The parasha this week starts with a plea from Moses, a passionate speech begging to be allowed to enter the land of Israel. Rashi points out something curious about this fervent prayer.
ואתחנן. אֵין חִנּוּן בְּכָל מָקוֹם אֶלָּא לְשׁוֹן מַתְּנַת חִנָּם – אַעַ"פִּ שֶׁיֵּשׁ לָהֶם לַצַּדִּיקִים לִתְלוֹת בְּמַעֲשֵׂיהֶם הַטּוֹבִים אֵין מְבַקְּשִׁים מֵאֵת הַמָּקוֹם אֶלָּא מַתְּנַת חִנָּם
Moses ‘beseeched’ God, and whenever this verb is used it indicates receiving a gift for free. Even though the righteous could rely on the merit of their good deeds, they only desire for God to provide for them gratuitously. (Rashi on Deuteronomy 3:23)
This is somewhat surprising. We’re used to thinking that traditional Judaism speaks in terms of reward and punishment, and that both the wicked and the righteous get what they deserve. But again and again, the Torah and Jewish interpretation subtly undermines this idea (think of Job), and here, it’s specifically the righteous who don’t want to be given what they deserve, but what they don’t deserve, more than they deserve, a free lunch. They don’t want a business deal with God but a gift from someone who cares. And God, like someone who really cares, answers Moses the way many prayers are answered: He says No. Moses never enters the land.
In the continuation of his speech, Moses implores the people to accept the Torah and use it to guide their personal and social life.
וְעַתָּ֣ה יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל שְׁמַ֤ע אֶל־הַֽחֻקִּים֙ וְאֶל־הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָֽנֹכִ֛י מְלַמֵּ֥ד אֶתְכֶ֖ם לַעֲשׂ֑וֹת לְמַ֣עַן תִּֽחְי֗וּ וּבָאתֶם֙ וִֽירִשְׁתֶּ֣ם אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֧ר יְ-הֹוָ֛ה אֱ-לֹהֵ֥י אֲבֹתֵיכֶ֖ם נֹתֵ֥ן לָכֶֽם… וְאַתֶּם֙ הַדְּבֵקִ֔ים בַּי-הֹוָ֖ה אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶ֑ם חַיִּ֥ים כֻּלְּכֶ֖ם הַיּֽוֹם׃
And now, O Israel, hearken to the laws and to the regulations that I am teaching you to observe, in order that you may live… you, the ones clinging to your God, are alive, all of you, today! (Deuteronomy 4:1-4)
This last verse has caught the attention of commentators in every generation: what does ‘clinging’, devekut , mean; and what kind of ‘alive’ is being referred to here. One simple reading of the text is within the reward-and-punishment paradigm. Those pagans who follow other gods will be destroyed, while those who follow a monotheistic faith in the one God will survive. Yet once again, the Jewish tradition isn’t content to read it in these terms. ‘Alive’, chayim, isn’t just the opposite of dead, but a deep and aware kind of life (Bios rather than Zoē, perhaps). It’s a life worth living, and the way to achieve it is through ‘clinging’ — but what does that mean?
Clinging means coming close. [It’s sometimes translated in English as ‘cleaving’, which is correct but confusing because the same word also means to split apart.] This is the sense it’s used in in Genesis, when Adam and Eve become the model for partners “clinging to each other, becoming one flesh.” But the rabbis reject that literal understanding of being able to come so intimately and physically close to God. We find in the Talmud:
״וְאַתֶּם הַדְּבֵקִים בַּה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם חַיִּים כּוּלְּכֶם הַיּוֹם״, וְכִי אֶפְשָׁר לִדַּבּוֹקֵי בַּשְּׁכִינָה? וְהָכְתִיב: ״כִּי ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵשׁ אוֹכְלָה״? אֶלָּא: כׇּל הַמַּשִּׂיא בִּתּוֹ לְתַלְמִיד חָכָם, וְהָעוֹשֶׂה פְּרַקְמַטְיָא לְתַלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים, וְהַמְהַנֶּה תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים מִנְּכָסָיו — מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִילּוּ מִדַּבֵּק בַּשְּׁכִינָה.
