AUGUST 11 • 2022 | 41

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uried inconspicuously in this week’s 
parshah is a short sentence with 
explosive potential, causing us to 
think again about both the 
nature of Jewish history and 
the Jewish task in the present.
Moses had been remind-
ing the new generation, the 
children of those who left 
Egypt, of the extraordinary 
story of which they are the 
heirs:
“Has anything so great as this ever hap-
pened, or has anything like it ever been 
heard of? Has any other people heard the 
voice of God speaking out of fire, as you 
have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to 
take for himself one nation out of another 
nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by 
war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched 
arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like 
all the things the Lord your God did for 
you in Egypt before your very eyes?” (Deut. 
4:32-34.)
The Israelites have not yet crossed the 
Jordan. They have not yet begun their life 
as a sovereign nation in their own land. Yet 
Moses is sure, with a certainty that could 
only be prophetic, that they were a people 
like no other. What has happened to them 
is unique. They were and are a nation sum-
moned to greatness.
Moses reminds them of the great 
Revelation at Mount Sinai. He recalls the 
Ten Commandments. He delivers the most 
famous of all summaries of Jewish faith:
“Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the 
Lord is one.
” (Deut. 6:4) He issues the most 
majestic of all commands: “Love the Lord 
your God with all your heart and with all 

your soul and with all your strength.
” (Deut. 
6:5) Twice he tells the people to teach these 
things to their children. He gives them their 
eternal mission statement as a nation: “You 
are a people holy to the Lord your God. The 
Lord your God has chosen you out of all the 
peoples on the face of the Earth to be His 
people, His treasured possession.
” (Deut. 
7:6)
Then he says this:
“The Lord did not set His affection on 
you and choose you because you were more 
numerous than other peoples, for you are 
the fewest of all peoples.
” (Deut. 7:7)

WHY SO FEW?
The fewest of all peoples? What has hap-
pened to all the promises of Bereshit, that 
Abraham’s children would be numerous, 
uncountable, as many as the stars of the sky, 
the dust of the Earth and the grains of sand 
on a seashore? What of Moses’ own state-
ment at the beginning of Devarim?
“The Lord your God has increased your 
numbers so that today you are as numerous 
as the stars in the sky.
” (Deut. 1:10)
The simple answer is this. The Israelites 
were indeed numerous compared to what 
they once were. Moses himself puts it this 
way in next week’s parshah: “Your ancestors 
who went down into Egypt were 70 in all, 
and now the Lord your God has made you 
as numerous as the stars in the sky.
” (Deut. 
10:22) They were once a single family, 
Abraham, Sarah and their descendants, and 
now they have become a nation of 12 tribes.
But — and this is Moses’ point here — 
compared to other nations, they were still 
small. 
When the Lord your God brings you into 

the land you are entering to possess and 
drives out before you many nations — the 
Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, 
Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven 
nations larger and stronger than you … 
(Deut. 7:1)
In other words, not only were the 
Israelites smaller than the great empires 
of the ancient world. They were smaller 
even than the other nations in the region. 
Compared to their origins they had grown 
exponentially, but compared to their neigh-
bors they remained tiny.
Moses then tells them what this means:
You may say to yourselves, “These 
nations are stronger than we are. How can 
we drive them out?” But do not be afraid of 
them; remember well what the Lord your 
God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. (Deut. 
7:17-18)
Israel would be the smallest of the nations 
for a reason that goes to the very heart of 
its existence as a nation. They will show 
the world that a people does not have to be 
large in order to be great. It does not have to 
be numerous to defeat its enemies. Israel’s 
unique history will show that, in the words 
of the Prophet Zechariah (4:6), “‘Not by 
might nor by power, but by My spirit,
’ says 
the Lord Almighty.
”
In itself, Israel would be witness to some-
thing greater than itself. As former Marxist 
philosopher Nicolay Berdyaev put it:
“I remember how the materialist inter-
pretation of history, when I attempted in 
my youth to verify it by applying it to the 
destinies of peoples, broke down in the case 
of the Jews, where destiny seemed abso-
lutely inexplicable from the materialistic 
standpoint … Its survival is a mysterious 

The Fewest 
of All People

continued on page 42

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

RABBISACKS.ORG

