V’ethanan 5768: Six Little Words, One Big Idea

This Shabbat is also known as Shabbat Nahamu, the Sabbath of comfort, whose name is taken from the Beginning of this week’s Haftarah portion.

1. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

2. Speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her fighting is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. [Is 40:1-2]

This Shabbat always happens the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av. I quoted a story last week which works as a great metaphor for Tisha B’Av:

R. Ashi made a marriage feast for his son. He saw that the Rabbis were growing very merry, so he brought a cup of white crystal and broke it before them and they became serious. [Brachot 30b-31a]

Our world is shattered on the Ninth of Av, much like the crystal goblet. We are all in pieces. Yet in the theme of comfort there are six little words

Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad!

4. Hear, O Israel; The Lord is our God the Lord is One! [Deut 6:4]

When our souls are still recovering from being in a thousand broken pieces, were are told that God is One. The Socino translation gives a common version that this means one god, a statement of monotheism. In a more mystical and universal bent, I take this as more than that. God is a unity of all things. God is transcendent – God is Life, the Universe and Everything – and then some. Shattering a glass seems to be a loss, yet in the unity of the ONE there is no such thing as loss or gain, just change. It was not a complete catastrophe on the Ninth of Av. Things will regenerate says the prophet Isaiah in the Haftarah.

But what do we do to get to such regeneration? How do we do it? Deuteronomy continues:

5. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be in your heart; 7. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. [Deuteronomy 6:5-8]

This is such a profound idea we must keep it close to us and not only think of it intellectually, but live it. Abraham Joshua Heschel, in Quest for God writes:

He who loves with all his heart with all his soul with all his might does not love symbolically…When a person is appointed honorary president or honorary secretary of an organization he is serving symbolically and is not required to carry out any functions. Yet there are others who actually serve an organization or a cause.

What was it that the prophets sought to achieve? To purge the minds of the notion that God desired symbols. The service of God is an extremely concrete, and extremely real, literal and factual affair. We do not have to employ symbols to make Him understand what we mean. We worship Him not by employing figures of speech but by shaping our actual lives according to His pattern. [Heschel 1954, 132]

The Shema is not a symbolic thing but something that is to be lived, to be done. The Torah requires us to recite these words twice a day in all of our being, heart soul and might. This means we are required to recite them with deep concentration according to the Talmud:

Our Rabbis taught: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Up to this point concentration is required. So says R. Meir. Raba said: The halacha is as stated by R. Meir. [Brachot 13b]

To say the words Hear Oh Israel we must do so with an incredible sense of attention, one the Talmud literally calls Kavvanat Ha- Lev, an intention of the heart. The rabbis spend much of the second chapter of the Talmud Tractate Brachot discussing this issue of Intention. The Mishnah that starts this section reads:

If one was reading in the Torah [the section of the Shema’] when the time for its recital arrived, if he had the intention he has performed his obligation. [Brachot 13a]

This seems like an odd occurrence, how often does one happen to be reading Deuteronomy 6 at the time one is supposed to be praying? But the Mishnah is here making an important distinction. Reading something and giving something attention with intention are two different things according to the rabbis. There are two Hebrew terms used to distinguish between these two: Keva, the regular structure of the prayer, and Kavvanah the intention of prayer. Abraham Joshua Heschel described the problem with these two:

THERE IS a specific difficulty of Jewish prayer. There are laws: how to pray, when to pray, what to pray. There are fixed times, fixed ways, fixed texts. On the other hand, prayer is worship of the heart, the outpouring of the soul, a matter of devotion. Thus, Jewish prayer is guided by two opposite principles: order and outburst, regularity and spontaneity, uni­formity and individuality, law and freedom. These principles are the two poles about which Jewish prayer revolves. Since each of the two moves in the opposite direction, equilibrium can be maintained only if both are of equal force, However, the pole of regularity usually proves to be stronger than the pole of spontaneity, and as a result, there is a perpetual danger of prayer becoming a mere habit, a mechanical performance, an exercise in repetitiousness. The fixed pattern and regularity of our services tends to stifle the spontaneity of devotion. Our great problem, therefore, is how not to let the principle of regularity impair the power of devotion. [Heschel 1953]

Prayer need both. Without the regularity and structural support of keva we soon lose energy to pray spontaneously, and stop praying. The uniformity of Jewish prayer, the prayers we find in the prayerbook, is the Keva. The personal passion that we pray with is the kavvanah. The keva of six words is rather simple; it is the kavvanah of those words which the rabbis of the Talmud were insistent concerning the Shema.

