I. How to Renew a Nation
THE CORE IDEA
There are 613 mitzvot in the Torah, but the numerical value of the word Torah is only 611. The Talmud suggests one answer to this difficulty: Moshe gave us 611 commands, while the other two – “I am the Lord your God” and “You shall have no other gods beside Me” (the first two of the Ten Commandments) – the Israelites received not from Moshe but directly from God Himself.
But a possible second answer is that there are 611 commands, and at the very end of the Torah, Parashat Vayelekh, there are two all-encompassing meta-commands, commands about the commands. They are Hak’hel, the command to assemble the people every seven years for a public reading of the Torah, and the command to write, or take part in writing, our own sefer Torah.
These two commands are set apart from all the others. They are inserted into the story in which Moshe hands on leadership to his successor Yehoshua. The connection is that both these two laws and the story are about continuity. The laws are intended to ensure that the Torah will never grow old, will be written afresh in every generation, will never be forgotten by the people, and will never stop being its guiding document as a nation. The nation will never abandon its founding principles, its history and identity, its connection to the past and its responsibility to the future.
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
1. What similarities and differences are there between these two mitzvot?
2. Do we still have these mitzvot? Are there other traditions we follow to achieve the same goals?
IT ONCE HAPPENED…
On a bright, crisp winter morning on January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America, the first African American to hold that office. It was a historic moment, and the almost two million people who crowded around the Washington Monument – the largest crowd ever gathered in America for a political event – were intensely aware of this. The nation that had fought a civil war over the abolition of slavery had finally conferred its highest office onto, as Obama put it, “a man whose father, less than sixty years ago, might not have been served at a local restaurant.”
It was a redemptive moment. Obama’s inaugural address touched on the many problems facing America and the world. But at the same time it followed the protocol – the language, imagery, and key ideas – of almost every other Presidential Inaugural Address since Washington’s first in 1789. What Barack Obama was doing was something that sets America’s political culture apart from all others in the world. He was renewing the covenant, a form of politics born in the Torah.
Future Tense, 155
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
1. What covenant was President Obama “renewing” with the American people?
2. How is this story connected to our parasha?
THINKING MORE DEEPLY
There is a beautiful complementarity between these two commands of Hak’hel and of writing a sefer Torah. Hak’hel, the national assembly, is directed at the people as a totality. Writing a sefer Torah is directed at individuals. This is the essence of covenantal politics. We have individual responsibility and we have collective responsibility. In Hillel’s words, “If I am not for myself, who will be, but if I am only for myself, what am I?” In Judaism, the state is not all, as it is in authoritarian regimes. Nor is the individual all, as it is in the radically individualist liberal democracies of today. A covenantal society is made by each accepting responsibility for all, by individuals committing themselves to the common good. Hence the sefer Torah – our written constitution as a nation – must be renewed in the life of the individual (mitzva 613) and of the nation (mitzva 612).
This is how the Torah describes the mitzva of Hak’hel:
“At the end of every seven years, in the year for cancelling debts, during the Festival of Tabernacles, when all of Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place He will choose, you shall read this Torah before them in their hearing. Assemble the people – men, women, and children, and the strangers in your towns – so they can listen and learn to revere the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this Torah. Their children, who do not know, shall hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God” (Devarim 31:10–13).
Note the inclusivity of the event. It would be anachronistic to say that the Torah was egalitarian in the contemporary sense. Yet the Torah regarded it as essential that women, children, and strangers should be included in the ceremony of citizenship in the republic of faith.
Who performed the reading? The Torah does not specify, but tradition ascribed the role to the king. That was extremely important. To be sure, the Torah separates religion and politics. The king was not high priest, and the high priest was not king. This was revolutionary. In almost every other ancient society, the head of state was also the head of the religion, as part of the pagan vision of religion as power. But although he was not the spiritual leader, the king of Israel was bound by the Torah. He was commanded to have a special Torah scroll written for him; he was to keep it with him when he sat on the throne and read it “all the days of his life” (Devarim 17:18–20). And by reading the Torah to the assembled people every seven years, he was showing that the nation as a political entity existed under the sacred canopy of the divine word. We are a people, the king was implicitly saying, formed by covenant. If we keep it, we will flourish; if not, we will fail.
