Drash Cards for Devarim (5770)

by Marc Mangel

• This parsha is almost always read on the Shabbat before T’sh B’av.

• The big theme is the lamentations of Moses: 1) mockery of the legal system and 2) the people’s inability to keep peace.

•We learn about leadership from the structure of the narrative: Moses begins not with his accomplishments but his limitations and what the people did (Ch 1, v 9ff; especially v 12-15

• Let us turn to verse 17 (read it in Hebrew).  Here is one interpretation: justice must be blind

• The 2nd interpretation is that the verse does not apply to the legal system itself: the most important criterion if for a leader or judge to know the law — when you appoint a judge for reasons other than the law, you are perverting the law.

• Although the Israelites are very successful, in Ch 2, v 9 we see that there are limits (one must know what is yours)