Reb Ginsbourg: This Day You Have Become a People to Hashem

'This day you have become a people to Hashem'

There is no nation in the land, except for Bnei Israel, as all the nations, compared to it, are as nought, and do not merit being called ‘a nation’.

We read in our Parasha ( 26:16-19):’This day, Hashem, your G-d, commands you to perform these decrees and the statutes, and you shall perforn them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have האמרת: selected Hashem today to be a G-d for you, and to walk in His ways, and to observe His decrees, His commandments, and His statutes, and to hearken to His voice. And Hashem האמירך: has selected you today to be for Him לעם סגולה: , a treasured people, as He spoke to you, and to observe all His commandments, and to make you supreme over all the nations that He has made, for praise, for renown, and for splendor, and so that you will be a holy people to Hashem, your G-d, as He spoke.’

The Torah then relates (27:1-8), that Hashem commanded the people, on the day that they cross the Jordan into the promised land, to set up great stones, on which they are to inscribe all the words of the Torah, ‘well clarified’- and continues:

‘Moshe and the Kohanim..spoke to all Israel, saying:’Be attentive and hear, O Israel: This day you have become a people to Hashem, your G-d, and you shall perform all His commandments and His decrees, which I command you today.’

Rav Zalman Sorotzkin asks:’Why did Moshe choose to say these things, at this time?

‘Answer: Since Mishneh Torah is replete with words of rebuke intermingled with a relation of the occurrences that befell us, from the exodus from Egypt, till the departure of Moshe from this life, and only in the preceding parshiot of Sefer Devarim, Moshe retaught the people some of the Mitzvot of the Torah, or taught them Mitzvot which he had received at Sinai, and for good reason, he had not previously relayed to them, now, that he had completed this, he warned them - as Rashi brings - that ‘divrei Torah should, in their eyes, always be as if they were given ‘today’’.

The Kli Yakar, in his great Torah wisdom, expounds that our psukim are in response to the earlier part of our Parasha - the Mitzvah of the Bikurim. Expounds the sage:’’You have selected Hashem this day..and Hashem has selected you’, by the declarations you made, with your Bikurim and tithes, saying:’I heeded the voice of Hashem’.

‘Correspondingly, Hashem also ‘selected you’, to gaze upon you from His Heavenly Abode, and to bless you above all the nations.

‘As in both passages we find the word ‘today’, we learn that our psukim are linked to the passage above- the Bikurim and the tithes.’

The Chatam Sofer proffers a different answer to our question - why this passage was given at this time:’Hashem does not want Mitzvot which are performed as ‘by rote’, and He therefore repeated the Torah in the plains of Moab, because it was then that the people had completed forty years of learning Torah from Moshe Rabbeinu, and - as our Sages teach - were only then able to fully understand his teaching.

‘From this fact - that Hashem ‘waited’ till that time - we can judge that Hashem wants us to serve Him with our hearts, not by rote, as, though He had previously commanded us with His Mitzvot, He commanded them - again - ‘today’, at the end of the forty year schooling, to teach that we are to perform Mitzvot ‘with all your heart and with all your soul’.’

The Shem MiShmuel adds:’The purport of ‘This day you have become Hashem’s people’, is that we are obligated each day to envisage in our minds that ‘this day’ we have become ‘Hashem’s people’.

‘This can be likened to the words of the Kriat Shema:’Which I command you today’, which Rashi expounds as: They are not to be in your eyes like something which is old’, but as something new, which all are attracted to.

‘So too, in our psukim, every one is to imagine in his thoughts as if he was a lost soul, and Hashem threw him a lifeline in his chessed, and took him to be His people, which touches him to his very being.’

Rav Shimshon Hirsch notes that the Torah here chose to use the words: האמירך and העמרת, ‘which is only found here, in our psukim.

‘Its purport here is causative and declaratory: You caused, that it should be said that Hashem shall be, to you, G-d, and, in turn, Hashem will cause that it be said of you: ‘Hashem has selected you today to be for Him a reasured people’.

‘The previous bond was in the nature of a ‘personal’ one; it now became ‘public’: known to all nations, and henceforth Hashem will be known as ‘the G-d of Israel’, and Israel as ‘Hashem’s nation’.

‘Israel ‘selected’: Israel vowed to Hashem, in the sight of all the nations, to be to Him ‘a holy nation’, to subjugate its whole destiny and deeds, to the rule of Hashem, and His guidance.

‘’Hashem ‘selected’: Hashem said, to the eyes of all the nations, that He was to Israel ‘a G-d’, totally His, and subject to no other force, and to ‘be a holy people to Hashem’: to the eyes of all nations, the nation of the Torah of Hashem, and the instrument to enlighten the eyes of the nations, and to teach them proper ways.

‘Hashem here expressed the destiny of Israel, and the expectations that He has of it, and so He says concerning Israel::You are obligated to be ‘a holy people’, only guided by that which is moral, and right in the eyes of Hashem.

‘This obligation is imposed on every individual who is counted in the nation of Israel, and therefore, if one should betray his holy destiny, even the least of the nations, is able to adjure him as to his destiny and his duty.’

The Be’er Mayim Chaim sweetens our appreciation of the great privilege this relationship confers on us:’Hashem has thereby entrusted us the entire conduct of His kingship, as he adjured us, prior to Matan Torah:’And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests’, which Rashi - there - expounded as:’Ministers’, meaning the Ministers of the King, by whom the Kingdom is ruled, as our Sages deduce:’ The ministering angels, asked Hashem: when do You declare the moadim? Answered Hashem: We, you and I, are bound by the decision of Israel.