Yet even they had problems defining what that intention should be:

Our Rabbis taught: The Shema’ must be recited as it is written. [i.e. in Hebrew] So Rabbi. The Sages, however, say that it may be recited in any language. What is Rabbi's reason? — Scripture says: and they shall be, implying, as they are they shall remain. What is the reason of the Rabbis? — Scripture says ‘hear’, implying, in any language that you understand. [Brachot 13a]

Such debates of course continue about what language the prayers should be written in, and the same two positions remain. The thing about Kavvanah is that it is personal. There is no right answer for a congregation. When the answer becomes a congregational answer or a movement’s answer, it is no longer Kavvanah but Keva. Rabbi and the Sages debate other points as well, such as should things be said out loud or silently. But most interesting is the idea of greeting someone while saying the Shema. One must pray with enough attention that under normal circumstance while reading, you will not greet anyone. If there is a danger or there is the need to greet someone due to the high amount of respect afforded that person, then one may stop reading. But only between paragraphs can some stop and greet someone.

While rabbis could argue at this incessantly, the question remains how do we as individuals find our own sense of Kavvanah? How do we in a sense connect spiritually and with intention? Many of the traditions, such as not only closing your eyes, but shield your eyes with your hand, are traditions which are there as ways of enhancing our own way of finding intention. But there are some things that are more personal. When the kavvanah is right for a person it is something that they never forget.

Shlomo Carlebach in his early years purportedly “raided” Hindu ashrams looking for wayward Jews to return to their birth faith. Often he would sing the Shema in the middle of the ashram, and noted who looked up. Most Jews who leave Judaism for Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and even the odd label Spiritual but not religious don’t forget the Shema. Indeed many I believe leave because as Heschel pointed out, the Keva got in the way of the kavvanah. They are looking East or elsewhere for the Judaism of the Shema, which was lost in the Keva of the modern synagogue service.

So what is the proper Kavvanah for the Shema? This is one of those posts where I have no answer. I know what works for me, but that might not necessarily work for you. It’s nice, however to share ideas, to find out how someone else thinks about how to do the liberating spontaneous Kavvanah. This works better in discussion, and that discussion I will have in my Torah Study session during Kahal services at Beth Emet in Evanston this Saturday. You are welcome to attend.

Devarim/ Tish B’Av 5768: These are the Words

This week we begin the book of Deuteronomy, which is sometimes called the Mishneh Torah, or repetition of the Torah, as described by Moses. Instead of Cliff's notes, Deuteronomy is Moses' Notes of the Torah. We are at the Jordan, across from Jericho. Deuteronomy is also Moses' last address before his death. In this week's portion, Moses summarizes the journey from Egypt to this point. Interestingly he mentions the episode of the spies in more detail than the rest. While some of those details differ from what was written in the book of Numbers two things are significantly similiar:

26. However you would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God; 27. And you murmured in your tents, and said, Because the Lord hated us, he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. 28. Where shall we go? our brothers have discouraged our heart, saying, The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and fortified up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.

The people’s murmuring is the same as Numbers'. The second part that is the same is God’s final reaction, though adding an interesting detail:

34. And the Lord heard the voice of your words, and was angry, and swore, saying, 35. Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I swore to give to your fathers, 36. Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will I give the land that he has trodden upon, and to his children, because he has wholly followed the Lord. 37. Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, You also shall not go in there.

According to his text it is the incident of the spies which causes Moses not to enter the Promised Land, not the striking of the rock. But according to Numbers Rabbah, Moses and the people not entering the Land was only the first round of punishment.

This alludes to the punishment which you received as a heritage for future generations. For Israel had wept on the night of the ninth of Ab, and the Holy One, blessed be He, had said to them: ‘You have wept a causeless weeping before Me. I shall therefore fix for you a permanent weeping for future generations.’ At that hour it was decreed that the Temple should be destroyed and that Israel should be exiled among the nations.[Numbers R. XVI:20]

The Midrash gives as its proof text Psalm 106:24-27

24. And they despised the pleasant land, they did not believe his word;
25. And they murmured in their tents, and did not listen to the voice of the Lord.
26. And he lifted up his hand against them, to make them fall in the wilderness;
27. And to make their seed fall among the nations, and to scatter them in the lands.