This is how Rambam describes the actual ceremony:
“Trumpets were blown throughout Jerusalem to assemble the people, and a high platform, made of wood, was brought and set up in the centre of the Court of Women. The king went up and sat there so that his reading might be heard…. The ḥazan of the synagogue would take a sefer Torah and hand it to the head of the synagogue, and the head of the synagogue would hand it to the deputy high priest, and the deputy high priest to the high priest, and the high priest to the king, to honour him by the service of many persons…. The king would read the sections we have mentioned until he would come to the end. Then he would roll up the sefer Torah and recite a blessing after the reading, the way it is recited in the synagogue…. Converts who did not know Hebrew were required to direct their hearts and listen with utmost awe and reverence, as on the day the Torah was given at Sinai. Even great scholars who knew the entire Torah were required to listen with utmost attention…. Each had to regard himself as if he had been charged with the Torah now for the first time, and as though he had heard it from the mouth of God, for the king was an ambassador proclaiming the words of God.”
Apart from giving us a sense of the grandeur of the occasion, Rambam is making a radical suggestion: that Hak’hel is a re-enactment of the giving of the Torah at Sinai – “as on the day the Torah was given,” “as though he had heard it from the mouth of God” – and thus a covenant renewal ceremony. How did he arrive at such an idea? Almost certainly it was because of Moshe’s description of the giving of the Torah in Vaetḥanan:
“The day you stood before the Lord your God at Ḥorev, when the Lord said to me, ‘Assemble (Hak’hel) the people to Me that I may let them hear My words, in order that they may learn to revere Me as long as they live on earth, and may so teach their children’” (Devarim 4:10).
The italicised words are all echoed in the Hak’hel command, especially the word hak’hel itself, which only appears in one other place in the Torah. Thus was Sinai recreated in the Temple in Jerusalem every seven years, and thus was the nation, men, women, children, and strangers, renewed in its commitment to its founding principles.
Tanakh gives us vivid descriptions of actual covenant renewal ceremonies, in the days of Yehoshua (Yehoshua 24), Yoshiyahu (II Melakhim 23), Asa (II Divrei HaYamim 15), and Ezra and Neḥemya (Neḥemya 8–10). These were historic moments when the nation consciously rededicated itself after a long period of religious relapse. Because of Hak’hel and covenant renewal, Israel was eternally capable of becoming young again, recovering what Yirmeyahu called “the devotion of your youth” (Yirmeya 2:2).
What happened to Hak’hel during the almost two thousand years in which Israel had no king, no country, no Temple, and no Jerusalem? Some scholars have made the intriguing suggestion that the minhag Eretz Yisrael, the custom of Jews in and from Israel, which lasted until about the thirteenth century, of reading the Torah not once every year but every three or three-and-a-half years, was intended to create a seven-year cycle, so that the second reading would end at the same time as Hak’hel, namely on the Sukkot following a Sabbatical year (a kind of septennial Simḥat Torah).
I would suggest a quite different answer. The institution of the reading of the Torah on Shabbat morning, which goes back to antiquity, acquired new significance at times of exile and dispersion. There are customs that remind us of Hak’hel. The Torah is read, as it was by the king on Hak’hel and Ezra at his assembly, standing on a bima, a raised wooden platform. The Torah reader never stands alone: there are usually three people on the bima, the segan, the reader, and the person called to the Torah, representing respectively God, Moshe, and the Israelites. According to most halakhists, the reading of the Torah is ḥovat tzibbur, an obligation of the community, as opposed to the study of Torah which is ḥovat yaḥid, an obligation of the individual. So, I believe, keriat haTorah should be translated not as “the reading of the Torah” but as “the proclaiming of Torah.” It is our equivalent of Hak’hel, transposed from the seventh year to the seventh day.
