On what we can learn about our responsibility for building a better future from the first Tisha b’Av, as told in Parashat Devarim

Imagine Moshe, standing in front of his people, about to give his last speech, as described in this week’s Torah portion, Devarim.

Now imagine yourself as one of those in his audience. You have lived nomadically for a generation, due to your parents’ failure to take up arms to conquer the Promised Land 40 years earlier. They were cursed for having listened to the reports of the spies and deciding that the odds were not in their favor. Your generation paid the price.

Now Moshe announces that the time has come to correct these past mistakes. To forge ahead. To cease your wanderings.

What a range of emotions those listeners must have felt! Anger, at having been punished for the faults of others; hope, that this time things will be different; anxiety, that something will go wrong again; fear they will never have a home of their own.

And we add to this the emotions many of of us may feel while reading this portion through today’s eyes: empathy for Moshe who knows he will not enter the land; moral revulsion, given the commandment to conquer the land and rid it of its inhabitants; foreboding,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)