Parshat: Devarim

Devarim

Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22

These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.

                                                                                                                                                               ~Deuteronomy 1:1

So begins the book of Deuteronomy, the final book of the Torah, which consists almost entirely of Moses’ final orations to the Israelites. In his speeches, he recalls, and reinterprets, many of the events that happened in the wilderness. Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi notes that Deuteronomy serves as “the first extended interpretation of the books of the Torah that came beforehand”. In this way, Moses, becomes our first teacher of Torah, modelling for us the process of retelling and re-interpreting that would become core to the way Jews would study torah from ancient times until today.

~Rachel Petroff Kessler