It is hard for individuals, let alone nations, to stay perennially young. We drift, lose our way, become distracted, lose our sense of purpose and with it our energy and drive. I believe the best way to stay young is never to forget “the devotion of our youth,” the defining experiences that made us who we are, the dreams we had long ago of how we might change the world to make it a better, fairer, more spiritually beautiful place. Hak’hel was Moshe’s parting gift to us, showing us how it might be done.
QUESTION TO PONDER
How does this mitzva help the Jewish people keep the “passion of their youth”?
FROM THE THOUGHT OF RABBI SACKS
The very institution of the American Presidential Inaugural Address is an adaptation of a biblical command, the 612th, known as Hak’hel. The Hebrew Bible contains historical accounts of such gatherings in the days of Yehoshua, Yeshaya, and Ezra and Neḥemya. In effect, these were national covenant renewal ceremonies, in which leaders recalled the nation’s history, gave thanks to God, and rededicated themselves to the terms of their vocation.
Future Tense, 173
AROUND THE SHABBAT TABLE
Why are the mitzvot of Hak’hel and writing a sefer Torah considered “meta-mitzvot”?
What is the message contained in the difference between these two final mitzvot?
What is the goal of these two mitzvot and how do we achieve this goal today?
EDUCATIONAL COMPANION TO THE QUESTIONS
IN A NUTSHELL
This conversation was an intimate and private conversation where God was giving Yehoshua the strength and inspiration he would need to lead the people, who may (and did) go astray. God wanted Yehoshua to believe in himself and believe the task was achievable. God did not want this conversation to be public, and show the people that there was any lack of confidence from either God or Yehoshua their leader.
THE CORE IDEA
They are both meta-commandments, commands about the commands. They are ways to maintain the people’s awareness of and loyalty to the covenant. However, they differ in that Hak’hel is a communal mitzva that involves the whole people, whereas writing a sefer Torah is a mitzva for the individual. This is a reflection of what a covenantal society must be – a balance between individual responsibility and collective responsibility.
While we still have a mitzva to be involved in the writing of a sefer Torah, we no longer have the original mitzva of Hak’hel (because we no longer have a king of Israel). However, a more recent equivalent mitzva that tries to achieve the same end, albeit more regularly, is the weekly public Torah reading.
IT ONCE HAPPENED…
The Inaugural Presidential Address is in effect a renewal of the covenant that is the basis for American society – the American Constitution.
This event takes place every four years when the president is sworn into office following an election. It is the American equivalent of Hak’hel, the renewing of the biblical covenant governing Israelite society – the Torah.
THINKING MORE DEEPLY
Hak’hel gives the people an opportunity, every seven years, to hear and understand the values that their society is based on. This is a re-enactment of matan Torah at Sinai, the original event where these values were inscribed in the hearts of the Israelites as they witnessed God’s revelation. These values are the core values of the Torah, and a renewal of the covenant every seven years provides a reminder of the passion of the original revelation where the covenant was bestowed upon the people.
AROUND THE SHABBAT TABLE
They are commands about the commands. They aim to achieve a continuous familiarity with and commitment to the Torah by commanding each individual to have a role in the writing of a sefer Torah (the experience itself meaningful, and also ensuring copies of the Torah would be widely available) and the communal reading of parts of the Torah every seven years by the king in front of the entire nation.
Hak’hel is directed at the people as a totality. Writing a sefer Torah is directed at individuals. This is the essence of covenantal politics. We have individual responsibility and we have collective responsibility. In Judaism, the state is not all, as it is in authoritarian regimes. Nor is the individual all, as it is in the radically individualist liberal democracies of today. A covenantal society is made by each accepting responsibility for all, by individuals committing themselves to the common good.
These mitzvot aim to give us a deeply personal and powerfully national connection with the covenant/Torah (hence the entire nation must be present at Hak’hel and every individual must be involved in writing a sefer Torah). They also encourage a continued loyalty and commitment to the Torah. Today, we still have the mitzva for each Jew to be involved in the writing of a sefer Torah, but without a Jewish monarchy, we no longer have the original mitzva of Hak’hel. However, we have instead the weekly public Torah reading which achieves the same goal.