Finding the Promised Land through Hope Eternal

By SARAH MARGLES

Parashat Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:21)

God had decided 40 years before this point that, with few exceptions, former Israelite slaves would not enter the Promised Land. It would be a land to be inhabited only by their descendants. This decision came out of an unfortunate incident involving spies, giants and grasshoppers. There is a mere handful of Israelites who have known slavery that will enter Canaan. It is this generational passing that opens the book of Devarim.

Poised to enter and conquer the land, Moshe gives a long speech to the next generation. This new generation of Israelites is reminded of the history they carry with them. It is a history of battle. Of all the events that occurred during the 40 years of wandering in the desert, it is stories of the battles that Moshe chooses to re-tell here. He speaks of the nations that were kind to us and those that were hostile, those that offered us safe passage and those who were violent. It is these stories of how we were treated that form the foundation for how we are meant to treat others in return. The Moabites were good to us, so we must be kind to them. (Leviticus 19:16) The Bashanites, however, were not good to us, so we are to take their land as an inheritance. (Devarim 2:9) Reading this parashah we discover that the paradigm of treating others the way we were treated, a paradigm we are familiar with today, is an old one.

It can be argued that Moshe' conception of reciprocity is akin to holding children accountable for the sins of their parents. By enacting reciprocity on the nations of Canaan, Moshe is seeking to play back the actions of the parents' generation onto the children of that nation. In Moshe' speech, I find the conviction with which he delivers this idea striking, and one that is later overturned by Ezekiel who states quite plainly, "A child shall not share the burden of a parent's guilt." (Devarim 3:3) Taking into account Moshe' experience of slavery, we can understand his fervor. At the same time, we identify with Ezekiel who advocates limiting punishment to those who have wrought it.

For Moshe, the urge to act on the memory of the past is dominant. As survivors of centuries of persecution, we know this feeling well. After how they treated us, why should we be nice to them? This is a question Jews can ask about many groups.

For Ezekiel, the assertion to not punish the children for the sins of their parents comes with hopefulness for it offers the opportunity for reconciliation, repentance and change. Hope pulls us out of the reactive and into the active. In some ways, it is the prime motivator behind activism.

The generation of slavery scouted the land and saw themselves as grasshoppers against giants. We know this feeling well. As we look at the legacy of our parents' generations, hope is often not the word that comes to mind. Yet it is precisely hope that enables us to create a future of promise.

As the Israelites stood on the cusp of entering a new era, so we are always on the cusp of a new generation and Promised Land. This land is not only a designated boundary - it is the world entire. Like every generation before us and every generation that will follow, we are eternally standing at the border between now and better-than-now. It is up to us to choose between reacting to how we've been treated or to finding an alternative. Hope exists in the recognition that the world is changeable. We live in a world that we inherited from our parents, but the previous generation is not the driver of our destiny. We can choose to be the new generation - at every moment. We can choose hope over reaction and thus cultivate a pathway out of a cycle of reaction and into a new one based on a fixed moral center.

Jewish history is filled with examples of other nations treating us in kind and not-so-kind ways. But with each new generation we have the chance to begin anew, to teach about our history in a way that both respects the past and looks to the future. We are standing at the perpetual beginning with a new generation who has only known the wilderness. What stories will we tell? What are the lessons of slavery we want to hold? What are the battles, won and lost, that we will remember? With what words will we steer the next generation into the Promised Land?

Reprinted with permission from American Jewish World Service.