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

Deuteronomy: Chapter 13

Seductions

Without and within 

the intimate, the exotic 

the known and unknown 

a fire between

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Having established that relationship is based on specificity and loyalty, this chapter turns to the possible threats to loyalty: the possible seductions away from God. The Chosen Land is a land on edge, and the relationship to God also remains on edge, full of tensions, tests, and uncertainty. 
The chapter is built of three parallels sections,each presenting a different possible seduction away from God, moving from the most intimate outward. The first danger is a false prophet or visionary who "dreams a dream"; the second is the seductions of close family "your brother, your son, your daughter, the wife of your bosom";  the final is peer pressure, as a whole city is "drawn away... to serve other gods." The sections are united by refrains, one highlighting closeness, the other distance: "go after other gods, which you have not known" vs. "burn out the evil from your midst (k'r'v, the root for closeness)."
The temptation away from God comes from within, from your brother, from your family, from your mind. Yet the desire is for distance, for what is far, exotic, a dream.
God is the God of the familiar, the "God of your fathers," who has proved Himself in "rescuing you from Egypt and redeeming you from the house of slavery." What He demands is the deepest intimacy, a ruthless loyalty that trumps all other connections: 
"After God your Lord you shall walk,  and Him shall ye fear, and His commandments shall you keep, and unto His voice shall you hearken, and Him shall you serve, and unto Him shall you cleave [d'v'k--the verb that usually refers to marriage "udavak be-ishto"--and he shall cleave to his wife".

Deuteronomy 12: In Writing

A springing hind

leap through knoll and valley

fleet-footed deer,

too dear to be possessed

a wandering river

wrap every winding,

chattering at the bend

burbling at every breast

liquid web that dissipates

or pools quiet and cold

in stony shadows

encircled and taken, to be made

your ascension, your sacrifice

your tithe, your bread

what rises from your hand

your promise, your dread

your gift, your firstborn,

your blood of red

bound and gathered
it bleeds at the edge
fully there.

Deuteronomy: Chapter 12

Whose eyes do you follow

now that you see?

What is chosen

consecrated 

named

never quite yours

bound to Here.

Let desire roam 

fleeting as water 

over the endless Theres

Only the consecrated is bound and gathered.

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In the previous chapter, the Promised Land was "the land that God watches from the beginning of the year until the year's close. Now the relationship between God and Land becomes more specific: there will be "a place that God chooses." The key word of the chapter is "place" (makom) and "there" (shama): "to there you will bring it" "you shall come there" you shall ascend there." 

As in the case of the covenant with Israel, the choice of a "there" redefines the relationship to the infinity of other "theres." Relationship is built of specificity and commitment. Even when speaking of the relationship to God Himself, it in not about qualitative difference, but rather about the exclusion of other options:"You shall destroy  their altars, and break their sacred stones, and burn their wooden images... you shall not so to God your Lord, but you shall seek the place that God your Lord chooses from all your tribes, to dwell his name, and you shall go there." 

As in the case covenant, one must "guard" against non-monogamy. The choice of a place must exclude other places from worship. No longer will it be permissible to worship "whereever is right in your eyes";  rather, Israel must to "what is good and right in the eyes of God."

Here, however, a place is set aside for the non-specific, for the non-sacred. The relationship to place becomes two-tiered. While sacrifices can only be offered in the "place that is chosen," meat can be eaten anywhere. There is a space for unfettered human desire outside of relationship to God: "as your soul craves, you may slaughter and eat flesh in all your gates." The key is not to concentrate this desire: "the pure and impure may eat it together, only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it on the earth like water." 

Eating non-sacred meat is repeatedly compared to eating the flesh of wild animals--"like a gazelle and  a hind." Non-consecrated meat remains undomesticated; its "blood  which is its soul/life spirit" still roaming free "like water on the earth." In the many "theres", the "desire of your soul/ life-spirit" can roam, so long as it does not attempt absolute possession of another's "soul / life force". 

It is only absolute, "chosen" place,  where the blood "life-force" can be "offered" to God, and "purged" on the altar.

The sacred and non-scared delimit each other, in an anophara of "only" rak. The non-sacred must remain untrammeled and free; the sacred is bound and absolute. ]

Deuteronomy 11: In Writing

See the path between

shattered crevice and sheer cliff,

winding, bright and blinding

as the watching sun

in its burnished sky.

Hold anger, heavy as an anchor

iced and jagged in your cradling palm

abrading your arid fingers

mouth parched to silence,

till you learn to listen for  whispers

the distant rumble that drums the sky,

flowing, flooding, milky and golden

down the sprouting mountainside

Filling upraised palms

in watery weight, that escapes

between crevice and crack

a sinking mirror

the silvers back

I am here

Deuteronomy: Chapter 11

To live always in response and choice
peaks and the chasms
Consequence arrayed before you.

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From Sinai and the wilderness, Moses moves to the upcoming entrance to the Land, subtly redefining the interaction between them. The path through the wilderness is not simply a literal progression towards the Promised Land. Rather, the exodus and its aftermath are here see as a trial by fire (literally) in the price and rewards of closeness to God: “your eyes have seen all the great works”—be they the devastation of Pharaoh, or the  destruction of the rebellious Datan and Abiram. The uniqueness of the Promised Land is now seen to lie not in its fecundity as a land of “milk and honey” but rather in its borderline sterility. The Land of Israel is a land on the edge, continuously dependent on its relation to the heavens. It is “not like the land of Egypt…where you plant your seeds, and water by foot, like a garden of greens. The  Land that you are crossing over to inherit is a land of mountains and chasms, it drinks water to their fall from the heavens. It is a land that God studies; His eyes are always upon it, from the beginning of the year until the aftermath of the year.” Entrance to the land is to give the wilderness experience of encampment permanence. Just as Israel was continuously “tested” in the wilderness by scarce food and water, dependent on God’s bread that would fall from the sky, so too in the land will Israel be continuously judged, dependent on  God’s rain fall from the sky. No placidity here, but the continued “mountains and chasms” of a roller coaster relationship. “And it will be if you harken to my commandments… I will give rain of your land in its season… Take heed of yourselves, lest your heart be seduced, and you worship other gods… And the anger of God will be kindled against you, and he will shut the heavens, and there will be no rain.”

The land and its rain will become a physical barometer of relationship. “Curse” and “Blessing” will be given concrete form and actually placed on the mountains of the land: “ And it shall come to pass, when God your Lord will bring you the Land that you go to possess, that you shall set the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal.” The land will unfurl before before Israel, consequence incarnate.]