While our texts in Deuteronomy and Numbers explain verse 26 as a punishment, it does not explain verse 27, which does not happen until the time of the destruction of the Temple. Therefore, according to the Sages this must refer to the Ninth of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second temples, and a whole slew of bad events for the Jews.

With precision set by the Sages’ calculations for the calendar, of The Ninth of Av always occurs after this week’s Portion is read for Shabbat. This year it occurs immediately on the heels of Shabbat. Sitting in the dark, reading Lamentations Saturday Night I’ll think a lot about the story that supposedly caused the destruction of the second temple, the story about a man named Bar Kamza [Gittin 55b]. A simple mistake in party invitations brought an enemy instead of a friend to a party. Because the host threw this man bar Kamza out of the party after seemingly inviting him, Jerusalem and the temple was destroyed. The host of the party feared Bar Kamza would talk about their why they were enemies. But Bar Kamza was hurt by the words of the host’s refusal. As the Talmud continues It has been taught: Note from this incident how serious a thing it is to put a man to shame, for God espoused the cause of Bar Kamza and destroyed His House and burnt His Temple. [Gittin 57b] An exchange of words destroyed the Temple.

Our portion this week is the word for words in Hebrew, Devarim. Words can be building blocks or forces for destruction. We can use constructive words to be constructive. We could do the opposite and say something destructive bringing a destructive outcome. But one does not follow the other. There are cases where we may say something constructive but its outcome is destructive because of miscommunication or conflicting agendas. Finally there are cases where we say something destructive to bring about a constructive result. This last case we know as rebukes. Much of Deuteronomy is a verbal rebuke by Moses to the Israelites, and this portion is particularly stinging as Moses enumerates the many failures of the Israelites in the wilderness, in the hope that when Moses is gone, they will not make the same mistakes again. Yet rebukes are not something one can do casually. They need to carry a sense of authority and creditability with them. The rabbis in the first chapter of Deuteronomy Rabbah give multiple explanations of the beginning to Deuteronomy. All of them are about the rebuke, and how to do it right. In several places Moses is compared to Balaam. If, according to this comparison, someone’s reputation and behavior is usually the opposite of their communication it helps the veracity of the statement. Balaam blessing instead of cursing the people lends credence to the blessing. Moses’ rebuke to the people is from a man who saved that people from God’s anger on multiple occasions. Secondly, a rebuke from an honest man carries more credence than a hypocrite. Moses was the most honest of men, one who did not take even a donkey from the people. This lends creditability compared to someone who broke the rules himself. It isn’t easy for everyone to rebuke. Do it wrong and you hurt someone. The party’s host and Bar Kamza show that to the extreme.

What the rabbis don’t talk about rebuking is one other way of showing authority and changing people’s behaviors. There are people who used to do a certain thing, say robbery, and then learned it was a bad thing to do. So they repent, stop doing it and start doing good. They know this sin or transgression well, but can show from the insider’s perspective how wrong it is to do from the knowledge of their own experience. Some can go to other robbers, talk in the language and experience of robbers and convince robbers to stop robbing. Such people are in a very literal sense masters of repentance. They are not only ones who can repent, but one who can get others to repent not by rebuke but by sharing their story.

But what gets the robber to make such a realization to change into such a master? There are two parallel stories which I tend to think of in this respect, the source of a venerated Jewish tradition:

Mar the son of Rabina made a marriage feast for his son. He saw that the Rabbis were growing very merry , so he brought a precious cup worth four hundred zuz and broke it before them, and they became serious. R. Ashi made a marriage feast for his son. He saw that the Rabbis were growing very merry, so he brought a cup of white crystal and broke it before them and they became serious. [Brachot 30b-31a]

The shattering event of something valuable gets people’s attention and they look at the world differently instantly. Such acts could be of destruction, as in these cases. Yet such acts, verbal and non-verbal can backfire. R. Ashi’s attempt to make his students serious at a wedding is now the sign to start the party at any Jewish wedding: the breaking of the glass by the groom.

One of the saddest kinds of backfiring of all is the one that is not even paid attention to. Outside of Orthodoxy, the 9^th of Av is not observed by most Jews, let alone known. Tisha B’Av’s function may be very well set on the calendar not for the wimpy murmurs of the Israelites in desert, but as a precious shattered glass. It is the start of the season of repentance. We have only a few weeks to prepare ourselves for the High holidays. Like the robber who might have gotten caught or shot as his defining moment to give up his illicit profession, the completely depressing day known as the 9^th of Av is that crystal-breaking moment when we realize we need to take stock and begin the cycle of repentance that will lead to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is not a punishment at all, but a chance for redemption.

