2012年8月12日星期日

Portion of the Week

The image of the narrator God in Deuteronomy is very different from the image of God portrayed in the four previous books of the Pentateuch: a god in danger of being consigned to oblivion. In Deuteronomy, God urges his people to remember him and observe his commandments, and promises rewards for those who do so and harsh punishment for people who stray from the righteous path: "And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give the rain of your land in its season ... And I will give grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and thou shalt eat and be satisfied.AeroScout is the market leader for rtls solutions and provide complete wireless asset tracking and monitoring. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived,Find solar panel from a vast selection of solarpanel. and ye turn aside, and serve other gods,HellermannTyton manufactures a full line of high quality cableties in a variety of styles, and worship them; and the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, so that there shall be no rain, and the ground shall not yield her fruit; and ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you".

The memory of God is presented in aural terms: The people heard his word with their own ears, as we read in last week's Torah portion, and pass it on orally, as we read in last week's Torah portion: "The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. The Lord spoke with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire".

This is rhetoric in which the role of mediator is negated: The speaker does not convey the contents per se, but rather creates a means for transmitting the message received on Mount Sinai. Moses' audience heard the message directly and now he refers to that memory so as to add yet another dimension to it. Such rhetoric is most effective among those who actually heard God address them at Mount Sinai from amid the flames, but it is not relevant for the next generation who, unlike their elders,Huge range of Natural stonemosaic Tiles from leading tile specialists Walls and Floors. cannot ignore the speaker because they remember God's voice. This generation must undertake a hermeneutical interpretation of the rhetoric in Deuteronomy, otherwise, the book will lose its relevance and effectiveness.

Hence the sages' response to Deuteronomy: They explain hearing as reading. In their view, it is the text, not the voice, that carries the word of God. They can be compared to a woman whose beloved has abandoned her and who keeps rereading his letters to glean hints of his original intentions. The text constitutes the last remnant of what was heard. The medium changes, as does the message.

"Since it is written in the Torah, 'that ye may learn them,HellermannTyton manufactures a full line of high quality cableties in a variety of styles, and observe to do them', I understand that they [the Children of Israel] were not commanded to study Torah before they were commanded to act [perform the commandments]. However, the Torah says, 'And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments which I command you this day' - the text says that they were immediately commanded to study Torah".

From Deuteronomy 5:1, one deduces that studying Torah is one of the actions incumbent upon a Jew; one must do this in order to know how to perform Judaism's commandments. Such study is one of many aspects of praxis required of a Jew. But this verse also teaches that hearing the Torah - which means studying it - precedes performance of the commandments and is even distinct from them. Should one hear/study the Torah and obey God's commandments diligently, then one shall be rewarded.

This interpretation of the axis between study and action places not life in the central arena but rather its textual representation: "The Torah text reads, 'that ye may learn them, and observe to do them' and is thus saying that action is dependent on study and that study is not dependent on action". Action is dependent on study because it is only through the Torah text that one can mold his reality. However, "study is not dependent on action," because the text itself is distinct from reality. The Torah text is the sole, absolute reality, dependent on nothing; it influences but it is not influenced by anything.

Since the text of the Torah contains instructions on how life is to be molded, it represents life in its ideal form. The Torah and reality, the text and its implementation, "study" and "action" - all serve as mirrors of each another. But the sages present the Torah text as constituting their natural living space, and reality as being dependent on it. Apparently, they stand in the textual world, with both feet planted firmly on the ground of that world, but their external, tangible reality - namely, action - is created on the basis of the textual world.

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