Dvarim

“Now Israel, what does Hashem, your G-d, ask of you: just to fear Hashem …” (Devarim 10:12). Chazal famously asked about the strange language of “just” considering that proper fear of Heaven is not so simple to attain (Berachot 33b). The gemara answers that for Moshe it was a simple thing, to which many ask that it does not seem relevant, as the commandment was said to all of Israel. The gemara also teaches us that “all is in the hands of Hashem except for yirat shamayim” (fear of Heaven). According to this, how can we pray (in Birkat Hachodesh): “Give us life that has within it fear of Heaven and fear of sin”? If it is up to us and not Him, how can we ask Hashem for the “gift” of yirat shamayim?

In our parashah, Moshe returns the second generation since the Exodus to the account of the greatest event in the history of mankind – the revelation and giving of the Torah on Sinai. This was the foundation of the status of Am Yisrael as Hashem’s nation, the only nation to whom Hashem revealed Himself. For that reason, Chazal saw the 600,000 plus who stood at the bottom of the mountain as the representatives of all future generations of Bnei Yisrael, as even those who were present only spiritually were included in the covenant. The closeness that was forged at Sinai turned all members into a nation of “prophets and sons of prophets.”