Moses rebukes in the weekly portion. The Jewish world is shattered on the 9^th of Av. In the broken pieces, we begin the process of re-building through our repentance and the ability to help others by sharing our story of what we did wrong and how to do it right. That rebuild is not easy and is often a seemingly lonely process. Next week, in response, we are given a little help in six little words.

Parshat Re’eh 5767: Rabbi, Is this Gazelle kosher?

Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

I’ve been a little intense lately so I thought I’d do something light on its feet, like a gazelle. This week we have a large number of mitzvot. In the middle of all this we have the commandment:

What ever I command you, take care to do it; you shall not add to it, nor diminish from it. [Deut 13:1]

We also have the repetition of the kosher laws. When discussing land animals, which in Leviticus we are only told they are to be animals which chew their cud and have split hoof, here we have a list of species:

4. These are the beasts which you shall eat; the ox, the sheep, and the goat, 5. The deer, and the gazelle, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the adax, and the wild ox, and the wild sheep. 6. And every beast that parts the hoof, and has the hoof cloven into two, and chews the cud among the beasts, that you shall eat. [Deut 14:4]

While domesticated animals, also known as the sacrificial animals, are mentioned in this list there is also the mention of wild game, which are non sacrificial animals. Two of these are the gazelle and deer. They are mentioned twice more in this discussion of kashrut:

15. However you may slaughter animals and eat their meat in all your gates, to your heart’s desire, according to the blessing of the Lord, your God which he has given you; the unclean and the clean may eat of it, as they do of the gazelle and the deer. 16. Only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it upon the earth like water. [Deut 12:15-16]

21. If the place which the Lord your God has chosen to put his name there is too far from you, then you shall kill of your herd and of your flock, which the Lord has given you, as I have commanded you, and you shall eat in your gates, to your heart’s desire. 22. Like the gazelle and the deer are eaten, so you shall eat them; the unclean and the clean shall eat of them alike. 23. Only be sure that you eat not the blood; for the blood is the life; and you may not eat the life with the flesh. [Deut. 12:21-23]

Non-sacrificial animals like deer and gazelles indicate to us that sacrificial animals can be eaten the same way as wild game by the normal populace. It is only in their sacred role as sacrificial animals and their eating by the priesthood that the issues of spiritual purity of the person eating apply. On the other hand, we are told even with the wild animals, there is a prohibition of eating their blood.

While we are not to add or remove anything from the commandments, there are ways of understanding the commandments we have in terms of the entire text. The gazelle is a good example of this. It is from the gazelle we can determine that ritual slaughter applies to all permitted land animals. Significant qualifications apply to the use of Shechita. In its biblical sense, trefa means meat has not been torn by beasts. By applying ritual slaughter to wild game, it also applied the rules of not allowing any cuts or punctures on the animal prior to slaughter. The animal must be alive at the time of slaughter, and die from the cut. A puncture or a dead animal would render the animal treif.

Unlike a cow, however deer and gazelle are very fast, not found on pastures and not easily herded into slaughter. If a hunter was not Jewish, this presents only minor problems. Projectile weapons such as a rifle or bow and arrow could take down wild game, but by using something that will puncture and might kill the animal renders them treif. This is a big reason there are few card carrying NRA members who are Orthodox Jews. For meat to be kosher Jews can’t hunt with guns. Like the paradoxical secular Jewish revulsion for eating a hamburger with a glass of milk, Jewish thought has continued that ideal even in liberal Judaism. Guns are treif for most Jews, whether they eat kosher or not.

There are however, lines in the text that point to hunting gazelle.

5. Save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler. [Proverbs 6:5]

Note Proverbs puts gazelles in parallel with birds. Hunters of wild birds like doves and pigeons also need to follow the rules of trefa as they are sacrificial animals. Fowlers, as we learn in other parts of the biblical texts used live traps and nets to catch birds. We can assume any hunter of gazelles would have to use the same strategy to catch gazelles and catch them in nets. Indeed there is a discussion forbidding trapping a gazelle in one’s house during the Sabbath, as that is too close to hunting. The proverb in context reads

2. If you are trapped with the words of your mouth; if you are taken with the words of your mouth. 3. Do this now, my son, and save yourself, when you come into the hand of your neighbor; go, humble yourself, and importune your neighbor. 4. Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. 5. Save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler.

