Parshat Va'etchanan: The Quotable Torah
Joe Green is sent to prison. On his first evening there, he meets the other prisoners and they are playing what seems to him to be a strange game. One inmate calls out the number ‘7’ and the others laugh. Another calls out ‘60’ and the prisoners are beside themselves in hysterics. No sooner are they able to regain their composure than a third prisoner calls out ‘114’ and they are gasping for breath.
Joe asks them what is going on and Harry, to the left of
him explains:
“This is a game we play. We have assigned numbers to jokes we like and as they are quite long, to save time and effort, we just call out the number instead of reciting the entire joke.”
Joe then asks: “Could I have a go?”
Harry replies: “Sure!”
Joe then calls out “28” and the prisoners don’t respond.
He tries again: “4”.
There is silence.
Not to be dissuaded, he tries a third time: “47”.
You can hear a pin drop but not a single laugh.
He then asks:
“What am I doing wrong? Are those jokes not funny?”
“Nah” comes the quiet reply.
“It’s just the way you tell ‘em!” (using the best Frank
Carson impression).
There is an old British expression which states: “familiarity breeds contempt”. Sometimes, we all overstep our boundaries and say something that we regret the moment it leaves our lips. Some phrases become so embedded in our psyche that we don’t appreciate their potency. We spout clichés as though they are part and parcel of our vocabulary, not realising from whence they are derived. It is easy to slip into the vernacular and forget to whom we are speaking and by which process we are vocalizing our thoughts.
If only it were as easy to quote famous phrases by using numbers as the examples I related in my joke!
This week’s Parsha could possibly be the most famous in the entire Torah because it contains so many of the verses we use in our prayers throughout the Jewish year.
Here are some examples – can you recognise when they are
recited?
We say this every
time we start to read the Torah, just before the Cohen is called up.
|
This is said
at the start of Hakafot on the evenings and mornings of Simchat Torah. |
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And of course, we
say this every time we have Hagbah.
All of these familiar and precious phrases can be found in
this week’s Parsha, namely the words that leave our lips when we are able to
connect with the Torah. They are the vocabulary we use to communicate with the Entity
who gave us our greatest, everlasting gift. We are essentially repeating back
to Gd the words that He taught us, when He dictated the Torah to Moshe. They
are more than just some random numbers that can act as a lazy way to avoid
reciting these Holy words. They are His words!
As if to underscore the point, the Parsha contains two
more prizes that demonstrate how significant it is in our religion – two of the
most famous paragraphs that we know – the Aseret Hadibrot, the Ten Commandments
and the prayer that can be found not only in our Sifrei Torah but also inside our
Mezuzot and Tefillin, namely the Shema. All of these pesukim are located in one
single Sidra, which is quite remarkable.
Words are precious and all the more so, those that are
derived from the Torah. We often utter these verses without realising what they
mean and indeed, what they represent. It is easy to forget how significant the
Shema is and how, despite all that has transpired in our long, chequered
history, the moral code enshrined in the Ten Commandments is as relevant today
as it was when it was given to us and by extension, the world, three thousand,
three hundred and thirty three years ago.
I am writing these words on 21st July, which is
exactly 52 years since man landed on the moon (3.56 am UK time). Neil
Armstrong’s immortal words of:
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind."
could equally apply to the giving of the Ten Commandments to the world. On a small mountain, somewhere in a desert, our ancestors received a series of statements that were as revolutionary in the development of humanity’s moral code as the moon landing was in the advancement of our scientific endeavour. That, three millennia later, the democratic world in which we reside and the judicial system which draws its breath from those ancient words testify to their significance.
As one fictional character who shares his name with the
second man on the moon famously said:
“To infinity and beyond!”
Let us continue to derive our lexicon and vocabulary from this tree of life because, as we say (and no, it’s not in this Parsha!),
“Etz Chayim Hi, Lamachazimkim Bah, vetomcheha Me’ushar. Derochecha darchei noam, vechot netoveteha Shalom – It is a tree a life to those who grasp it and those who uphold it are happy. Its ways are the ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace”
Reading the Torah, we can draw on its wisdom to help us navigate the choppy waters of the present and steady our ships in preparation of the future when, one day soon, Moshiach will make himself known to us and “The Lord shall be King over all the earth: on that day the Lord shall be One and his name One” (which is also not in this week’s Parsha – our Sages wanted us to ensure that we used a variety of Biblical locations to source our davenning quotes!)
Shabbat Shalom
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