By Zoey Green

General Overview: Amongst other things, it includes Moses explaining how God refused to let him enter the land of Israel, a restatement of the 10 commandments, the establishment of cities of refuge for people who “unwittingly slew a fellow man” and the textual basis of practices such as saying the shema, putting up mezuzot and using tefillin. A lot, I know! For more detail, see the full text here or a summary here (wiki) or here (chabad).

A Few Musings: While I think there are many interesting and empowering messages to be found within this parsha, I want to draw attention to a passage that does not sit easy with me. In Deuteronomy 7:1-2 it says “When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are about to enter and possess, and He dislodges many nations before you… and the Lord your God delivers them to you and you defeat them, you must doom them to destruction: grant them no terms and give them no quarter.” This passage not only fails to communicate any of the empathy and compassion that I consider to be Jewish values, but it has been used historically to justify many acts of social injustice.

I have to admit that my first inclination is to ignore this passage and focus on statements such as “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” which are much easier to get behind. But, I think it’s pretty important that we don’t engage exclusively with the parts of Jewish text which we can immediately find palatable messages in. The cut and dry manner in which it is stated that we must “doom [the other nations] to destruction” and “grant them no terms and give them no quarter” leaves little wiggle room for thinking that we were supposed to go in and build up a nation in Israel that allowed for any sort of kiyum meshutaf. On the other hand, the passage that establishes cities of refuge for individuals who inadvertently murdered another, despite the explicit law ‘You shall not murder,’ seems to suggest not only that empathy and compassion are fundamental to the values that structure Jewish living, but that we

should understand that even the most explicit statement in the Torah is laced with contradictions, exceptions and ambiguities that invite us to critically evaluate the meanings that rest behind them.

So what meaning could I find in Deuteronomy 7:1-2 itself? Not much. BUT, particularly in the wake of Tisha B’av, I do still think there is meaning in having this statement included in our Jewish texts. Without such passages, we may be tempted to ignore our accountability to our history and present of being both oppressed and oppressors. I think it complicates our claim that Judaism is rooted in compassion and ideals of shivyon erech ha’adam, but I also think that’s a good thing. If we fail to recognize the ways in which our secular Judaism differs from those around us or from traditional readings, we will also fail to put our Judaism forward as a genuine alternative that deserves a seat at the table of Jewish thought, culture and politics.

Food for Thought:

So, in trying to grapple with some of the difficult passages in this parsha, I returned to a Berl Katznelson text we used in talking about Tisha B’av this week called ‘Our Historical Heritage.’ He writes…

“…Historical man possesses two faculties – memory and forgetfulness. Were only memory to exist, then we would be crushed under its burden. We would become slaves to our memories, to our ancestors...And were forgetfulness to have exclusive reign over us, would there then be place for culture, science, self-consciousness, spiritual life?...But if humanity had not preserved the memory of its greatest achievements, noble aspirations, periods of bloom, heroic effort and striving for liberation, then

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