Motivations for Storytelling

By Paula Mack Drill | Devarim

When our family gathers for celebrations, one refrain consistently punctuates every conversation: “That’s not the way it happened!” One of my adult children will then retell the story of how my youngest’s wrist was broken or the first time one of the daughters-in-law came for Shabbat dinner. Everyone has a different motivation for shaping our iconic family stories according to their own remembrance – to make themselves the heroes (or at least less culpable) or to uplift a favorite way of recalling the incident.

Stranger still is the way I find myself telling old stories in a great variety of ways depending on my emotions or my audience in the moment. I might be the victim or the hero; sometimes in the telling, “I was shocked” or “I knew all along”! Memory is a tricky thing.

So it seems to be with Moshe here in Devarim, as he recalls what happened when the tribal leaders were sent to reconnoiter the land; an event we first learned about back in Parashat Shelah Lekha in the Book of Bemidbar. It is fair to assume that the all-knowing narrator in Bemidbar was sharing an account of what happened close in time to the event, and Moshe is now remembering it in Devarim at a later time, as an iconic story of his own. If we try to imagine Moshe’s motivation (conscious or unconscious) for telling the story in the way that he does, we can begin to understand why he says (and doesn’t say) the things he does.

Black North, White West: Color, Grief, and the Geography of the Soul

Aug 1, 2025 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Devarim | Tishah Be'av | Yom Kippur

There’s a tradition in ancient Semitic languages of mapping the world with colors. The north is black. The south is red. The west is white. The east—sometimes blue, sometimes green. In Arabic, the Mediterranean is still called al-baḥr al-abyaḍ al-mutawassiṭ—the White Middle Sea. The Red Sea is to the south. The Black Sea lies to the north.

The Rules of Rebuke

Aug 9, 2024 By Ariel Ya’akov Dunat | Commentary | Devarim

In Leviticus 19:17 we are commanded: “You shall not hate your fellow in your heart. Rebuke your fellow, but incur no guilt on their account.” Rashi teaches that when the Torah says “rebuke your fellow, but incur no guilt on their account,” we come to learn that in giving rebuke, we need to be considerate of how we do it. Location, audience, and method all matter. Rebuking someone publicly may cause embarrassment. Our tone or our choice of words can also belittle them, even if unintentionally. When giving rebuke, we must keep the recipient’s dignity in mind. In Parashat Devarim, Moses expands this principle of dignity further.

Taking Life’s Journey with Torah

Jul 21, 2023 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Devarim

“Hear, O Israel,” the book of Deuteronomy proclaims over and over, the verb always in the second person singular. The Torah wants every one of us to listen carefully, whoever we are, at whatever stage of life. It knows that each person will hear its words somewhat differently—and will perhaps listen differently—this day than in the past.

Moses’s Retirement Speech

Aug 5, 2022 By Raymond Scheindlin | Commentary | Devarim

Deuteronomy, which we begin reading this week, is devoted to Moses’s farewell to his people. Deuteronomy is preeminently Moses’s book; in it, Moses mostly speaks in his own voice, so that instead of the ever-recurring third-person opening line “And the Lord spoke to Moses . . .,” we read “The Lord spoke to me” (Deut. 2:2). Deuteronomy contains not one but a series of farewell speeches and prophetic poems in which Moses recalls the forty years since the Exodus from Egypt and looks ahead to the future in the promised land.

Rebuilding the Temple Within

Jul 16, 2021 By Eitan Fishbane | Commentary | Devarim | Tishah Be'av

With this parashah, we begin the book of Deuteronomy, the opening of a book of memory—a recalling of the forty years of desert wandering while simultaneously anticipating the entrance of the people into the Land of Israel.

Retelling the Past

Jul 24, 2020 By Sarah Wolf | Commentary | Devarim

Since the wave of protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, Americans have begun to reckon with the narratives many of us have taken for granted about our national past. As part of this national awakening, the legacies of some formerly beloved past leaders are being revisited. Demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, toppled a statue of Thomas Jefferson, a “founding father” who also owned hundreds of slaves; the statue of Teddy Roosevelt in front of New York City’s American Museum of National History, which portrays him on horseback next to an African and a Native American man, has been removed. Although this is an unprecedented moment of introspection for the United States, we can turn to the Book of Devarim for some insight on what is at stake in telling and retelling the past.

Hope Amid Destruction

Aug 9, 2019 By Sara J. Bloomfield | Commentary | Devarim | Tishah Be'av

Tishah Be’av, which begins immediately after this Shabbat, is a moment on the Jewish calendar when we pause to reflect on the nature, impact, and significance of destruction. I’ve spent 33 years working at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, so naturally I’ve thought intensely about what the catastrophic destruction of European Jewry means for me, for Jews, and for humanity.