Whoever wrote (or spoke?) the fifth book of Torah imagines us hearing a sermon - Moses stands up and delivers what will be the final teaching, his ethical will. The visuals don’t matter much - just the sounds, the words as they are read on the page, chanted out loud from the scroll, spoken, interpreted, generation to generation.
The supremacy of vocal over visual transmission of this information is what’s at the heart of this chapter - and this entire Judaic system of religious-cultural normative lore. Listen, Moses tells us, hear these words. And never fall into the trap of worshiping what your eyes are seeing, mistaking visual reality for what may seem like symbolic representation of the divine. He gets specific: We are forbidden from depicting the divine as image or object - not as male or female (v. 16) bird or beast (v. 17) fish or reptile (v. 18) sun, moon, stars (v. 19) and human-made wood or stone idols. (v. 28)
The Book of Words is about words - d’varim. It is of course ironic that in Hebrew the same word for ‘words’ can also be the word used to indicate physical ‘objects’. Perhaps as a nod to our sensory and sensual modes of living and to the way so many other cultures celebrate the sacred - even words become things in our construction of reality.
But still the heard or even read word word is prioritized over the vision and the visual. Left brain more than right brain, linear and binary systematic thinking linked to maschulie and patriarchal structures over older, matriarchal, image based systems of belief.
Words have the power to convey meaning as tangible as touch and they become the defining hallmark of this tradition. Many have stipulated over time how this insistence on words as opposed to images is at the root of the Jewish experience, our unique survival and maybe even secret sauce - why there are so many Jews among the Nobel prize winners, and why literacy and abstract thinking is so vital to the ongoing transmission of Judaism which insists on divinity that can only be never seen, just heard.
This chapter makes this link implicit, linking the demand to obey these iconoclastic laws to the continued cultivation of knowledge:
וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם֮ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם֒ כִּ֣י הִ֤וא חׇכְמַתְכֶם֙ וּבִ֣ינַתְכֶ֔ם לְעֵינֵ֖י הָעַמִּ֑ים אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֚ת כׇּל־הַחֻקִּ֣ים הָאֵ֔לֶּה וְאָמְר֗וּ רַ֚ק עַם־חָכָ֣ם וְנָב֔וֹן הַגּ֥וֹי הַגָּד֖וֹל הַזֶּֽה׃
Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, “Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.”
Note the emphasis on hearing - not just those who follow the rules but even the rest of the world who will hear those wise ones who hear and heed the words. Hearing is believing - not sight.
Fascinated by the allure of Judaism in the early 20th century at a time when so many Jews turned away from religion, the German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosensweig, who would later be one of the greatest translators of the Bible, wrote:
“It is to a book, the Book, that we owe our survival-- that Book which we use, not by accident, in the very form in which it has existed for millenia: it is the only book of antiquity that is still in living use as a scroll. The learning of this book became an affair of the people, filling the bounds of Jewish life, completely. Everything was really within this learning of the Book. “
Close your eyes, Moses is saying, listen within, seek the connection (v. 29) and when you’ve tired of all the false visions and temptations, you will hear The Voice inside your heart.
With all the screens, including this one, competing for our visual attention, these ancient words, despite the baggage and the rhetoric of anti-other, still feels like really wise advice.
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
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