Deuteronomy: Chapter 19

 

Beat the bounds

and know the paths

redeem the space

where blood run

where blood pools

within, without

the boundaries that broader

the boundaries unmoved

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This chapter continues expanding up the key words that appeared in the previous one: k'r'v--within, amongs; d'r'sh, investigate, analyze. Now, two  new leitworts enters: g'v'l--boundary, border; and d'r'kh--path, road. We at last speak of the definitive boundaries that create the sacred space "within" and the roads that form the interconnections. These preservation of these boundaries requires taking responsibility on the most primal level: a care for spilled "blood," for perjury, and a constant maintenance of the sacred space within: "you must burn out the the clean blood within" in a continuous re-calibration.  There must be a "redeemer of the blood" (go'el ha-dam). Even if inadvertent, any act of killing is "murder" and demands a complex play of redemption and refuge.

The return to Sinai in the previous chapter also returns us to the laws given in the aftermath of Sinai: "He that hits a man and dies shall be put to death; but if he did not lie in wait, but God brought it to his hand, I shall appoint a place where he shall flee" (Exodus 21: 12-13). These laws are  reiterated in this chapter, but now grounded in the earth "which you are about to enter." Characteristically for Deuteronomy, the laws are now focused on humanity rather than on God: "designate for  yourself three cities within your land."

And it is only in taking this responsibility that the land will truly become "yours." The chapter open by emphasizing that the land does not yet truly belong to Israel: "when God shall cut off the nations whose land God your Lord is giving to you...and you dwell in their cities and in their houses." Only after taking responsibility for inadvertent murder does that land become Israel's: "You shall separate three cities in the midst of your land, which God gave you to posses."

In taking this responsibility, one can even change and move the seemingly immutable outer boundary. Boundaries are  perhaps absolute on a personal level-- "do not encroach on the boundary of your brother, which  the early ones have bound"--but on a national level, the are flexible, expanding to fit the nation's commitments: ": "If God your Lord expand your border...designate another three cities of refuge." ]

Deuteronomy 18: In Writing

Close the conches of my ear
so I don't hear 
so I don’t see

seal my eyes

Leave me the space of not-know

of not now,

of tomorrow

Give me the silence between words 
the echoes of emptiness 

Blanket me dark
make me present in absence

Give me the hollowed grave
So that I don’t die

Deuteronomy: Chapter 18

the desire for absence

to be not

to circle the gaps of the unknown "no"

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This chapter is dominated by the same key words as the previous one: k'r'v-- close, within; and d'r'sh, to investigate, analyze; d'v'r--thing, saying. It too focuses on to'eva--usually loosely translated as "abomination"; it too places it in opposition to tamim --pure, without blemish.

Thematically, the two chapters are  related as well, as here we further define the relationship of center to periphery and the space "within". The "chosen" (18:5) tribe of Levi is intimately linked  to the place that "God will choose," and so cannot have "an inheritance amongst / within [k'r'v] his brother" (18:2)--he cannot truly be part of the space between the periphery and the center. Coming into the land will bring a to a new leadership that will come from among (k'r'v) the people: "I will raise them a prophet from amongs (k'r'v) their brothers, like you [Moses]". This leadership will draw directly from Sinai,  the place where all the nation "heard the Lord."

Yet rhetorically, this chapter is dominated by the negative: it opens with a sonorous "no": "lo yihiye--there shall not be."  This negative is balanced by the positive "ze yihiye--this shall be" in the next subsection, but the negative floods once again at the closing, with the return to Sinai. The prophet who will come to replace Moses will come to preserve "not": "let me not hear again the voice of God" "let me not see this great fire." Too much Presence leads to complete absence: "so I not die." 

The coming prophet will straddle the line between the known and unknown, between yes and no: "the prophet who will speak in My name that which I have not commanded, that prophet shall die.... that which the prophet spoke in the name of God and was not (lo yihiye) and will not come (lo yavo), that is the thing which God has not spoken..." Hu ha-davar asher lo davro--that is the thing that God has not--the negative here gains a positive presence, becomes an actual davar, thing, object, speech act.]

Deuteronomy 17: In Writing

How to find the space

between breath and breath

between blood and blood

between touch and touch

between the air 

billowing the lungs

and the caverns between

between the blood

pulsing through your arms,

down to your fingers,

out to the tips

that touch the world

and the blood that circles

 back to the heart again

hold the thread of words

between your fingers

cats cradle weaving and unweaving

your body

Deuteronomy: Chapter 17

move out

and come in

the perfect circle

that creates its own continuation

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This chapter continues the vortex inward movement that defined the previous chapter. If the previous chapter ended with the establishment of local courts--a move outward from center to periphery--this chapter moves back in, as the local courts stream into "the place that God will choose" for consultation. 

