Vaetchanan Unscrolled: A Sin of Senselessness

In Parashat Vaetchanan, Moses recounts the giving of the law at Mount Horeb, or Sinai. “The LORD spoke to you out of the fire; you heard the sound of words but perceived no shape—nothing but a voice” (Deuteronomy 4:12).

Elsewhere in the portion, Moses recalls how he pleaded with God to be allowed into the holy land. God denied his request, and as if to add salt to the wound, told Moses, “Go up to the summit of Pisgah and gaze about … Look at it well, for you shall not go across yonder Jordan” (Ibid 3:27).

Parashat Vaetchanan thus centers itself around two unique sensory experiences.

For the Israelites, an experience of hearing without seeing.

For Moses, an experience of seeing without touching.

The difference in the quality of these experiences (for the Israelites, all-encompassing immanence; for Moses, unbreachable distance) is evidence of how the organs of our senses shape our perception of reality, each in its unique way. Experientially, vision is a casting forward of the gaze. Looking upon a star in the sky, for instance, we do not feel that our eye has been touched by a drop of light from the heavens—though indeed this is what has occurred. Rather, we feel that our eyes have sailed out into the deep dark, encountering the star where it is.

Sound, on the other hand, feels as though it comes to us. For this reason, it is the thunder that frightens young children during a storm—not the bolt of lightning that lights up the horizon.

Our senses are not, then, unbiased reporters of reality as it is in itself. The world is created for us through the senses—it flashes into being upon our retinas, it is given voice in our ears, it acquires taste and scent in the throat and in the nostrils, and finds form and texture against our fingertips.

Imbued with primal creative power, our senses are thus a clear example of how we are created in the image of God.

After Moses tells of these two incidents, he moves onto a separate but deeply connected matter. He warns the Israelites in stark terms, perhaps the most stringent in the entire Torah, against making graven idols or even artistic representations of anything on earth. The fashioning of an image—something that resembles one of God’s creations, but which is devoid of subjectivity and soul—is portrayed here as a unique spiritual danger.

Idols are described as that which “cannot see or hear or eat or smell” (Ibid 4:28). In a portion that emphasizes the divinely creative power of the senses, idolatry is revealed as a sin of senselessness.

In a portion that emphasizes the divinely creative power of the senses, idolatry is revealed as a sin of senselessness.

Idols are senseless. And the danger they present to us is that we will become senseless as well. As we are warned in Psalm 115, “all who trust in them, shall become like them.”

Moses predicts that the Israelites will someday stray. They will chase after inert gods, idols of wood and metal. God, however, will remain close at hand, ready to receive them in repentance.

“If you search there for the LORD your God, you will find Him, if only you seek Him with all your heart and soul” (Ibid 4:29).

Herein lies the great paradox of this portion. Idols, insensate, can be perceived only through the senses. The living God, on the other hand, is best perceived through the organ of the heart.

Perhaps this is the hidden reason why the Israelites listened and didn’t look—why Moses looked but didn’t touch.

Deprived of one sense, the heart was awakened to that which cannot be perceived by the senses alone.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.