The second idea is from Professor Yoel Eitzur. The Torah stresses that the blessing and curse ceremony must take place between the two mountains, Gerizim and Ebal; and that the Torah intentionally refrains from mentioning Shechem by name, seemingly in order to distance the covenant from any connection to the city. While Shechem certainly has its own virtues, the covenant of the blessing and the curse is not connected to those virtues but to those of the two mountains. Nonetheless, Shechem can provide us with a frame of reference for the division of the land into regions. A map of the cities of refuge in the land of Israel demonstrates that Shechem is located in the central region of the land. As the Torah states, “You shall divide into three parts the territory of the country” (Deuteronomy 19:3). This teaches us that Shechem, located between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, is considered the midpoint of the land of Israel. From the perspective of road travel as well, one of the branches of the ancient international road bisected the land of Israel at the valley conveniently located between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. From here, this branch splits off into the national road from Shechem, passing through Shiloh, Bethel, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and Beersheba. Jacob, and apparently Abraham before him, arrived in the land of Canaan via this road. Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal are very tall mountains; Mount Ebal is 3084 feet above sea level, while Mount Gerizim is 2890 feet above sea level. A steep slope from each mountain leads to the valley between the two, about 1640 feet above sea level.
The Hebrew verb for forging a covenant is kerita (literally, cutting off) and similar verbs serve the same purpose in other languages as well. In two places in the Tanakh, we indeed find that the parties involved in a covenant would cut up the body of a live animal and pass through the pieces. Thus, we read regarding the Covenant of the Pieces:
Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove and a young bird... He cut them in two, placing each half opposite the other... There appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch (Rashi: the proxy of the Shekhina, which is fire) which passed between those pieces. (Genesis 15:9-17)
Likewise, in Jeremiah 34:18: “The calf which they cut in two so as to pass between the halves.” The meaning of this practice in the context of forging a covenant is perhaps the following statement: We are both symbolically connected to each other as one life body. If we violate the terms of the covenant, may the two of us be like these two carcasses. In light of this, it seems to me that Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal were chosen because this was the place where it was as if G-d cut the land of Israel in two. Between the pieces, the Ark – representing the Shekhina – stood along with the people of Israel and together forged a covenant. The covenant between G-d and the people of Israel had already been forged at Sinai, but that was merely a theoretical covenant, established in the wilderness, over a Torah that was neither connected to the land of Israel nor grounded in reality. In the land of Canaan, the Torah assumed its true form, as it was given “for you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy” (Deuteronomy 4:14). The land of Israel is a living body, a land that bestows its bounty upon its faithful children (“The land shall yield its fruit” [Leviticus 25:19]), listens closely to the word of G-d (“Let the earth hear the words I utter!” [Deuteronomy 32:1]), acts as a witness (“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day [30:19]) and spews out those that defile it (“Let not the land spew you out for defiling it” [Leviticus 18:28]). Now, the covenant is renewed together with the land itself, between the pieces of the “living body” of the land of Israel.
The third idea was conceived by Rabbi Uri Sherki of Jerusalem and developed by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, a teacher at Yeshivas Od Yosef Chai in Yitzhar. The yeshiva was situated in the very plot of land purchased by Jacob (Genesis 33:19) in which Joseph’s Tomb was later situated (Joshua 24:32) near the mound of ancient Shechem until the riots of September-October 2000. It can be said that the Biblical virtue of this site and its vicinity was a central theme in the yeshiva’s world view. The following is the idea, in brief.
The area between Gerizim and Ebal has a distinctive landscape, one that resembles an overturned mountain. The ceremony at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal can be seen as a kind of negative image of the revelation at Sinai. At Mount Sinai, the people of Israel stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain itself was enveloped in thick cloud, smoke and fire, and G-d’s voice emanated from within the fire, addressing the nation. At this heady juncture, what does the nation do? All the people need to do is listen. This task is perfectly suited for the people who had only recently left Egypt, who now subsist on manna in the wilderness; all that is asked of them is to listen to the voice of G-d. Upon entering the land, however, their hierarchy of values is turned on its head. In the land of Israel, nature takes the place of miracles; “You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil” (Deuteronomy 11:14). G-d’s voice does not emanate from within the fire; rather we must broadcast G-d’s voice on our own. In the land of Israel, the divine word does not come from some mountain that towers above us; quite the opposite, G-d’s voice stems from within the holy ground itself. The Ark stands in the middle, surrounded by the Levites, in lieu of G-d’s actual voice, the Levites transmit G-d’s message from within the land and the nation of Israel stands on the slopes of Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal on both sides of the valley. Instead of clouds and smoke, there are stones painted by the Israelites themselves with white plaster. The whole ceremony acts as a metaphor for divine worship in the land of Israel, a worship that is firmly rooted in the land’s holy soil. Even the very voice of G-d does not ring out on its own; we must listen for it and broadcast it on our own.
