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Drash for Shabbat Va'etchanan-Nachamu By Mal Eisenberg - July 27, 2007 The central focus of Parsha V'etchanan is the Ten Commandments. They are our moral compass as to how we, as Jews, should conduct our daily lives. When I read the Torah, I always look at how the written page is laid out. For this Parsha, I looked to see how it begins, what comes before and what comes after the Ten Commandments, a method to gain valuable insights. The Parsha begins with Moses saying to God, "V'etchanan el Adonai ba'et hahi lemor" meaning a plea with God to enter the Promised Land. Rashi says that V'etchanan comes from the root chanan which means a favor, a gift and not an obligation. Often we think quid pro quo when we do a mitzvah, that is, if we do a mitzvah then God is obligated to reward us. Moses could have said, " Look God. I have done almost everything you ever asked me to do even though I did not want to do it. I have gone the extra mile for you. You owe me. Let me enter." However, Moses leaves all of that off the table. He does not demand anything in return for his past actions. He simply pleads to God. Later on in the Parsha, right before the Ten Commandments, Moses sets up three cities of refuge on the East side of the Jordan, where, "a manslayer, one who unwittingly slew a fellow man without having been hostile to him in the past, could escape." Moses sets up these cities even though he knew that he would never see them. In chapter six, verse four of the Parsha, right after the Ten Commandments, is the Shema. There are two large letters written in the Shema. The first large letter is the ayin in the word Shema and the second large letter is the daled in the word Ehad. If you put these two letters together, then you have word "Ayd" which means witness. In summary, we can glean from this that whenever we do a mitzvah we should bear in mind the following: First, God is not obligated to reward us for our past good deeds. Second, even though we may never see the fruits of our labors, we must still continue to do mitzvot to make the world a better place. Last, we as Jews, by doing God's mitzvot willingly and freely, bear witness to His Divine presence in the world. Shabbat Shalom. P.S. One day in March, Sharon Geiger called me up and asked me if I would do a drash. I promptly said no! Then Sharon said, " But Mal, won't you please do the drash out of friendship for me and Art?" The moral is that sometimes Jewish guilt does work. I did it the very next day.
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