The creation of a central core and outer liminal "gates" allows the internal space to begin to function a a single entity. One of the key words of this chapter is k'r'v (close, within): once we have drawn the radii connecting the center and the outer limits, we become aware for what is enclosed "within." The nation begins to function as a single entity:"Burn out the evil from within you" is transformed into  "a burn out the evil from Israel." 

With the establishment of a national entity, the movement to the center in physical space is echoed in the human realm: the centralization of authority through the appointment of a king:"Appoint a king over yourselves, whom God will choose" (17:15). The social center, like the physical center, is not yet defined. It awaits the appointment of God's choice.

  

The appointment of the king introduces the vortex-like circularity into the very structure of the book itself. Deuteronomy here provides for its own self-replication: "and when he sits on his throne, he shall write this mishne torah [review of the Law--another name for Deuteronomy] in a book before the priests and Levites, and it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear God, and keep all  the words of this Torah, to do all these laws" (17:18-19). The king appointed through this book will assure the continuation of the book. ]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 16

Going out

and coming in

The always

the point

month, day, hour, instant

Where all comes from, 

where it is all going

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In some ways, this chapter is a seamless continuation of the previous one. It continues the theme of scared time, with its pattern of six-to-seven. If the previous chapter focused on the sabbatical year, this chapter focuses on the festivals: the seven days of Passover, the seven weeks leading to Shavuot (lit. ‘weeks,’ Pentecist), the seven days of Succot / Tabernacles. As in the case of the previous chapter, the sacred is now focused on the social / communal element. 

Deuteronomy (lit. "second telling"; in Hebrew Mishne Torah "the review of the Torah") presents Moses' 40 day review of the 40 years of his tumultuous leadership. That narrative voice influences the narrative, and the reprise is significantly different from the various (at times multiple) former presentations. As in the case of the reprise of the laws of the sabbatical year, which here revolve around the protection of the poor. The re-presentation of the festivals continues with this focus, as the inclusiveness of the festival is repeatedly highlighted: "You shall rejoice before God, your Lord, you, your son, your daughter, your slave, your maid, the Levite that is within your gates, and the stranger, the orphan and the widow that are in your midst..."

Another element is added here to the previous presentations of the festivals in the Books of Exodus Leviticus and in Numbers.

It is not simply that the nation is brought together. A swirling vortex motion defines the chapter as a whole. Every festival is here redefined by an inward motion towards "the place that God will choose: in order to celebrate the the outward motion of the Exodus, when He "took you out of Egypt." again, and again, the focus is on the specificity of place, a move "from your gates" towards a central point of gravity--the Temple.

This intensification and specification of place is reflected in an intensification and specification of time: we move from a celebration of the "month" to a focus on the "seven days" to a intense focus on the "day". 

The sanctification of the center--temporal and spatial--allows the movement outwards again. The Passover must be offered only "in the place that God will choose" but it is followed by seven days in which "all your borders" are sanctified. The chapter closes with the command to set up "judges" in each gate, sanctifying the periphery, while knitting together the disparate "tribes"]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 15

Release
open your heart
open your hands
Do not leave others empty handed

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Having closed the previous chapter with a discussion of the need to tithe produce of the Land, and the social responsibility for the poor, this chapter moves into a presentation of the Shemita Ilit. 'release') sabbatical year—the time where there is no tithing, and where the land becomes open to the dispossessed. On Shmita, all humanity is equally disposed, for “the Land is Mine” (Leviticus 25:23).

This is the third presentation of the Sabbatical year, and—as is usual in Deuteronomy, the “second-saying”—the reprise also changes the focus. If in Exodus, the focus is on transforming the relationship with God; and in Leviticus, the focus is on the relationship to the Land, in Deuteronomy, the focus of the Sabbatical year is the human other: “your friend, your brother”. The subtle difference in focus becomes clear when we look at the context: All three presentations come within a biblical pattern of sevens. Yet Exodus is presented within the context of the six days of labor, and the Sabbath: “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest your crops,  but during the seventh year let the land lie unused. Then the poor among your people may eat, and the wild animals may eat what is left. …Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work...”