The best way to avoid a trap is to go in the opposite direction. If you engage in Lashon hara go back and apologize and run from that trap the proverbs says.

Outside of this portion on Deuteronomy there is only one other place in the biblical text that has plenty of gazelles. The Song of Songs uses gazelles in several repetitive themes. Yet unlike Deuteronomy’s halakic themes and deriving kosher law from them, the Song is all Aggadah. The first theme uses the comparison of the gazelle’s speed and ability to dart from one place to another:

2:8. The voice of my beloved! Here he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. 9. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart; Behold, he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. [Song of Songs 2:8-9]

Until the day cools, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether. [Song of Songs 2:17]

Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young hart upon the mountains of spices. [Song of Songs 8:14]

The Midrash to the Song of Songs notes that like a gazelle skips and jumps around, so does God. The gazelle is a parable to God’s omnipresence, and God’s seemgly instant disappearance only to show up a second later. [Numbers R. XI:2] Second use of gazelle is a little harder to understand:

4:5. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies.

6. Until the day cools, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense. 7. You are all beautiful, my love; there is no blemish in you. [S.S. 4:5-7]

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. [7:4]

Comparing breasts to twin gazelles seems a little odd. Here Hebrew helps a little. The word for gazelle in Hebrew is TZVi spelled Tzadi-Veit-Yud. One of the words for beautiful, swelling, or abundant is also TZVi. In a double entendre, breasts are called twin swelling beauties. While the rabbis tried their hardest trying to steer clear of such sexual innuendo in the Song, they pulled a similar double entendre in the third Gazelle theme

7. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field that you stir not up, nor awake my love, until it please. [S.S. 2:7, 3:5]

Why would anyone swear on a deer or gazelle? In the plural, Gazelles are a lot like the Hebrew words for hosts, TZeBaot, implying the heavens. The rabbis playing on this word believe it was not Gazelles and deer one is swearing by but the home of the hosts (heaven) and the home of the beasts (earth). This is swearing by heavewn and earth. Other interpretations follow, this one all playing on the word for gazelles:

R. Hanina b. Papa and R. Judah b. R. Simon gave different explanations of this verse. R. Hanina said: He adjured them by the patriarchs and the matriarchs. BI - ZEBAOTH are the patriarchs who carried out My will (zibyoni) and through whom My will was executed. THE HINDS OF THE FIELD are the tribes, as we read, Naphtali is a hind let loose (Gen. XLIX, 21). R. Judah b. R. Simon said: He adjured them by the circumcision, zebaoth meaning ‘the host (zaba) which bears a sign,; and they are called HINDS OF THE FIELD because they pour out their blood like the blood of the deer and the hind. [Song of Songs R 2:2]

There is a polarity in Jewish thought best described By Abraham Joshua Heschel. There is aggadah and halacha. Both are necessary and both need each other to exist. The rules in which each can be understood are very different. Double entendres don’t work with Halacha which requires verses on top of verses to work, and then in terms of not adding or subtracting, only to further clarify what is already there. But with aggadah an active imagination and a loose set of literary interpretation techniques are in play. Gazelles in their few mentions in the biblical text show this polarity well. From Deuteronomy to the Song of Songs, we have this polarity of halacha that clarifies the prohibition of guns for hunting to the aggadah describing the beauty of the female form as indeed heavenly.

Parshat D’varim 5767: Who Wrote Deuteronomy?

Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22

This week we begin the book of Deuteronomy, the last and most intriguing book of the Torah. Also known as the Mishnah Torah, it repeats and summarizes everything that came before it from the time of Sinai until the people reach the east bank of the Jordan. Deuteronomy ends with the death of Moses.

This week instead of commenting on the text I’m going to look at the entire book. Actually there is a rather odd question that I’m going to ask: Who wrote this book? It’s writing style and grammar is different that any other book of the Torah. Nowhere before Deuteronomy do we hear certain phrases, which will be reflected in later texts but never here. “All your heart and all your soul” is only here in Torah. Oddities about the text abound. It gets so odd, the documentary hypothesis of Torah which assigns authors like J and E to parts of the other four books doesn’t work here. They had to make up a new author “D.” But who is D?

The rabbis of the Talmud do believe they know who D is.

