Devarim, דְּבָרִים  "Words"  Deuteronomy. 1:1-3:22

Devarim  /  In The Beginning    5783

A poetic meditation on the parashat Devarim*

To the Children of Awakening Repentance,

awakening to the glory of Torah observance

And to the Children of the Torah Audience,

whose approval is in their face,

in the joy and amen of their radiance

To the Children of Wilderness Redemption,

saved from looking into the mirror of deception

To these, Moses will recite the Ten Mitzvot,

mitzvot of redemption fully determinate

Knesset Israel heard them at the top of creation,

at the height of Abraham’s hope and Sarah’s elation

Moshe will bless Israel with the blessing of his own soul

His soul will be bound with a Torah scroll

Through his blessing,

like an iron pressing,

Israel, God's firstborn child, will multiply the measure of creation

All sorrow will be transformed and become appreciation

All according to the personal blessing of Moshe,

the blessing he gave on Israel’s birthday

In a dream in the night

I sat with children during the war

Fighter jets howled over the house

I said to a child who was comforting another

“God is good!”

Thoughtfully, he replied, “God is good!”

The room around us was dim with violent shadows

“Even if he takes my life, I will trust him,” I said

The children looked at me

The boy who had answered before spoke

His face brightening, his eyes looking deeply into me,  he said,

“This life is not good by itself

It is good with God”

I was silent and the children again comforted one another

The sound of the fighter jets shook the house

Moshe’s holy tongue,

is the teacher of old and young

Moshe’s holy tongue of love,

has its heart below and its ear above

With all its devotion for the people,

having been trained with the ox and lion and eagle,

(when it moved the stars were awed),

is a tongue taught for teaching the word of God,

His tongue recited the Ten Imperatives of Life,

the remedy for the poison of strife,

to the children who faced the River

the children of the Almighty Giver

For the Torah was the eternal inheritance

of these Children of Awakening Repentance,

who wandered for forty years

learning to confront their fears

Those who know they are lost in desert grey

are seeking to find the right way

Those who build a wilderness house

do not want the Eternal for a spouse

The great and fearsome desert is everywhere

Children fashioned by wilderness-soul repair

have learned the humble power of Moshe's prayer

“You, too, shall not go in there!”

God’s word to Moses was like a sun-quake

Moses said to Israel, “It was for your sake!”

Ears up! Ears sharp,

children of Messiah’s harp 

Children schooled in the music of the wilderness,

whose ear has turned their heart away from backwardness

Moshe is about to sing from his songbook to you

With an ear for music, listen to what you should do

Know that the rebels whose wisdom is imaginary,

whose love is confined and solitary,

have self-proclaimed their autonomous freewill

They will stand before God and be silent and still

The rebels require a worldview

from which they can try to construe

that morality appears by happenstance

and conclude that gambling is a valid form of finance

such freewill honors violent coincidence

and mixes idealism with insolence

Its joy is in a mazel dance

Its true belief is that only the darkest chance

writes the laws of necessity

Its desire is always dominance and supremacy

Such rebels went wild in the wilderness

Torah and mitzvot were for them to rigorous

They waited in the desert sun for a second wind

Instead, their heart shrank and their breath thinned

In the end they had no day of faith

They didn't keep the seventh, much less the eighth

Individually strong, as a group they gave up

They thought miracles were just a random buildup

But for Knesset Israel, set free by God,

who serve the crown of the letter, yod,

there could be no despair,

no converting of a Jew into a ger

The Torah Jew received a second wind

while time slowed and creation spinned

The deep structure of creation is justice!

The justice of God is endless

Mercy and truth build their home together there

The fires of the Shechinah are just and her clouds are fair

The forgiveness of God is endless,

forever elevating the soul and elevating justice

The foundation stone of creation is righteous mercy!

