Parshat Va-Etchanan
Chapter seven of Devarim starts with a warning. Hashem is going to help us remove the seven Canaanite nations from the Land, and we must fully remove and not intermarry with them, lest they lead our children astray, away from service of God.
No Intermarriage with Any Non-Jews
On 7;4, HaKetav VeHaKabbalah asserts the text itself reads in line with what tradition said [remember the work is called The Writ and the Tradition], the Torah prohibits intermarriage with any non-Jews. [Since verse 1 singles out the seven Canaanite nations, we might have thought otherwise, as we will see.]
R. Mecklenburg says the Torah expected the non-Jewish father to lead the children of that marriage towards other gods, meaning the miseducation of the child concerns us, not which nation produced the non-Jewish father [incidentally, this verse is the source for matrilineal descent, the idea the mother establishes Jewishness, because the verse envisions the male parent leading the Jewish child away from God].
Rambam, Laws of Prohibited Liaisons 12;1 backs him up, says the prohibition includes all non-Jews. The verse singled out the seven nations only because they were the most relevant right then, were near to the Jews and known. Last phrase for the comment: “and there is no doubt about this to all those who walk the path of truth.” Meaning, of course, there were others who doubted this, and R. Mecklenburg wanted to stand up to them.
What About Less Than Intermarriage?
That aside, the Rambam he sent us paints a more shaded picture. He does prescribe Biblical lashes for marrying a member of any other nation, with a support verse from Nechemiah 10;1 [Rambam calls it Ezra, because the two are really one book], where a campaign to end intermarriage announced the Jews’ commitment not to marry any of amei ha-aretz, the people of the Land, with no distinction between the seven nations and others.
[A personal pause: I find it ever more painful to consider these passages. Newly restored to Israel after a decades-long exile, not a century removed from the loss of the Beit HaMikdash, the Jews return to intermarriage. Since we sadly cannot relegate it to the past, I anguish over why we shoot ourselves in the foot this way, over and over.]
In the second paragraph of the chapter, though, Rambam limits the Torah’s ban to marriage, perhaps because only marriage threatens to leave the fullest ideological and cultural marks. Promiscuous relations (or a committed nonmarital relationship) were left to Chazal to prohibit, and they did, meaning there would be makkat mardut, lashes that end only when the person commits to refrain from the behavior going forward.
[How the Torah chose what to legislate itself and what to leave to Chazal is a very important topic, but not ours here].
There’s no special reason not to marry the seven Canaanite nations, R. Mecklenburg stresses, I suspect because people of his time sought to reduce the opprobrium of intermarriage, a problem and challenge that continues to our day.
The Level of Our Obligation to God
The end of chapter six of Devarim has a passage we know well from the Haggadah, avadim hayyinu, we were slaves to Paroh. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch parses each phrase to show a new aspect of why we must dedicate ourselves to God’s service.
First, Hashem freed us from bondage to the most powerful nation on earth, where there was no “natural” hope for emancipation. In the process, we witnessed signs and wonders Hashem imposed on all Egyptians, including the highest levels of society. Where God usually works through the regular rhythms of nature, here He stepped outside of it, to demonstrate His direct destruction of evil. Those miracles testify to Creation, because only the Creator has such thorough control over the world’s workings. (R. Hirsch also says a mofet, a wonder, is the kind of event that will change people’s worldviews, force them to concede what they had hitherto denied).
Third, our hold on the Land (the verse addresses Jews who will be in Israel) comes to fulfill Hashem’s commitments to the Patriarchs. Then God commanded us to keep the Torah, a sign our success depends on our doing this, no more and no less.
Sure, we were slaves, and God saved us with miracles, yay. R. Hirsch is saying there’s more: God showed us, the Egyptians, and the world, truths people often try to avoid, our job is to do what Hashem wants, and only then do we fulfill our purpose.
Finding a Way to Want Reward
I have always thought Devarim 6;18 taught us not to limit ourselves to the required, told us to do what is yashar and tov in God’s eyes, right and good. Malbim focuses on the connection between this phrase and the rest of the verse, so that it will be good for you. To him, the verse also teaches a lesson in acting for the sake of reward.
Sources as early as Antignos of Socho (among the first named Torah leaders after the time of Tanach), Pirkei Avot 1;3, frown on serving God for the sake of reward. Malbim finds a way to straddle the line.
He says God multiplied mitzvot to provide opportunities to earn reward [he does not quote it, but the sentiment reminds me of the end of the last Mishnah in Makkkot, R. Chananya b. Akashya said Hashem wanted to give us merits, and therefore gave us much Torah and mitzvot]. While we can find reasons for many of those mitzvot (suggesting they have a purpose other than giving us reward), for plenty of others, the reason remains beyond us. Rather than being about the reason, Malbim thinks the goal is finding us a way to get reward.
Still, we do not want to be the kinds of servants Antignos denigrated. Rather, says Malbim, we should do the mitzvot so fulfill Hashem’s purpose for them, which happens to be to give us reward. We then won’t be seeking reward for its own sake, but to let God do what God “wants” to do.
Selfless of us, don’t you think, to earn reward just so God can give us the reward intended when commanding the mitzvot?
It Goes Back to Egypt
To explain the portrayal of Shabbat in our parsha’s version of the Aseret HaDibberot, R. David Tzvi Hoffmann contrasts zachor, a call to mark a day’s difference from others, to shamor, a matter of refraining from work. In this parsha’s version, the Torah names animals (your ox, your donkey), where in Shemot, a reference to kol behemtecha, all your animals, sufficed.
Ramban had said our version wanted to be sure farmers knew they needed to desist, too, despite their work being life-sustaining. R. Hoffmann thinks it particularly relevant to a nation about to enter the Land, to know to create an environment where they and their servants desist from labor on Shabbat.
The reminder of slavery in Egypt, for R. Hoffmann, takes us back to Malbim territory. He thinks memory of our slavery, sprinkled liberally throughout Devarim, was to give us the right attitude even to those mitzvot we might find difficult or not immediately appealing. Closing our business on Shabbat might mean we miss out on money, but it’s better than being slaves in Egypt.
We’re not suffering for our observance, he thinks the Torah is trying to remind us, we are basking in the life God gave us, a life where we aren’t slaves to Paroh in Egypt.
Our eternal obligation to God, and how to keep our focus on it, in Parshat VaEtchanan.
