Deuteronomy 31:1-30 | Hosea 14:2-10; Micah 7:18-20; Joel 2:15-27 | Luke 15:11-32

This week's edition of The Set Table contains:

Questions and Commentary on Shabbat Vayyeklekh
Chayyei Yeshua - A Devotional Commentary on the Besora Reading
Looking Ahead

Questions & Commentary on Parashat Vayyelekh

1. How do we explain the phenomenon of "God hiding his face" in Deuteronomy 31:16-18? How do we reconcile this with our discussion of God's nearness in last week's parasha? 

Nick Amic

One attribute that any atheist or agnostic will agree with is that God often seems hidden from the world. The atheist concludes that God does not exist; whereas the agnostic concludes that God might exist but simply is not involved in the world. As believers we categorically reject both opinions, yet we still have a very real problem of reconciling God's apparent hiddeness in the world. How are we to apply these conclusions to the verses explicitly stating that God will hide? Furthermore, how do we apply this idea on an individual level?

In the context of this week's parasha, when Israel strays from God's Covenant, God responds by "hiding" (Deuteronomy 31:17). After Israel's subsequent realization of God's absence, his response is a further concealment (18). There appears to be two concealments: one to provoke Israel to return and another in response to Israel's realization of God's discipline. Among the myriad of answers to this philosophic problem, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Ephraim relates it to a parable:

A King wanted to test his sons, to see which of them really loved him with a true love. So he arranged to have walls constructed all around his palace. But the walls were really an optical illusion. The walls created a hiding place for the King. Would his sons come to seek him?

Degel Machaneh Ephraim, Parashat Vayyelekh

According to Rabbi Ephraim's parable there are two responses among the Children of Israel. Both groups rightly understand that the tragedies in life are a result of God's removal of his protective hand. One group mistakenly thinks that God has abandoned them, to which God responds by additional "hiding" in order to provoke them further towards teshuva. A second group, however, understands that the "hiding" itself is an act of loving discipline in order to make one desperate enough to seek relief from his or her Heavenly Father.

On a personal level, we understand this by way of the familiar experience of a child learning to walk. At first the parent is close to the child in order to catch him or her when he or she will inevitably fall; however, as the child becomes adept at walking on his or her own the parent distances him or herself further to allow the child to take more and more steps independently. So too is our relationship with our Heavenly Father-as we grow in closeness he seemingly "hides" in order to allow us to take more steps independently towards spiritual and emotional maturity. Our tradition relates this season as the time when we "seek God while he may be found" (Isaiah 55:6). This week's parasha-Vayyelekh (going)-relates this to Yom Kippur where our duty is "to go" and seek after God through prayer and fasting. May we seek and be rewarded by being sealed for good.

One son was perceptive enough to discern that the walls barring his entry were only an illusion. He understood that it couldn't be possible that his father would create between them such a division. It must then be just an allusion to test him. Every wall represented a deeper level of love that he hoped his son would come to. Another son, more foolish than the first, perceived the walls only as obstacles and turned back, believing that the King, his father, had indeed abandoned him.

2. Parashat Vayyelekh contains the last two mitzvot in the Torah. What are they, and what is the connection between them?

Rabbi Jonathan Kaplan

According to Sefer HaChinukh, the last two commandments in the Torah occur in Deuteronomy 31. The first of these commandments is to gather the community at the end of every seven years to read Moses' Torah during Sukkot, the Feast of Booths.                     

And Moses wrote this Teaching and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, "At the end of every seven years, during the time of the year of remission, at the festival of Sukkot, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God in the place which he will choose, you will read this Teaching aloud in the presence of all Israel."

Deuteronomy 31:8-11

In the section of the Mishneh Torah (Maimonides' great code of Jewish law) which describes the celebrations enumerated in the Torah (Chaggiga), Maimonides expands upon the ritual enumerated in our parasha and describes how the scroll of the Torah is carried through the courts of the Temple (the place which God ultimately chose) and is passed from one religious official unto the next until the high priest gives it to the king who reads from it. According to Maimonides, the king surrounds his reading of the Torah with the appropriate blessings said in the synagogue and adds an additional appeal to God on behalf of the people. The association of Sukkot and the reading of the Torah continues to this day with the celebration of Simchat Torah, the day on which we conclude the reading of one year of Torah and begin another.

The second mitzva of our parasha (and the final one in the Torah) is the command for every Jewish person to write a Torah scroll.  The commandment is drawn from Deuteronomy 31:19,

And now, write this song and teach it to the children of Israel, set it in their mouths in order that this song will be a witness among the children of Israel.

Though this command was originally given to Joshua and Moses and refers to their writing down of the song Ha'azinu (which is the parasha for next week), these words have been interpreted as referring to the whole Torah of which Ha'azinu is a part (see Sefer HaChinukh). Today, people often fulfill this commandment by joining with the rest of their synagogue community in writing one letter or word in a scroll that the community has commissioned a scribe to write.

Both of these commandments serve to reinforce the reality and importance of the Torah in the life of our communities.  Through them the Jewish people reenact the drama of standing at Sinai which was spoken of in last week's parasha (see Deuteronomy 29:9ff). Reading and writing the Torah inscribes these words in our memories, our hearts, and our minds. Like the celebration of Pesach and LeZikroni (Messiah's Meal), these actions remind of us of who God is, who we are, and how we are called to live.

Luke 15:11-32 - The Lost Son

David Nichol

The well-known story of the lost son tells us of a son who takes what one might call the path less traveled. Instead of living in service to his father and working the land in order to inherit some of it later on, he asks for his inheritance while his father is alive. The ridiculousness of this proposition, while not lost on us, was even more profound to the original hearers of this story. Not only does he effectively disown his father and eschew his familial and communal ties, he also undermines the family enterprise, taking half of it to go off and party.

The conclusion of this plot, wherein this lost son comes back humbly to beg for a servant's position in his father's household, but is welcomed with joy to his original station as a son, is usually read as a lesson emphasizing Dad's (i.e. God's) abundant mercy-and it surely is. Reading the story in this way centers it on the moment "when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." 

However, if we find the pivotal moment to be slightly earlier, we find a slightly different message. The son, having ended up in a very sad place, says, "I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants,'"

His dad, seeing him from far off, intuits the change in his son. He knows that for his proud and selfish son to come back in ignominy, true repentance must have taken place. It is that same true repentance that arouses his compassion and sets up the sweet reunion. It nullifies the harsh words that Dad had no doubt been rehearsing in his mind in case he ever saw his son again - harsh words that would have been just, but in the end are put away.

And as for the celebration, perhaps it wasn't just the son's physical return that he was excited about. It was his return in the spiritual, moral sense. Teshuva, (return, repentance) is what brought the dead to life and caused what was lost to be found.

As we find ourselves in the yamim nora'im (Days of Awe), preparing for Shabbat Shuva, the sabbath of turning, may the Holy One help us to search out all the dark places and be moved, in humility and repentance, from lost to found.

NEXT WEEK'S READINGS - PARASHAT HA'AZINU