The Book of Deuteronomy: Moses' Last Words

Moses has five weeks left. He starts talking on the first of Shevat, he dies on the seventh of Adar, and in between he delivers the longest, most repetitive, most urgent speech in the Torah. The traditional name for it is Mishneh Torah, the repetition of the Torah, and many commentators say this is the one book Moses spoke on his own behalf.

So this week we skip the parsha by parsha treatment and take the whole book at once, because the themes only show up when you stand back far enough to see them.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why Deuteronomy reads differently from the first four books, and what “Moses spoke on his own behalf” actually means

• The discrepancies with Numbers, starting with who really wanted to send the spies, plus the small differences in the Ten Commandments

• Who Moses is actually talking to: a generation born in the desert with no slave mentality and no memory of Egypt

• The warning that prosperity, not persecution, is what makes people forget, and how uncomfortably well that lands in America

• Why Moses was not allowed to enter, what God showed him from the mountain, and why he wanted in so badly in the first place

• The Shema line by line: hearing as integrating, why “one” and not “alone,” the two inclinations hiding in V’ahavta, and how anyone can be commanded to love

We also end up on free will, the chocolate bar, and a sixth grade yearbook from 1992 that somehow ties the whole thing together.