My wife and I are in a mixed marriage, not mixed by
religion but by nationality. She grew up
in America and I grew up in Britain. And
if we want to further complicate matters she is the child of a Canadian and an
American, while I am the child of a Brit and an Israeli. Where we come from plays an important part in
who we are. My British experiences, and
by extension the experience of having a British father and an Israeli mother,
define the type of person I am. My
personal history informs certain decisions that I make, certain attitudes that
I have, and certain ways that I behave.
All of us are formed by our personal histories and
it’s important to know where we came from to think about how and why we do
things.
In this week's Torah portion, as we begin our final
book of the Torah, Devarim (Deuteronomy), Moses addresses all of the Israelites
on the other side of the Jordan and he begins by reminding the people where we
came from. When we were at Horeb God
said: ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Start out
and make your way to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their
neighbors in the Arabah, the hill country, the Shephelah, the Negeb, the
seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and the Lebanon, as far as the Great
River, the river Euphrates’ (Deut. 1:6-7).
And then Moses begins to tell our story.
In many ways the entire book of Devarim is Moses’
recollection of all that has happened to the Israelites over these past forty
years since we left Egypt right up and until this moment as we stood on the
other side of the Jordan. These people
experienced parts of it, the lived it, and yet Moses thought it was important
to remind them of where they had come from in advance of them reaching their
final destination, the Promised Land.
Before they could reach the Promised Land they had
to, once more, think about all of those experiences that had formed them; to go
over their history and internalize it.
These experiences would inform the choices and the decisions that they
would make in the Land of Israel.
For us, like the Israelites in the wilderness, it is
always important to know where we came from, to know our family story, and to
know the history of our parents and our grandparents. All of those experiences made us into the
people we are today. All of those
experiences, for better or for worse, inform who we are.
Moses knew that for the Israelites, as a whole, they
needed to think about where they had come from to know where they were going. And it's the same for all of us. We don't have a Moses to tell us our story
and so we have to discover it for ourselves, but when we do perhaps then we get
to be that one step closer to reaching the Promised Land.
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