Hello and welcome to another episode of Covenant and Conversation with me, Rabbi Sachs.

In each new episode, we'll explore a Jewish idea from the Hebrew Bible based on the Torah reading of the week.

Dvorim, the teacher as hero. Imagine the following scenario. You are 119 years and 11 months old.

The end of your life is in sight.

Your hopes have received devastating blows.

You've been told by God that you won't enter the land

to which you've been leading your people for 40 years.

You've been repeatedly criticized by the people you've led.

Your sister and brother, with whom you shared the burdens of leadership,

have pre-deceased you,

and you know that neither of your children, Gershmer and Eliezer, will succeed you.

Your life seems to be coming to a tragic end, your destination unreached, your aspirations unfulfilled.

What do you do?

We can imagine a range of responses. You could sink into sadness,

reflecting on the might of bins, had the past taken a different direction. You could continue to plead with God to change his mind and let you cross the Jordan. You could retreat into memories

of the good times, when the people sang a song at the

Red Sea, when they gave their ascent to the covenant at Sinai, when they built the tabernacle.

These would be normal human reactions. Moses did none of these things, and what he did instead

helped change the course of Jewish history. For a month,

Moses convened the people on the far side of the Jordan and addressed them. Those addresses

form the substance of the Book of Deuteronomy. They are extraordinarily wide-ranging,

covering a history of the past, a set of prophecies and warnings about

...