‘Further, we read in the Gemara (Rosh Hashanah 16):’Say before Me psukim of kingship, so that you crown Me over you’- teaching that all in the conduct of the Kingdom is in the hands of Israel, and by them, Hashem is elevated above all others, in all worlds, as by our deeds we determine His praise.’

The Netivot Shalom adds:’ The reason for ‘Hashem you selected today’, is that, since you accepted upon yourselves the whole of the Torah, with all of its particulars and novelties, you have glorified Hashem and elevated Him, that He alone should be to you a G-d; and said ‘Hashem selected you today’, because this day is to you as that day at Sinai, when Hashem elevated and glorified you by the giving of the Torah, that you should be to Him the nation chosen above all the nations.

‘This was on the day that Moshe completed expounding the Torah in the Book of Devarim, and Bnei Israel accepted upon themselves the Torah in its entirety.

‘This day was therefore in the nature of a new acceptance of the Torah, when we selected Hashem, and Hashem selected us, on this day, as He had, at the giving of the Torah on Har Sinai.’

Rav Yosef Salant brings the commentary of Rav Elazar ben Azaria (Chagigah, 3.):’’You have selected Hashem this day’: Hashem said to Bnei Israel: You have made me חטיבה אחת: a single entity, in this world, as it says:’Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One’, and I will make you ‘a single entity in the world, as it is written:’And who is like your nation Israel, the one nation in the land’’.

The Rav then brings the commentary of Rashi, on this Gemara:’’Praise after praise, saying: There is none like you’; and, on our passuk:’Denotes separation and distinction. From all the pagan deities, you have set apart the Lord for yourself, to be your G-d, and He separated you to Him from all the peoples on earth, to be His treasured people’.

Expounds the Rav:’Seemingly, Rav Elazar here brings a novel understanding of our passuk, and this requires explanation, as to what led him to use the word חטיבה: a single entity, an unusual word, and not simply say:’You made me the One Lord in the world, and I will make you the one nation in the world’.

‘We may posit that the novel understanding from his choice of words, is: there is no nation in the land, except for Bnei Israel, as all the nations, compared to it, are as nought, and do not merit being called ‘a nation’.

‘He derived this understanding from the words of our psukim: ’Hashem you have selected to be to you the Lord’, that, just as we praise Him as ‘the One G-d’, meaning: the only true ‘One’, as only Hashem is not composed of various elements and parts.

‘This ‘only One-ness’, this led Rav Elazar to choose the language חטיבה אחת:’ a single entity’, something the like of which can not be found elsewhere.’

Adds the Rav:’There is an additional aspect to this saying - ‘You made Me a single entity in the world’ - as we say: Hashem our Lord, Hashem is One’, to refute the false thought of those who deny His One-ness, holding that it is not possible that both ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, should emanate from the One entity, and who therefore hold that there are two separate sources, one for each of the opposites.

‘We, however, believe in perfect faith, that both emanate from Hashem, the one and only source, in His different attributes: ‘Hashem’ denoting mercy and good, and ‘Elo-kim’, denoting Judgement, He is the One G-d.’

Rabbeinu Nissim - the Ra’n - asks, on the aid brought for ‘And you made Me one חטיבה: a single unit’, from the words of Kriat Shema: ‘The Shema is not the words of Bnei Israel, but is the words that Hashem commanded us to say, to believe in His one-ness, and, though we proclaim them twice each day, they are not words that Bnei Israel proffered as praise of Hashem, but the fulfillment of a Mitzvah.

‘If you should say, that in truth, the words: ‘And you made Me a single entity in the world’, the meaning is not what you said in the Shema, but in that you fulfilled the commandment in this passuk, which we fully believe in, and we have thereby, as it were,‘made Hashem חטיבה אחת: a sngle entity’.

‘However, my opinion is that which has been said on this subject, alludes to the passuk:’And Yaakov called for his sons, sayng: gather around, and I will reveal to you that which will befall you in the end of days’, but the shechina departed from him; whereupon, he said: Perhaps there is amongst you, heaven forfend, an invalidity in one of my seed, as was the case with the seed of my forefathers? They responded:שמע ישראל: Hear O Israel’- our father, Yaakov, who is also called ‘Israel’ - ‘just as in your heart there is only the One, so too, in our hearts, there is but the One’.

‘Therefore, even though these words are commanded as a positive Mitzvah, the tribes already had said them, and, by them, indeed praised Hashem, and were written, not only in Sefer Breishit, in their place, but also in Sefer Devarim, as a Mitzvah binding all generations, so that it justly can be said to Hashem saying:’You made Me one entity in the world’.’

A parting gem from the Netivot Shalom:’The words:’Hashem you have selected this day’, alludes also to Rosh Hashanah, THE day of Judgement, the day on which Creation is renewed, and the time of the renewed coronation of the King, Hashem, and of the covenant between Hashem and Bnei Israel, which is renewed every year.

‘This is the meaning of the passuk: ‘This day Hashem commands you to perform these chukim..: today you have selected Hashem to be the for you the G-d’: the task of every Jew, on Rosh Hashanah, is to renew the covenant with Hashem, that ‘He shall be to you, your G-d’.

‘And Hashem has selected you today, to be for Him, His treasured nation, that just as the coronation of Hashem is renewed on Rosh Hashanah, so too, our choice, as ‘His treasured nation’, is also renewed , as ‘there is no King, without subjects’.’

Reb Danny Ginsbourg