A Thought on Parshas Devarim

"...Re'aeh noson HaShem...lifan'echa...es ha'aretz..." "...See that HaShem has placed before you the land..." (1:21) With this week's Torah reading, we begin the final book of Chumash. We have been studying the Torah according to the insightful views of Rabbeinu Aharon ben Yosi haLevi - the author of the Gan. At times he offers a "pshat" - an interpretation, which draws on the exact meaning and sequence of the words. At times he draws on a midrash - a lesson derived by our sages - which veers from the midrashic approach cited by Rashi. At times, the Gan is more homiletic, culling lessons and values from the context of the verses. This week, on the above words, he draws such a lesson. What is it that HaShem wanted us to "see" with regard to "giving" the promised land to us? After all, he had not yet given it to us; we were still en route to that new territory. Moreover, what was there to "see" if we had not yet set eyes on that land? The terminology needs clarification. The Gan writes that HaShem wanted us to look back - to see - that He was presenting us with a special land indeed. The terrain which we had endured for forty years was, by the Torah's own description (8:15) "a massive and frightening wilderness, a place of venomous snakes, scorpions, waterless expanse, thirst, rock and flint." The deserts which we traversed were hostile and inhospitable. Yet, we made it through, surviving the elements and the odds. We could look back and we could see that. Now, with that retrospective, one might easily dwell on the horrors and the dread which we had faced, and get fixated on the fearsome trauma of having had to endure those hazards. What the Torah teaches us, in this verse, is that HaShem wanted us to dwell not on the fact that we had confronted terror but rather that we had clearly survived all of that terror. What that means is that HaShem had His plan which definitely included the planned outcome that despite our being exposed to danger, we were destined to make it through virtually unscathed. That means that HaShem did not want us to succumb to the dangers; He wanted to take us past all of that in order to bring us elsewhere. That could only mean that whatever was in the past was but a prelude to the next step ahead, that of entering the Promised Land. This, then, is the sequence of the verse: look back and see what you were protected from, and rather than fret over what might have happened to you, focus on what it means that you were saved from tragedy. Being saved means that HaShem wanted you to reach this destination, so that He could give this land to you. I recently returned from Israel, where part of my time centered on the second yartzeit of my great rebbe, the Admor of Savraan ztvk'l, who trained me as a dayan. One of many lessons that the Rebbe zchuso yagen aleinu v'al kol Yisrael taught me is that when one has survived an ordeal, a trauma, it is important that he focus on the outcome rather than obsess about the process. That is, don't allow your thoughts to mull over and over the horrors - worrying over what might have been - dwelling on unraveling and "undoing" in the mind the processes that one went through. Rather, one needs to look at the end result, the finale, the crescendo with which the matter was finished, and recognize that it is a loving G-d who may have placed you in that process but who wanted you to outlive and overcome it. The Rebbe used to say that this is what we say during Yamim Noraiim when we pray "V'kol maminim sh'Hu... zocher l'mazkirav tovos zichronos" - "we believe that HaShem gives us ways to remember the memories of what was good." This is in contrast with our proclivity to get stuck on the memories of what was not good. We are on the eve of the Ninth of Av. Like Rabbi Akiva, who saw the desolation of the Temple Mount yet laughed because he focused on the apex, the good yet to come, rather than on the painful process of past and present, may we soon merit that point in time when the world will look back and recall only the wonderful finale, the arrival of Moshiach, the return of Malchus Bais Dovid, the evaporation of Amalek y'sh, binyan Bais HaMikdash and kibutz gol'yos. Good Shabbos. D Fox