Who wrote the Scriptures? — Moses wrote his own book, the portions of Balaam and Job. Joshua wrote the book which bears his name and [the last] eight verses of the Pentateuch. [Baba Batra 14b]

Moses, except for the recounting of his death, wrote Deuteronomy according to the Sages. This, however, is not conclusive. Some object to this statement thinking that Moses wrote the whole thing, He prophesized his own death thus writing those last lines in tears. [Baba Batra15a] Among those lines, we read

10. And there has not arisen since in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,[Deut 34]

Interestingly someone else had an obituary similar to this:

25. And like him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Torah of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.[II K 34]

This is only the second time in the entire Tanach that the phrase “all his heart, all his soul and all his might” shows up. The first of courses is in the Shema:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. [Deut 6:4]

This may not be a coincidence. The obituary in II Kings is for King Josiah. Josiah was a righteous king of Judah, a few decades before the destruction of the first temple. In the later part of his life he became one of the most righteous kings of all time by destroying all the idolatrous sites in Judah, centralizing Jewish observance in Jerusalem and even making incursions in the former northern kingdom. His zeal started around the eighteenth year of his reign with a payroll audit. After several years of idolatrous kings, the Temple needed some renovation, and Josiah had workers begin the renovation effort. He sends Shapan the scribe to deal with the payroll issues, who’s met at the Temple by the High priest Hilkiah:

8. And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found a book of Torah in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. 9. And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Your servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it to the hand of the workmen, who supervise the house of the Lord. 10. And Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest has delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. 11. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the Torah, that he tore his clothes. [II Kings 22]

What could have caused such a commotion? Was this the whole Torah, or a part of it? The repetition of this story in II Chronicles adds one more detail:

14. And when they brought out the money that was brought to the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a Book of Torah of the Lord by the hand of Moses. [II Chron 34:14]

Moses wrote this. While Torah mentions Moses transmitted individual things from god by his hand, no where is there something that would upset a king. However,

1. These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness…3. And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the people of Israel, according to all that the Lord had given him in commandment to them;[Deuteronomy1 ]

At the end of Deuteronomy we read:

24. And it came to pass, when Moses had finished writing the words of this Torah in a book, until they were finished, 25. That Moses commanded the Levites, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, 26. Take this book of the Torah, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you. [Deut 33]

Like the rabbis said, it looks very much like Moses wrote Deuteronomy with his own hand. The book of Torah which is specifically Moses’ is Deuteronomy. There are other places in Torah where we are told do good and you get good, and do bad and things are going to go very bad, including exile. It is only in Deuteronomy that we see one particular wrinkle which would get a king upset enough to tear his garments:

36. The Lord shall bring you, and your king which you shall set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known; and there shall you serve other gods, of wood and stone. 37. And you shall become astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations where the Lord shall lead you. [Deuteronomy 28]

Here we see a mention of a king which could of course make a king upset. Josiah sends the text to a prophet to verify the prophecy. Since apparently Jeremiah is out of town, Josiah sends the scroll with a delegation to the prophetess Hulda, who’s also interestingly enough Hilkiah’s cousin. She tells his envoys is that since Josiah’s been a good boy, this prophecy is true but will not happen during his reign.[22:19] Given this and several other mentions of kings in Deuteronomy, very likely the book Hilkiah and Shapan find is Deuteronomy.

Josiah’s reaction is to destroy every idolatrous thing in the entire kingdom, and brings a massive scorched earth policy of removing Idolatry. Among the things he destroys is the Bamot, the high places which served as local sacrificial altars. Prior to Josiah, there altars served both idolatrous and non idolatrous purposes. Elijah uses one at Mt. Carmel is his contest with the Priests of Baal. Joshua sets one up at Mt. Ebal in accordance to directives from Moses. Several times in the book of Judges including Samson’s parents and Gideon people perform sacrifices to God at bamot.

Yet Gideon’s case shows part of the problem. Around this altar is Ashera, idolatrous wood posts or trees. Gideon uses them for kindling. Functionally however, the Bamot allowed local communities to makes sacrifices as a community and not schlep all the way to Jerusalem every time a sacrifice was needed. Such communal sacrifice was so needed no other king before Josiah was ever as successful as he was with destroying the Bamot.

Josiah did something else as well. He mandated all Levitical and priestly activity to be in Jerusalem at the temple. Sacrifices outside of the temple were completely banned. Economically, the results are obvious. All offerings were coming to the Temple now, not the high places. Jerusalem benefited at the cost of the local priests.

