Va’etchanan 5768
Often when a parsha begins with or contains a genealogical passage, it suggest an exploration of transgenerational issues. What is one generation’s responsibility to its children, or to its parents? This parsha contains no such genealogies, yet it is rich with transgenerational responsibilities worth exploring.
Foremost is the assertion of one generation’s responsibility for the next. These words which God has given you this day you shall teach to your children. We are responsible for the Talmud Torah of our children, as our parents were responsible for our Talmud Torah.
Second, we learn of transgenerational accountability. For our sins God promises justice to be delivered to the third or fourth generation after the sin. What human standard of justice is conceived or worded so, or is even capable of such enforcement? On the other hand, one theme we see time and again in the Torah is that the certainty and ferocity of God’s justice is exceeded only by the depth and breadth of his mercy, and this parsha even quantifies (if metaphorically) this beautiful inequality. While God’s justice extends to the third and fourth generations, His mercy extends to the thousandth generation of those who love Him.
For those keep keeping score at home, the winner is mercy, 1000 to 4.
Or if you’re a geek like me, 250:1.
Finally is the exortation that once we enter the promised land, and we dwell in houses and cities not built by us, and we eat to satiey from groves and vinyards not planted by us, that we be careful not to forget the Lord that brought us there. Commentaries in the Etz Chaim chumash interpret this as another message of transgenerational responsibility. We all dwell in houses that were built before we got there, and we all exist by the grace of the work that came before we got here. To me this makes a nice book-end to the idea of parental responsibility to teach…the responsibility of children to remember what we are taught, that we may carry the lessons forward to our children.
Just as a fundamental block of Jewish identity is the family, a fundamental block of Jewish time is the generation. In the enumeration of the covenant that is central to this parsha, we are taught that God’s role in the bargain is to render justice and grant mercy from one generation to the next, and ours is to transmit (both send and receive) His instruction, blessing, and praise from one generation to the next. And while it is within our power to bridge just one generation at a time, we can count on His love for a thousand generations.
Tags: 5768, Sefer Devarim, Va'etchanan