“But You who cleave to the Lord your God, are alive every one of you this day” (Deuteronomy 4:4). But is it possible to cleave to the Divine Presence? Isn’t it written: For the Lord your God is a devouring fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24)? Rather, this verse teaches that anyone who marries his daughter to a Torah scholar, and one who conducts business on behalf of Torah scholars, and one who utilizes his wealth to benefit Torah scholars with his property in some other way, the verse ascribes him credit as though he is cleaving to the Divine Presence. (Ketubot 111b)
Basically, the rabbis are replacing God with rabbis. In Maimonides’ list of 613 commandments, ‘cleaving’ to rabbis is the sixth on the list. It’s impossible to come close to God, but honouring rabbis in material ways is possible and that’s what the Torah is asking of the people. Personally, I think that I like this interpretation very much! But it’s easy to mock it, and indeed, find it very dangerous. Religious leaders who identify themselves with their god, or command allegiance and financial support in the name of their god, are risky people to have around. We can think of the Supreme Leader of Iran and the medieval Catholic system of paid indulgences, of course, but also enough corrupt rabbis around the world who demand money as a way of doing the will of God. I think of the conflicts in Netivot between the “X-ray rabbi” Yitzhak Ifargan and his rival miracle-worker, known as the Baba Baruch. Both are allegedly supported by businesspeople, army officers, mafia criminals and politicians. In their defense, both of them could point to the source I just quoted, and say that supporting Torah scholars is the only way to come close to the Divine presence in this world.
I want to try to save this Talmudic commentary and find some value in it, without taking it to the place of corruption and money (although I am usually glad when rabbis are paid for what they do!). The first step that the Talmud takes is to change ‘God’ in the verse to the Shechinah, the Divine Presence. It’s a common move and doesn’t surprise us, until we consider the totality of examples where the Shechinah is described as being present. In different texts, the Shechinah is there when judges judge with righteousness, it’s there among a community praying, it’s with the Jewish people in their exile, it’s there between lovers, it’s there when tzedaka is given to the poor, and most significantly, whenever two people share words of Torah [Avot 3:2]. The Jewish tradition that uses this language doesn’t see God as distant or impossibly transcendent, but neither is it pantheistic. Simply, one can feel the presence of God more strongly in some places and some locations more than others. In our verse, ‘those who cling to God are alive today’ — it would be easy to interpret it as a call for mystical devekut, attachment to the divine and rejection of this world in order to be truly alive. By saying that this clinging is an invitation to come close to teachers of the Torah, it keeps the focus in this world.
There’s another piece that needs to be clarified here. Who is a Talmid Chacham, a Torah scholar, in the text here? There’s a wide range of definitions, from someone who knows at least one law [Sukkah 20b] to someone who never stops repeating the texts [Tosafot on Sotah 21a], and everything in between. It can’t be that the Talmud is telling us that we should strive to come close to someone who knows the Torah but is a bad person. Maimonides offers a pragmatic definition that seems right to me: someone who knows the law and tells the truth [Hilchot Gezeila 14:12-13, cf. Birkat Asher]. But we can also widen it up, I think, from Torah scholars to anyone who is an inspiration to us. In that moment, when someone who understands a truth finds the words to share it with us, the Divine Presence is there. The call to cling to God means surrounding ourselves by such people that can share their inspiration and truth, and who make our life more alive.
This might go quite far from the simple meaning of the verses in the Torah, but maybe not too far. Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher, knows he is about to die, and that the people will continue without him. He is concerned about transmission, and about creating a society with values and integrity. More than anyone, he knows how human the Children of Israel are, how childish and fragile. What can he offer them, or us? It seems he tells us to look for teachers and to become teachers, to seek out the Divine Presence and to make it more present. There are many ways for this to go wrong, but we do the best we can.
Shabbat shalom.