So who wrote Deuteronomy? For some, looking at the evidence of Josiah’s story, there are the streaks of conspiracy in the air. The temple needs money for rennovation, the priests need power and Josiah needs to consolidate his power as well. It is rather convenient at that exact moment such a document from Moses shows up. The document dictates that everything needs to be centralized in Jerusalem, and if it doesn’t happen, everyone’s going to die or be exiled. For much of the nineteenth and early 20^th century everyone thought D was a member of Josiah’s court. Shapan could have written it, or edited and expanded an earlier document Joshua used to set up the bamot at Mt. Ebal. So too could the prophetess Hulda, whose husband had access to many hidden nooks and crannies in the temple. Mid 20^th century scholars thought the conspiracy went back further to the time of King Hezekiah, who like Josiah, also tried a reformation, though not as successfully. It was the priesthood of the family of Zadok, Hilkiah’s and Hulda’s family, grabbing the power of the priesthood during the time of Hezekiah was the theory.

However, I need to look at the events that happened after the discovery of Deuteronomy. Something odd happened. When people were told to stop making sacrifices anywhere but the Temple, they did. But they still couldn’t go up to the temple for every little mandated sacrifice. So they did something else. Josiah was obviously affected by this Torah of Moses, so instead of making offerings, the people began to read communally this document. They found a few items in Deuteronomy that appeared to make good reading for a daily service and a Shabbat service. The Shema [6:4-9, 11:13-21] and the Ten Commandments [Deut 5:6-19] became more than readings. They became communal liturgy.

This new idea, praying instead of killing animals or burning incense had a lot of pragmatic merit. It was cheap, since no animals were necessary, and maintenance of the high places wasn’t needed either. All you needed was to gather a bunch of people and start chanting or reading. In the next couple of decades it stuck with many people. Unlike the time after Hezekiah when the High places are rebuilt, the high places disappear at this point and never exist again. Assemblies of people begin to replace them.

The idea stuck in the next several decades. By the time of the destruction of the Temple it was already habit. One of the exiled, Daniel, would pray towards Jerusalem three times a day.[Daniel 6:10] Prayer, unlike the Temple or even a High place, was very portable. A liturgy coordinated everyone to pray together and made an organized language of prayer. All of this made Judaism a portable religion, one of the few that has survived millennia. When the exiles return to the Second Temple to celebrate the first Rosh Hashanah there, we do not hear in Nehemiah of new sacrifices, but of a Torah reading not very different from todays, including translation and possibly a D’var Torah as well:

5. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; for he was above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up; 6. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands; and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. 7. Also Jeshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodijah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites, helped the people to understand the Torah; while the people stood in their places. 8. So they read in the book in the Torah of God clearly, and gave the interpretation, so that they understood the reading.

By the time of these readings, not only was prayer and Torah readings a substitute for a folk religion of bamot, it was the ritual of the elite.

So who wrote Deuteronomy? Who was D? Moses? Joshua? Shapan? Hilkiah? Huldah? Was it a conspiracy to find it in the Temple in Josiah’s time, or just an accident? I believe it was a conspiracy, but the culprit is a suspect not in the list so far. A Talmudic sage, a man who saw the world both as a warrior and as a rabbi, Resh Lakish once said:

The Holy One, blessed be He, does not smite Israel unless He has created for them a healing beforehand, as it says . When I have healed Israel, then is the iniquity of Ephraim uncovered. [B. Megilah 13b]

Resh Lakish notes the reversal in Hoshea 7:1. The Northern kingdom is described by two common terms: Israel, and its dominant tribe Ephraim. But the healing is before the affliction here. Resh Lakish concludes that God makes sure there is a way to survive any affliction before he brings down that affliction. No nation who made sacrifice the critical element of their religion ever survived exile. Decades before the Exile and destruction of the temple, the discovery of Deuteronomy by Josiah’s court caused a crisis. The result of that crisis was the replacement of the Bamot with the Beit Knesset, the Synagogue. It was the right time for the right idea. Had Deuteronomy not been found exactly then, it’s likely there would not have been a Jewish people after that first exile.

For me it’s not the issue of who was D, but instead who put D and everyone else at the right place at the right time to get exactly the results that came about, which has saved the Jewish people until the present day. So the true culprit is of course…

God.