Without it you have no hope on your return journey

Listen with humble awe

Moses will sing you a law

Moses will sing you a song, 

making right all that is wrong

Moses will recite to you the Ten Imperatives,

silencing all ungodly narratives

Moses will sing you a curse that is able to cure,

able to cure Adam and turn the stars to powder

Moses will sing you a beautifying blessing,

to end your terrifying doubt and deadly guessing

You are traveling to eternal Jerusalem,

not to a planet of alien collectivism

You are traveling with the Sabbath map,

not with the slap of the old slave’s strap

You are traveling with God on a narrow bridge,

not wandering alone on the devil’s wide ridge

You are moving from this world to the world to come

keeping time with Moses and the beat of Mashiach’s drum

You’re walking, your hand in the Shechinah’s hand

You can end up nowhere but the Promised Land

You’re crossing over Jordan upon the Shechiah’s wings

Listen to every word that Moses sings,

Attune your ear to the majestic beat,

Holiness your eyes and your faith your feet

Take counsel with the Torah’s personal wisdom and understanding

its grace is soft and its beauty is commanding

Place each foot with care and learning

Form your words with teeth of truth and always be discerning

You are here at the Gate of the Source of Opposites

where self-assured pride is exposed with all its deficits 

You stand across the Field from The Other Side

The voice of Moses will be your guide

Moses will begin God’s epic story

The Torah's future is to reframe history

Every generation attunes its ear and listens,

those in towers and those in prisons

Every generation survives by learning what’s true

Every generation hears from Moses what’s true anew

Words from the sages fall in manna's manner

Gracious words of correction sung by the master tenor

Rabbi Eliezer* rose up and spoke

Elijah came and removed the cloak

The one who taught many teachers expressed his view

Every liar is blinded by what is true

Then wisdom was understood

Understanding leaned down like motherhood

The world is a limited place, Rabbi Eliezer said

The infinite Torah cannot be all easily wed

Let us learn the Torah in the world

and the Torah Above the world

For the Torah overflows the world!

Elijah spun the cloak and the cloak unwhirled 

But Rabbi Yehoshua* rose up and answered him

His words were shapened and his thought was trim

And then wisdom was deeply understood

Wisdom leaned down like fatherhood

We must learn for ourselves, he said,

The Torah must be engaged before it is wed

The ox must learn in the ox’s style,

the lion in the lion’s style,

the eagle the eagle’s style

Adam must learn as a little child

He must learn to be tame and cease to be wild

Let the Torah first fill the earth,

and then give birth

and then it will overflow…

Then the very waters of the sea will know

that God is one

Elijah said, Amen, they are done

Moses heard both rabbis with a deeply humble smile

He was deeply pleased, for all the while

he saw that his song of rebuke

with its heavenly and earthly outlook

had taught them true simplicity

child-like sagacity

In the knowledge of each,

and the wisdom of each

he heard the voice of his own speech,

confirmation of its eternal reach

He heard in each the fear of their Loving Master

He head pure reverence for the soul’s own father

In the song of Moshe there is no flaw

Every yod is love and every stroke is awe

All its corrections are blessings

All its outcomes are weddings

The guidance of Moshe gave them confidence and clarity,

decisiveness and charity

Through the light that shinned from Moshe’s face,

they glimpsed the light of the Creator’s grace

They learned to walk in the spirit of repentance

Their talk was always of their Torah observance

How did Moshe’s melody have such power?

How was eternity found in his hour?

Moshe’s songbook made them know

what the heavens had always tried to show,

that Israel is God’s sentence

that her journeys are all of Adam’s penance

This sentence of just and righteous mercy,

for which the soul hungers and the spirit is thirsty,

is passed for eternity upon Adam and their children

Its not a sentence that is yet to be heard but one already given

Why, then, do the nations rage?

Why do they never come of age?

Because they are still minors in the prisoner box

They dream of golden eagles, golden lions, and a golden ox

because they have not yet heard

the final sentence, the final word

From the day the Jewish children were born,

God’s covenant was made and his oath was sworn,

they were fashioned with an energy and form

to translate to the nations God’s musical lightning storm

They had confidence, they had grace and mitzvot of power

Their translation would come from the eternity of Mashiach’s hour

Then the words of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai* were remembered

Our eyes were trued, our ears were tempered

And then wisdom was understood,

It came down as one parenthood

The wisdom of the forty years of love,

like the branch of life in the mouth of the dove,

containing thousands of years of learning,

forty years containing all of human yearning,

those forty years seemed to Israel like a journey of three days

God waits for nothing when he has the wilderness dead to raise

Even the wilderness dust is redeemed

The resurrected learn that the body is not what it seemed

Adam’s body will be made to live through Israel

And the office of the children of the Torah will be managerial 

Their number will be like the sands of the seashore,

The work of their heart will be to restore

all which cannot be measured or counted

all which cannot be doubted or shrouded

In the place of wandering in the desert,

Elijah will appear in the generational circuit

On the other side of the Jordan where it was said to them,

How perfect is your monotheism?

You are not yet wholly my people

Your left hand and your right hand are not fully legal

In that very place of the Jordan’s parting waters,

where not yet all were called Jerusalem’s daughters,

the narrow bridge shall cross over the world so broad,

and they shall all be called the children of the Living God!