Parashat Devarim

Saturday 21 July 2018                                                                                                          8  Av  5778
Parashat Devarim
Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22; Isaiah 1:1-27; Matthew 24:1-22

A special portion for Shabbat Chazon – the Sabbath of Vision - is read this Shabbat!

The book of Deuteronomy begins, “These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel” (Deuteronomy 1:1). Devarim means “words,” and Devarim is the Hebrew name of the book. The “words” of Deuteronomy primarily consist of Moses’ recapitulation of the Torah, hence the common title “Deuteronomy” which derives from the Greek words for repetition of the Law.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe stated that the opening phrase of the parashah, “These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel,” imply that a person should always regard “the words” of Torah as something new and exciting, no matter how many times he has studied them in the past. “They should be new in your eyes every day,” says Rashi. Pireki Avot says, “Turn it over, turn it over again, for everything is within it. Look into it and become grey haired and old in it.”

A person should never consider himself to be above learning Torah. If the Torah really does convey the words of the living God, then it continues to impart revelation regardless of how many times a person has read it. It will always be new. When Moses recapitulated the Torah in the words of Deuteronomy, he delivered the same Torah, but it became like new material as he spoke it.

The second redeemer, the Messiah, will be like the first redeemer. Just as Moses reiterated the Torah and it became like a new Torah as he did, the Messiah will reveal a “New Torah” to the world in the Messianic Era. Then the Torah will go out from Zion. All nations will ascend to Messianic Jerusalem to learn Torah from the Messiah. The Messiah’s “New Torah will go forth” to all nations, as it says, “A Torah will go forth from Me, and I will set My justice for a light of the peoples” (Isaiah 51:4).

The New Torah of Messiah is not a different Torah, nor does it contradict anything in the Torah of Moses. Instead, the New Torah reveals the spiritual Torah behind the Torah of Moses, that is, the hidden will and wisdom of God. It will be the same Torah, but the Messiah will reveal the inner meanings. He will open the spiritual dimensions of the Torah and show us the things hidden in the Torah. The written scroll of Moses containing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy can be compared to the physical body; the Torah of Messiah is like the divine soul which animates the body.

The sages say, “The Torah which a man learns in this world is like nothing in comparison to the Torah of the Messiah.” Moreover, “the Messiah will elucidate for them the words of the Torah … and he will correct errors in its interpretation.”