September Bulleting Ref3

A Few Minutes with the Torah

Spotlighting the outstanding divrei Torah written and delivered by congregants.  Elizabeth Davis shared some thoughts with us at a recent Board of Trustees meeting.

D’varim – Passing the Word
by Elizabeth Davis, Secretary

When I heard the Board needed a volunteer to write a D’var Torah for the upcoming meeting, I volunteered. I enjoy doing them, and it had been about a year since I did the last one, so I figured it was probably “my turn” again. But then I remembered: this is actually just about exactly the same time of year, so I wondered if it would be the same parsha.

Turns out, it wasn’t, but D’varim is oddly on that same theme: repetition. It’s the start of Deuteronomy and consists of Moses reviewing some of the story that came before. It functions as a sort of preamble to the relisting of all the laws that form the core of the book – a “how did we get here.” And by “here,” Moses means on the brink of entering the Promised Land, a land where neither he nor any other of the people’s previous generation of leaders will be able to follow. It often reads as a diatribe, where he comes off well and it’s all the Israelites’ fault for the fact that he and they won’t make it in.

But for all its retelling, D’varim is really, at its heart, about new beginnings. Moses knows that whatever comes next, he is not going to lead the Israelites when they cross into the Promised Land. All he can do is draw on his experience leading them this far to try and guide the next generation of leaders. To this end, he recounts the story thus far and sets forth the lessons he draws from it.

The timing intrigued me, coming as it does near the start of our fiscal year, at the outset of our new Board President’s term, and even in the heat of a national election year, and one where – no matter what happens – the next president will not be our current one.

“D’varim,” of course, are “words” and also “things”, and Moses uses a lot of words to impart his wisdom about a lot of things to a new generation. Leadership themes include:

• Coming up with a structure to make it possible to administer a large, complex society. In this case, appointing judges to arbitrate disputes fairly and impartially, without regard to wealth or power.
• Picking your battles (literally).
• What lessons to take from bad outcomes.

Commentators have noted that his recollection of many of the events described appears not to match the earlier versions, which are in third-person, and thus can perhaps be seen as more “objective.” For instance, he remembers the establishment of the court system as his own idea, whereas in Exodus, the idea came from his father-in-law, Jethro. As one commentator puts it, “Moses is retelling the stories as he experienced them, and in so doing, is both learning and teaching new lessons for the future.”[1] Time passes, memories change, perspectives are different and informed by any individual’s phase of life.

As Melissa takes on the new and challenging role of Board President, I have been struck by the way that other members of the Board and the Rabbi have been working to bring her up to speed. She is hardly new to the congregation, but she is new to the Board, having stepped in directly from her role on the Ritual Committee. Even with a resume that includes many years of running services for the religious school and doing numerous other important d’varim in the congregation for decades, it has to be a bit like walking into the middle of a conversation.

Each of us has our own opportunity to be a Moses here, to share our version of recent or not-so-recent events. Members of the Board range from relatively new members of the congregation to those who have been here for decades, and their Board service ranges from continuous over the past several years, to a second go-around (like me) and even a past president. Sometimes, with all that collective institutional memory, a topic that is new to some of us can provoke a response of “this again?” from others.

But this parashah gives us the opportunity to remember that fresh eyes on old problems can sometimes yield new solutions. At least, it seems that that was G-d’s plan.

[1] Rabbi Sara Laufer, https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/dvarim-embracing-contradiction