Parashat Vaetchanan - Fifth Aliyah

The aliyah opens by closing the description of the revelation at Mount Sinai: “Et hadevarim ha’eleh diber Adonai el kol kehalchem… kol gadol velo yasaf” (These words Adonai spoke to your entire assembly… a great voice, and it did not cease, Deuteronomy 5:19). Rashi explains “velo yasaf” following the Targum: “We render it ‘and it did not cease’… for His voice is mighty and endures forever” (Rashi on Deuteronomy 5:19), and he brings a second reading as well, that He did not appear again in such public revelation. A voice that was engraved on two tablets of stone and given to Moshe.

Facing the overwhelming revelation, the people draw near to Moshe in awe and say: we have seen the glory of God and heard His voice from within the fire, and yet we live, but we fear that if we keep listening we will die. They ask that Moshe be their emissary, that he hear the word of God and pass it on to them.

The divine response is moving: “heitivu kol asher diberu” (they have done well in all that they have spoken, Deuteronomy 5:25). There is a recognition here that awe is not weakness, but a vessel for preserving closeness and commitment. And then comes the rare call: “Mi yiten vehayah levavam zeh lahem” (Who would give that this heart of theirs remain theirs, Deuteronomy 5:26), a yearning that this awe stay in their hearts forever.

God commands Moshe to return and teach them all the commandments, the statutes and the laws, so that they will fulfill them in the land they are about to inherit. The Torah stresses it again and again: do not turn right or left, walk in the whole way, so that you may live and lengthen your days upon the land.

Toward the close of the aliyah, an introduction opens to the central commandment that is coming: the awe of God and the keeping of the commandments through all generations, “atah uvincha uven bincha” (you, your child and your grandchild, Deuteronomy 6:2), as a continuous way of life that brings length of days and abundance in a land flowing with milk and honey.

The request “Mi yiten” is a rare expression of longing. There is a hint in it that the bond with God is not one sided, that He too “wants” us. The awe and the love we develop are not only demands made of us, they are also something yearned for. When we keep a commandment out of an inner connection, we are answering that hidden call, and drawing ourselves genuinely closer to Him.