Mussar practice. Love and fear (or awe) are two of the deep soul-traits to work with, grounding almost every other facet of our character. “Walking in God’s ways” is understood to mean that we should act with kindness and follow God’s ethical example (Talmud Sotah 14a).
We also start reading this book right around Tisha B’av, which memorializes the destruction of the first and second Temples. The first temple fell to the Babylonian Empire. The second temple fell to the Roman Empire. If you read historians, you’ll quickly realize how tiny the kingdoms of Israel and later Judea are, how the land is situated at a crossroads of great nations such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia. It seems clear to me that you can describe the destruction of the temples and the various political misfortunes of the Jewish ancestors as part of a larger geopolitical drama. Jewish kings made strategic mistakes, their land was a geographic key to the ambitions of surrounding empires, and the resulting devastation is not really so surprising.
What is surprising is how Jews began to interpret the loss of temple and homeland. Instead of stating the obvious and acknowledging the vast power of the Romans, for example, the Talmud teaches: “The humility of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas caused the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem” (Talmud Gittin 55b-56a). In fact, as the central rabbinic story of why the temples were destroyed unfolds, we consistently see political power sidelined as a mere consequence of the real tragedy, sin’at chinam (“baseless hatred”), and underdeveloped character, such as Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas’s misapplication of humility.
Essentially, geopolitical conflict results not from power struggle for resources, but from spiritual and ethical atrophy. For the rabbis, without mussar - the introspective and spiritual practice of developing our character and ethical action - politics will fail us. Trying to transform policies, systems, structures, even laws and rituals, will ultimately fail us if we don’t also try to transform ourselves.
Our haftarah this week tells us what a good society looks like (and crucially, one that will thereby endure).
“Learn to do good.
Devote yourselves to justice;
Aid the wronged.
Uphold the rights of the orphan;
Defend the cause of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)
I like this as a definition of loving God, of fearing God, of walking in God’s ways, of serving God with your whole being - “learn to do good.” It will take a lifetime. Let’s learn together.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
