RE’EH: You have seen….
Towards Understanding Moses’s Farewell Reminiscences to the Surviving Generation
Remember …What?
On several occasions in Sefer Devarim (Deuteronomy) including twice in this week’s Sidra, Moses exhorts the people to “remember that you were slaves in Egypt”.
A fundamental question arises. Forty years had elapsed since the Exodus. An entire generation of able-bodied men – those between the ages of twenty and sixty at the time of the rebellion resulting from the spies’ mission – had passed on. A new generation had arisen in its place who had not been slaves in Egypt. What were they to “remember”?
You Saw And Heard
This question is reinforced by key passages earlier in the book. Prior to his restatement of the Aseret haDibrot (Ten Commandments), Moses proclaims the following:-
Not with our forefathers did G-D seal this covenant but with us – we who are here today, all of us alive! (Deut 5:3)
Following the Decalogue text, Moses reminisces how “you approached me” in fear of imminent death having “heard the voice of the Living G-D speaking from the midst of the fire” (5:22)
A few chapters earlier, an extensive passage makes us in no doubt as to the tenor of Moses’ message.
You should know today that it is not your children who did not know and who did not see …His greatness …His signs and His deeds that He performed in the midst of Egypt … and what He did to the Egyptian army, its horses and riders … and G-D caused them to perish without trace until this day; and what He did for you in the wilderness …and what He did to Dathan and Abiram …when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households and their tents and all their assets …in the midst of all Israel. Rather it is your own eyes that see all the great work of G-D which He did! (Deut 11:2-7)\
Extraordinary! All the miraculous acts of G-D pinpointed and outlined in these passages occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Exodus forty years prior. A new generation had sprung up. Grown men and women in their twenties and thirties had not even been born when the ten plagues rocked Egypt, when the Bnei Yisrael crossed the Reed Sea, when the Torah was covenanted at Mount Sinai, when the earth swallowed Datan and Aviram. Yet Moses insists “your own eyes” saw these miracles.
We might have expected to encounter some sort of protest or denial at these words. Just ten months earlier, the people had uprisen in complaint about lack of water and the monotony of the manna. They had not been shy to make their voices heard then. Yet in Devarim nobody raises a murmur at any of Moses’ words. Everyone listens rapt to Moses 36-day oration without interruption. The clear conclusion is that the whole of Bnei Yisrael is ‘amen-ing’ all of Moses words. No-one has a problem with any of Moses declarations including the assertion that the entire nation, the twentysomethings and thirtysomethings included, “saw” everything there was to see and “heard” everything there was to hear during the past forty years even when, in the plain sense, they didn’t!
What are we to make of this? Had Moses hypnotised the new generation into accepting a false narrative. Or is there another explanation?
You Shall Inculcate Them To Your Children
The question can best be answered by examining two key verses in Devarim which we recite twice daily. The first: veshinantam levaneikha. “Teach them (the words) by repetition to your children” (6:7) The second: ve-limadetem otam et beneikhem. “Instil them (the words) didactically, conceptually, experientially into your children” (11:19)
I have deliberately employed the word “inculcate” in my sub-heading above. A dictionary-definition of “inculcate” reads: to teach and fix an idea, habit or value in someone’s mind through persistent instruction and frequent repetition. It covers both ve-shinantam and ve-limadetem otam.
I have written elsewhere of the two methods of instruction, shinun and limud, which the Torah prescribes, one by absorption of facts and one by absorption of concepts. Both are necessary. And both were inculcated by the generation of the Exodus into the hearts of the next generation during the forty years schooling in the desert, by the parents – fathers and mothers – directly to their children.
Second-Generation Survivor Syndrome – A Paradigm
Tragically, last century saw a dark phenomenon, one which helps us nevertheless to understand the answer to the question: how could it be said that a generation who did not witness can nevertheless bear witness?
The phenomenon is “second-generation Holocaust survivor syndrome”. The children of Holocaust survivors brought up under the cloud of their parents’ enduring trauma as a result of their suffering were able to eloquently bear witness to that suffering.
Today there are fringe groups on both Right and Left extremes who seek to deny that the Holocaust took place or claim that the unspeakable horrors are exaggerated. Thankfully there are still second-generation survivors of the “baby-boomer” generation who will have internalised, either through their parents’ gruesome narratives or osmotically through their silences, the horrors of the death-camps and will be able to testify as though they lived through those experiences themselves.
If this is true of a uniquely monstrous experience such as the Shoa, it will be just as true, if not more so, of the uniquely supernal experiences of the Exodus and the Sinaitic Revelation. Particularly in light of the mitsva devolving upon the generation who witnessed the miracles in Egypt, the splitting of the Reed Sea and the Divine declamation of the Decalogue to inculcate these experiences into the psyches of their children, this latter generation could be said to have experienced these phenomena as though they were first-hand. Particularly since the accompanying miracles such as the guidance of the ananei ha-kavod, the Clouds of Glory, the daily fall of manna from heaven and the miraculous travelling well of Miriam were indeed experienced first-hand by the surviving generation.
Inherited Memory
Our questions are therefore answered. Moses can legitimately call upon the generation about to inherit Erets Yisrael and dwell in freedom to “remember” that they were slaves in Egypt. And he can proclaim to them that they saw and heard experiences that their parents saw and heard first-hand because they had imbibed them all with their mothers’ milk and internalised them to the extent that these experiences became their own.
Davar Acher – All The Elders and Women were Still Alive!
A more prosaic but equally valid answer to the question lies in the fact that, contrary to our superficial assumptions, the majority of those who experienced the Exodus and the Revelation were actually still alive!
Let us consider: Those men under twenty years of age and those over sixty when the decree of forty years’ wandering was issued following the spies’ evil report of the Land did not die in the desert. Nor did any of the women: they loved the Land and did not rebel against going up to take possession of it as did the men. Together with those born during the extended desert wanderings, this would have comprised a majority of the nation!
Thus when Moses declares “you have seen” and when he enjoins Bnei Yisrael to remember, he is actually speaking in the plain sense directly to the majority of the people who had seen with their own eyes, heard with their own ears and recall with their own memory everything about which Moses reminisces.
But Still ….
This in no way detracts from the powerful reflection that the unborn children of those who witnessed the seminal events of Am Yisrael internalised them all and took ownership of them. Consequently, Moses is given leave to unveil the 36-day closing oratory of his life uninterrupted, uncontradicted and appreciated as never before.
It is these unparalleled revelatory events witnessed by an entire nation and transmitted didactically, osmotically and seamlessly to the next generation that cement our unique Sinaitic, covenantal heritage and mark out our Torah as the world’s sole, ultimate truth – whether the world likes it or not, knows it or not or acknowledges it or not!