אנשי אמנה

Regarding the verse (in Vayikra 19:18) "and you shall love your fellow as yourself: I am Hashem," Rabbi Akiva (Talmud Yerushalmi, Nedarim 9:4) said that is a great principle of Torah. The Hebrew original of the verse is: וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ: אֲנִי, יְהוָה Rabbi Akiva was following Hillel, who taught: {Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 31a} What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the entire Torah. The rest is Perush. Go and learn it. This is a rather famous dictum, expounding on the above verse in a negative way to make it more practical. Hillel has a point, the verse is asking for a modification. The following is mine: וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹ שאהבתי ךָ, אֲנִי, יְהוָה In translation: And you shall love your fellow as I have loved you, I am Hashem! In other words, we read כָּמוֹךָ {as yourself} as shorthand for כָּמו שאהבתיךָֹ {as I have loved you}. After all, the verse starts with וְאָהַבְתָּ, and ends with אֲנִי, יְהוָה. Who, then, is רֵעֲ...

Here is another step in the construction of Sefer Devarim, this time it is a step within Devarim. The expression לָלֶכֶת בְּכָל-דְּרָכָיו occurs, in several variations, seven times in Devarim, and does not occur in the rest of Torah, and every occurrence seems to be a 'recent' addition. They are in Devarim 8:6, 10:12, 11:22, 19:9, 26:17, 28:9, 30:16, the last of which is in Parshat Nitzavim: וְשָׁמַרְתָּ, אֶת-מִצְו‍ֹת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, לָלֶכֶת בִּדְרָכָיו, וּלְיִרְאָה אֹתוֹ. וְעַתָּה, יִשְׂרָאֵל--מָה יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, שֹׁאֵל מֵעִמָּךְ: כִּי אִם-לְיִרְאָה אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לָלֶכֶת בְּכָל-דְּרָכָיו, וּלְאַהֲבָה אֹתוֹ, וְלַעֲבֹד אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשֶׁךָ. כִּי אִם-שָׁמֹר תִּשְׁמְרוּן אֶת-כָּל-הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם--לַעֲשֹׂתָהּ: לְאַהֲבָה אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, לָלֶכֶת בְּכָל-דְּרָכָיו-- וּלְדָבְקָה-בוֹ. כִּי-תִשְׁמֹר אֶת-כָּל-הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת לַעֲשֹׂתָהּ, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם, לְא...

The covenant code of Shemot 21-23 is not really the code of a Covenant. It lacks a section that says what will happen if the decrees are not kept. Although it has a verse in this direction (Shemot 23:21), it lacks a Tochachah. The law code of Devarim has such section. It is in truth the code of a Covenant. The kernel of the book of Devarim is quite old. Probably, therefore, Devarim was originally written down on tablets. We imagine tablets written on one side with the introduction , on the other side with the law code, starting at Devarim 12:1. If many tablets were needed for the law code, the introduction was the same. Such was the purpose of the introduction, to be on the front side of each and every one of the tablets. Like the tablets described by Shemot 32:15, which were written on two sides. One side was for the Ten Commandments, the other side for the Covenant (Shemot 34:28). But we have an alternative to the law code of Devarim. It is also a law code with a Tochachah, and it ...

P and D came to a compromise, to construct one history for one nation. The important thing for the history to convey is the law code of D and the law code of P, in which this law code is embedded. They constructed one nation with one law, one Torah. To emphasize that everybody is right regarding history, P devised Shemot 46:8-27, showing that the seventy souls were no different than Yaakov and his family, and D accepted the fathers Abraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. The lesson of the compromise should be clear. If everybody is equally right about the historical truth, everybody, among the compromisers, is wrong about the historical truth. But the compromise did create historical truth, by the fact that it occurred a long time ago. Before the Islam, before Christianity, and before rabbinic Judaism. All three are the result, for better and for worse, of this historical compromise. That is the truth. The compromise is also a compromise between the sons of Aharon and the Levites, and from ...

The book of Devarim has accounts of history, but it does not have any ancient history. It does for instance not mention the creation of the world. While it does mention the fathers Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, it does say anything about their lives. The question I wish to address is why this is, what is the heart of the matter. The clue is with the fragment Devarim 10:12-22, which in translation is as follows, excluding 10:13 and 10:19: And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. Behold, unto the LORD thy God belongeth the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, the earth, with all that therein is. Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, even you, above all peoples, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked. For the LORD yo...

ביתי בנוי על שקר חורבן ונהרס הלכתי עם בניי ועשיתים את-כל-האמת כדאי אין לשקר כדי לבנות אמונה כי ביתי ההרוס יקום באמנה > עֵקֶב עֲנָוָה, יִרְאַת יְהוָה; עֹשֶׁר וְכָבוֹד וְחַיִּים

The mission of this blog is to go the opposite way. We assume that RJE not only created the EJ text, but also created the first "Deuteronomy," a text that summarized EJ, ending with "the" Decalogue, followed by a new law code, ending in a hortatory section, a Tochachah. To be as specific as possible, we assume that the EJ text was this one and the first Deuteronomy was this text , though the exactness of the text is not critical. We will ask the big questions: What is the nature of the first Deuteronomy? Who could have been RJE? What is the nature of the replacement of the first Deuteronomy with the second Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim? What was the fate of the first Deuteronomy? What does it all mean for the status of the Halacha? What are the implications for the status of Jews? In particular, what does it mean for Jews in the Land of Israel? וּבְהַשְׂכִּיל לְחָכָם, יִקַּח-דָּעַת