Parashat Vaetchanan: Listen, Act, and Rebirth

This week’s parashah reminds us of one of the fundamental pillars of our faith: the Shema Israel: Hear, O Israel Adonai is our God, Adonai is One.

More than just a phrase, it is a deep, urgent call inviting us to listen with an awake heart, to remember consciously, and to act with commitment.

In Jewish tradition, our lives are filled with visual and auditory reminders that guide and sustain us. Tefillin, mezuzah, tzitzit, and the Hanukkah candles are visual cues. But perhaps none is as emblematic as the shofar, a sonic signal, a call to awaken the soul.

Judaism has always trusted the ear more than the eyes. As the book of Bemidbar (Numbers 9:22–10:2) tells us, during the Exodus a cloud marked where the Israelites were to camp, and silver trumpets summoned the community to move.

Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut points out that the cloud was a visual reminder and the trumpets an auditory one, but that the Jewish instinct trusts what is heard more than what is seen. Visual signs can be copied; words cannot. At Sinai, the revelation was primarily auditory. The key to entering the Jewish world is not re’eh (seeing), but shema (hearing).

Hebrew itself expresses this wisdom: balance is izun, sharing a root with ozen (ear). The balance of the people of Israel rests on this capacity to listen. When we lose the ability to listen, we become not only deaf but blind as well—we lose our inner compass.

Within this framework, the verse “And you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord, so that it may go well with you…” (Deuteronomy 6:18) challenges us to go further.

The Ramban, Nachmanides, teaches us that the command to do what is right and good is not limited to fulfilling the letter of the law but demands a higher moral sensitivity. The Midrash speaks of acting lifnim mishurat hadin—“beyond the letter of the law.” It is not enough to avoid evil; we must actively choose good, even when there is no explicit command. This is spiritual maturity, where justice, generosity, and empathy become free expressions of our covenant with God.

Maimonides, for his part, deepens the internal dimension of this listen-act process. In his Guide for the Perplexed and Mishneh Torah, he links obedience to the divine will with rational, conscious love of God. Listening to the divine voice involves a commitment of mind and heart, where fulfilling the law is not mechanical but a manifestation of human ethical and spiritual perfection.

Thus, listening to the Shema is an integral process: listen, understand, love, and act.

This message becomes even more vivid and necessary when we bring the text of Vaetchanan into the light of Tu BeAv, the festival that celebrates love, unity, and rebirth—a sort of Jewish Valentine’s Day.

Tu BeAv is one of the strangest and most beautiful days in our calendar: it comes without complex laws or prohibitions but is filled with meaning. In biblical times, it was the day when young people from different tribes met and formed new bonds. It was a day of openness, reconciliation, rebirth, a search for love to build life.

Tu BeAv is the bright response to the darkness of Tishá BeAv. After mourning and destruction, Tu BeAv reminds us that hope and rebuilding are possible. This date teaches us that Jewish identity is not defined only by loss or victimhood but by the ability to rebuild, to love, and to listen even in fragility.

Today, amidst the pain for those who have been held captive for 670 days and their families, the urgency of the Shema grows. Listening to their absence, sustaining their memory, demanding their return is an act of resistance. To love after loss, to persevere in hope in dark times, is also justice.

This week, as we recall Moses’ final words, we can choose to listen more deeply, act more courageously, and open ourselves to rebirth. Because the promised land, any promised land is not reached by maps or strength alone; it is reached through values, ethics, and the capacity to listen to one another and to the God who speaks in our inner voice.

Perhaps this is our task today:

• To listen, even when the noise of the world pushes us to close our ears.

• To transmit, even when it seems no one wants to hear.

• To do what is right and good, even when no one demands it.

• To love and rebuild, as Tu BeAv reminds us, even after loss and fracture.

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Because the Shema does not end with an act of faith; it continues with ethical action. We listen in order to act. And we act so that, as the Torah says, “it may go well with us”—not just for us, but for the entire world.

May this be the path we choose to walk, together, with courage and hope, renewing the listening, memory, and love that sustain us as a people.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Gustavo Geier