AUGUST 22 • 2024 | 39
would be disastrous. As Moses
makes clear toward the end of the
book, in the long account of the
curses that would overcome the
people if they lost their spiritual
bearings, Israel would find itself
defeated and devastated.
RULES FOR CREATING
CIVILIZATIONS
Only against this background can
we understand the momentous
project the book of Devarim
is proposing: the creation of a
society capable of defeating the
normal laws of the growth-and-
decline of civilizations. This is an
astonishing idea.
How is it to be done? By each
person bearing and sharing
responsibility for the society as
a whole. By each knowing the
history of his or her people. By
each individual studying and
understanding the laws that
govern all. By teaching their
children so that they too become
literate and articulate in their
identity.
Rule 1: Never forget where you
came from.
Next, you sustain freedom by
establishing courts, the rule of
law and the implementation of
justice. By caring for the poor.
By ensuring that everyone has
the basic requirements of dignity.
By including the lonely in the
people’s celebrations. By remem-
bering the covenant daily, weekly,
annually in ritual, and renewing
it at a national assembly every
seven years. By making sure there
are always Prophets to remind the
people of their destiny and expose
the corruption of power.
Rule 2: Never drift from your
foundational principles and
ideals.
Above all it is achieved by rec-
ognizing a power greater than
ourselves. This is Moses’ most
insistent point. Societies start
growing old when they lose faith
in the transcendent. They then
lose faith in an objective moral
order and end by losing faith in
themselves.
Rule 3: A society is as strong
as its faith.
Only faith in God can lead us
to honor the needs of others as
well as ourselves. Only faith in
God can motivate us to act for
the benefit of a future we will not
live to see. Only faith in God can
stop us from wrongdoing when
we believe that no other human
will ever find out. Only faith in
God can give us the humility that
alone has the power to defeat the
arrogance of success and the self-
belief that leads, as Paul Kennedy
argued in The Rise and Fall of the
Great Powers (1987), to military
overstretch and national defeat.
Toward the end of his
book Civilization, Niall Ferguson
quotes a member of the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences,
part of a team tasked with the
challenge of discovering why it
was that Europe, having lagged
behind China until the 17th
century, overtook it, rising to
prominence and dominance.
“At first,” he said, “we thought
it was your guns. You had better
weapons than we did. Then we
delved deeper and thought it was
your political system. Then we
searched deeper still and con-
cluded that it was your economic
system.
“But, for the past 20 years, we
have realized that it was, in fact,
your religion. It was the (Judeo-
Christian) foundation of social
and cultural life in Europe that
made possible the emergence first
of capitalism, then of democratic
politics.”
Only faith can save a society
from decline and fall. That was
one of Moses’ greatest insights, and
it has never ceased to be true.
Broken Fragments
T
he fifth book of the Torah is
referred to as Deuteronomy,
meaning essentially “a
second or repeated” reading of the
Holy Word. The Jewish community
usually refers to the book as
Devarim, traditionally known as
Mishnah Torah, a repetition
of Torah.
In his farewell sermon to
the Children of Israel, Moses
“repeats” the story of his life
and the significant events
that marked the people’s 40
years in the wilderness. His
audience/congregation is,
for all intents and purposes,
a new generation: Those
who are listening to his
stories are the children and
grandchildren of the Hebrews
who were slaves in Egypt.
Moses is an old man; he repeats
himself; he remembers details
a little differently; what seems
obvious or humorous to him at this
moment may be an entirely new
understanding of what happened
decades previously. His smiles
and his tears come at awkward
moments. But, as we are told in the
final phrases describing his death,
his vision had not dimmed nor has
his strength diminished.
We remember him as Moshe
Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher. For
the best teachers (and the most
beloved grandparents, too, we
know) repeat and review the vital
lessons from which we can all learn.
In this week’s portion, Moses
reminds the Israelites about
the Golden Calf that they had
fashioned while he was on Mt. Sinai
receiving the first two tablets of the
Covenant. When he came down
after 40 days and 40 nights and
saw what the people had done, he
smashed the tablets. Later, we know,
he ascended the mountain again,
pleading with God to forgive and
allow the Hebrews to move ahead
as an Am Kodesh, a Holy People. He
returns to them, bringing two new
stone tablets.
The rabbis ask: What happened
to the broken tablets? Moses did not
just leave them lying in the
desert, did he? The answer:
No; he picked up the broken
fragments and later placed
them in the Ark, together
with the new tablets of the
Commandments. In this
week’s portion, Moses recalls
and recounts this story.
Imagine his thinking at the
time: Those broken pieces
of the tablet represented so
many hopes and dreams, a
sacred bond between God
and the Children of Israel.
Imagine his disappointment and
sadness. Yet the teacher (and leader)
quality in him inspired him to make
of the tragedy something positive
and hopeful.
Yet there needed to be
punishment and response in the
episode of the Golden Calf; there
also needed to be acceptance, love
and hope that could only come
from one whose wisdom and age
gave him perspective and faith.
Moses, like the loving
grandparent and role model for the
generations who would inherit his
Mishnah Torah, implores us to “not
discard the broken fragments,” but
to find the most appropriate Ark in
which they can be kept and handed
down. Also, we should fashion new
tablets, as he did, to inspire those
who come after us to move forward
into their promised land with love
and confidence.
Rabbi Norman T. Roman was rabbi of Temple
Kol Ami when this article originally appeared
in the JN, Aug. 6, 2015.
TORAH PORTION
Parshat Ekev:
Deuteronomy
7:12-11:25;
Isaiah
49:14-51:3.
Rabbi
Norman
T. Roman