Leviticus is presented within the discussion of the seven years of seven of the Jubilee: “When you enter the land that I’m about to give you, you are to let the land observe a Sabbath to the Lord. For six years you may plant your fields...But the seventh year is to be a Sabbath of rest for the land—a Sabbath for the Lord.…Count for yourselves seven years of Sabbaths—seven times seven years. …Set aside and consecrate the fiftieth year to declare liberty throughout the land for all of its inhabitants. …Every person is to return to his own land that he has inherited.”

Here, the focus is on a human six and seven: the seven years that an indentured servant works, and the seventh when he is let free.”If your brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto you, he shall serve you six years; and in the seventh year you shalt set him free.”

Appropriately, then, the focus on this Sabbatical is not the land, or work, but rather the human elements of money and debt: it is a year of “releasing” one’s control over one’s money. All debt is to be erased. Again, and again, the chapter addresses the human connection to possession, acknowledging the difficulty of letting go: “do not harden your heart, or shut your hand from your needy brother…You shall open your hand to him… Beware that you not think the base thought: ‘Behold the seventh year of release is at hand…and you give your brother naught. You shall give him and your heart will not be grieved when you give him.”

The reprise of the laws of slavery likewise focuses on the need to let go of possession. Now one must not simply release the slave, but must also grant gifts: “When you let him free, he shall not go empty. You shall  give him a gift, from your flock, grom your threshing field, from your press.” And again the warning against the instinctive desire to hold on and possess: “it shall not seem hard to you, when you let him go free, for to the double of the hire of a hireling he served you six years; and God your Lord will bless you.”

This third presentation of the six and seven highlights the human aspect of the Sabbath that has reverberated in the background, translating fully within human relations.]

Deuteronomy 14: In Writing

What do I call

when you’ve lost your name

 mix of sounds and sights

how will I know you?

Ayaa, Dayaa, Bat yaana

Cry-of-pain, enough!

O, it's the daughter-of-all-calls

Hasida, anafa,shahaf

Soar-winged kindness

budding branches

Netz, kos, kaat

Breathing, breaking bowl of morning

You sent away

I am gone

Shalakh, shahaf,

Breath

tinshemet

breath

Don’t rip yourself

In blood red weeping

Deuteronomy: Chapter 14

What's torn in two

Take in

Spit out

Ingest

Bear responsibility

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“Tear your heart so you will not have to tear your clothes” (Joel 2:13) the prophet enjoins the people, highlighting the deep-seated correlation between the ritualized forms of morning, and the experience of devastation.

What does it mean, then, to limit the expressions of mourning? “You are children to God, your Lord. You shall not gauge your skin, or make a baldness between your eyes for the dead.”  Does the connection to God make the devastation less acute? Is there a level of despair that should not be touched?

I studied these words after returning from a funeral that made these questions terribly real. A young girl died. But the Jewish custom in Jerusalem is to downplay mourning during the month Nissan, in which Passover takes place, as it is the time of redemption. Each person who got up to speak acknowledged this. They all opened by saying “we do not eulogize during Nissan.” And each of them held back. There were no histrionics. No details of the loss, suffering and devastation that was palpable in the room. Barely any discussion of the months of illness. Yet nonetheless it was one of the most harrowing and heartbreaking funerals I’ve seen. The prohibition on eulogizing made people focus on appreciating the person herself: what she had taught them, what they gained from being around her. Rather than focusing on her loss, they said thanks for her presence. And that brought home the loss in the most devastating way possible.   Perhaps this is what is meant by “you are children to God”: don’t focus on eh personal devastation, but rather on the unique “child of God” who is gone. Let your mourning be focused outward, to the dead, rather than on externally expressing one’s inner pain.

The chapter goes on to deal with boundaries. If the previous chapter spoke about the seduction of the exotic “gods you do not know” and the intimate evil that must be exorcized “from within you”, this chapter deals with preserving the proper boundaries of the body: no gauging holes or uprooting hair, a limitation of what can be ingested… There is a constant dialectic and tension between what is prohibited and what is permitted, what may be eaten and what may not. A doubling and duality, like the cloven hoof that must be split in two—mafris parsa; shosaat shesa. In preserving the inviolability of the self, one comes to responsibility for others. The chapter ends with the command to take out the tithes and donate them  to the poor and vulnerable members of society: “At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites… and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows …may come and eat and be satisfied…”]

Deuteronomy 13: In Writing

What do you dream

In the deep of night?

See outside the domed window?

What distance haunts your eyes?

Whispers in your ear?

wraps long fingers round?

Pull tight

Then unravel

Burning from inside out