The Pshat Heard 'Round the World

The prominence of the Shma passages in Jewish life is so great that, when we come to Parashat Va’etchanan, home of the famous first paragraph of the Shma, it is tempting to focus on those few verses to the exclusion of the rest of the Parashah. Which is exactly what I am planning to do! You see, as I was review the parashah earlier this week, I was struck by the repeated usages of the verb root Shin-Mem-Ayin. First, I noted that even the combination Shma and Yisrael is used two other times leading up to the epiphanic verse. But beyond that, the root appear no fewer than 23 (!) times in the course of three short chapters, almost 1/10 of all the appearance in the entire Torah – a six-fold increase in concentration. The mantra goes: a sudden increase in frequency of appearance of a given word or verb-root means – this is the key to the whole passage. So, it would seem that understanding what is implied by the word Shma holds the key to the entire parashah. But what does the word Shm

These are the words with which Moshe spoke harshly to the Jewish people “in the desert” (complaints about the deprivations of the desert) , “on the plains” (orgiastic idolatrous indulgence with the Moabite women), “facing the Red Sea” (complaint about their seemingly inevitable death at the hands of the onrushing Egyptians as the sea was splitting), between “Paran” (the staging ground of the spies) and “Smeared and White” (complaints about the manna) and “courtyards (the place of the rebellion of Korach) and “Plenty of Gold” (the calf, of course). You’ve just seen Rashi’s reading of the first verse of Devarim. Taking his cue from the words of Rabbi Shimon in the Midrash – “we’ve gone through the entire Tanach and we haven’t found such place-names”, Rashi explains that what are presented in the form of place-names are actually veiled references to the great transgressions of the people over the last forty years. Moshe is reminding a new generation, poised to enter the Land, of their his

So here we are, at the end of the journey. We’ve made it through the desert, and now it’s time for a backward glance o’er traveled roads (all rights reserved by Walt Whitman) So begins our parashah, Mas’ei, with a review of the 42 places at which Hashem directed us to pause our journey from Egypt to the Land of Israel. Some evoke brief comments, most are passed over with the formula of “and they traveled from X, and they camped at Y”. And after that cursory review, it’s time to divvy up the land. Chiefs of each tribe are appointed to receive their tribes portion. Then, the needs of the Levites, who are given no portion in the land, they themselves being Hashem’s portion in Israel, are addressed. The Levites are granted towns, each surrounded by a small belt of land for grazing and small farming, scattered throughout the holdings of the tribes. Of these 48 cities, six are to be designated as “cities of refuge”, and the parashah continues by elaborating on the function of these ci