Of all the books of the Torah, Deuteronomy might be the easiest to understand, yet the hardest to experience in the real world. Standing on the precipice of the Promised Land, Moses gets one final opportunity to speak to the people, expressing to them the power of the covenant with God and their sacred obligation as the Chosen People. He is not going to be permitted to go into the land with them; nobody from the previous generation is permitted to cross the Jordan, leaving an entirely new cohort of Israelites to lead the charge. But, like a parent sending their child off to college for the first time, Moses gets one more lecture to explain how the people can get the most out of their experience moving forward.
The moral system of Deuteronomy is straightforward: if you follow the commandments, good things will happen, while ignoring them will result in calamity. In this week’s Torah portion for example, Parashat Re’eh says, “See this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing if you obey the commandments of Adonai your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Eternal your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.” (Deut. 11:26-28) Throughout the book, the paradigm is repeated over and over again: God will take care of you if only you take care of your relationship to God.
This sounds an awful lot like a meritocracy. Those who exhibit the best ability to sustain the system are rewarded with prosperity, while those who struggle to uphold the values of the group are left to suffer the consequences of their ineptitude. However, as we have discovered in the 21st century, meritocracies aren’t as ironclad as we might hope to believe. After all, this is the message of the Torah, a book that serves one of the most persecuted, abused, and hated peoples in the history of humanity. How is it possible that a system that promises us great reward if we comply can allow so much suffering and strife?
Historically, our scholars and sages have answered this by saying that we haven’t held up our end of the bargain. All of the hardship and cruelty that Am Yisrael has confronted has been because we have been easily swayed from the rules set forth by Moses, and our inattention and disregard for God’s commandments have justified all of our problems. This was certainly the reason the Hebrew Bible offers for why the Temples were destroyed in ancient Israel; we failed to keep God happy, so God let the Assyrians and the Romans teach us a lesson. But in the modern world, where we accept far more complexity and nuance into our understanding of our relationship with Judaism and the Divine, it can feel far more unsettling to believe that our personal challenges are a result of some kind of curse from God. After all, how am I supposed to remain steadfast in my keeping of the commandments when the context for those regulations has changed so dramatically?
Instead of viewing the worldview of Deuteronomy as a strict prescription for a life of prosperity, perhaps there is a more spiritual, interpretive option. After all, it is equally unsettling to imagine our relationship with God as a kind of Divine Vending Machine: if I put in mitzvot, I will get out rewards. Instead, Deuteronomy creates a system in which participating in the project of national identity is an insurance policy against the feelings of isolation and despair that are inevitable when we don’t feel grounded by a shared sense of peoplehood. When we are all doing the work of creating a world centered around justice, holiness, and compassion (as are central to the sections of the Torah we read in this book), we are not only more likely to be met with the same values we uphold, but are also given the support and encouragement of community when we inevitably encounter the struggles of daily life. As Abraham Joshua Heschel put it in a piece that has made its way into the Reform prayerbook: “Prayer invites God’s Presence to suffuse our spirits, God’s will to prevail in our lives. Prayer may not bring water to parched fields, nor mend a broken bridge, nor rebuild a ruined city. But prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, rebuild a weakened will.”
We know all too well that the world does not always play fair, and I think it is reasonable to say that the Torah knows that true. But rather than set us up with unreasonable expectations about what we deserve from the world, Deuteronomy is instead reminding us that buying into a system founded on shared values is one of the ways we can offset the tumult of the universe; to invest in one another and to create the fabric of community that makes even the toughest situations just a little more manageable.
Embody goodness, and goodness will follow you. Not because evil is impossible, but because kindness always finds a way to have a powerful impact on our experience of life.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.