This promise guarantees that our People – regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves – will never entirely forfeit its calling, never totally forget its mission, until the end of time. There will always survive within us a spiritual principle protected by Hashem Himself, through which again and again we will return and achieve a spiritual renaissance. I take the liberty of paraphrasing an inspiring paragraph from Horav S. R. Hirsch’s commentary to the end of this parsha. The Rav lived in Germany during a period when the reformers, heirs to the Haskalah, Enlightment movement, ran rampage over the Torah, destroying the very foundation of our beliefs, leading thousands astray to alienation, apostasy and even the baptismal font. He fought them valiantly – and succeeded in turning the tide and saving what was left of German Jewry.
Now, thousands of years later, we look back upon these past millennia of “that” people and of “that” Book of Moses. We see how everything predicted in the text has come true in the course of time. We see how, in the end, precisely during the periods of its direct suffering, this nation wedded itself so intimately into this Law that for its (the Torah’s) sake it endured a martyrdom unparalleled in world history. This Law became the “wings of eagles” upon which Divine Providence bore Yisrael, beyond all trials and tribulations, from the midst of a world that offered it only hatred and scorn, misunderstanding and embitterment, into ever-renewed vitality and vigor…
For, despite their sin, the Jewish People have carried with them into exile sparks that can spread and seeds that can germinate among all mankind. Is there a thinking man who – “after reading Moshe Rabbeinu’s final declaration and reviewing the history of this nation and this Book – could refrain from acknowledging that this, precisely, is why the Law could not have been the work of Moshe – the man. It could only be the Law of G-d, of which Moshe was only a messenger, so that both the Law and the nation will remain the finger of G-d showing the way to all mankind.”
Yet, after all this time, despite all of the proofs, they refuse to see that the Torah will never be forgotten. Social justice, empowerment, be like the outside world: it did not work then and it will certainly not work now. The only thing that will endure is the Torah. The sooner we all wake up and concede to this verity, the quicker Moshiach Tzidkeinu will arrive and bring an end to our exile.
