V’etchanan / A great, wise and understanding people. Oh, really?!

We are now past Tisha B’Av, and our first Shabbos foray into the synagogue puts us in a position to hear this message from Moshe:

“Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as the L-rd, my G-d, commanded me, to do so in the midst of the land to which you are coming to possess. And you shall keep [them] and do [them], for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations, who will hear all these statutes and will say, ‘This great nation is only a wise and understanding people’.” (Devarim 4:5-6)

I try not to live with blinders on. Which is why reading this triggers an exasperating throw of my hands skyward, along with a look heavenward, and a cry (sometimes aloud, but more often silent because no one is listening) of “Us? When will this happen?”

Did this happen during the time of David or Solomon? Did this happen during the time of the first or second Temples? Did this happen during the Talmudic Period? Does it refer to the historical anomaly of the kingdom of the Khazars?

It’s great that the Kuzari was written by Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi. Would it ever have been written by someone from the “nations” described in the Torah?

The only “wisdom of this nation” I hear bandied around is the accusation of the Jews being the Illuminati, or that the Protocols are true. Of course both of these are nonsense. But when the headlines “amongst the nations,” when true, are about Jews who commit abominable deeds — especially Jews who are supposed to know better on account of their Jewish education and upbringing — the Torah (and I shudder to say this) seems to be out to lunch on reality.

Of course, the Torah is right. If the Jewish people would only “keep them and do them” — the commandments, that is — we would indeed be a wise and understanding people; a model to all. After all, thievery, physical abuse, cover-ups, dishonesty, slander, etc., are all intolerable offenses that have no place in a world governed by Torah ideals.

But even so, our public relations would still need a lot of work. There are many cynical and skeptical people, Jewish and not Jewish, who believe the Torah mandates the stoning of adulterers (Vayikra 20) and the killing of minors (Devarim 21:20-21, 22:21-24), and the most heinous of punishments not for the perpetrators, but for the victims of sexual abuse (Devarim 22:29).

Anyone who makes these claims does not understand the magnitude of Torah knowledge as they look at the verse in its most simplistic translation, and have no concept of the Oral Torah, and thousands of years of rabbinic discussions addressing what these cases mean.

The Talmud (Makkot 7) claims that courts did not exercise capital punishment. At worst, it was a very rare occurrence. And the conditions leading to such were almost impossible to attain: valid witnesses, proper warning, zero contradictions in testimony.

We live in a time when Sharia law, which takes some of the Biblical laws literally (or at least as prescribed in the Quran), and practices the worst kinds of corporal punishment, is on the rise in in practice and acceptance around the world, even in some Western countries.

Halacha, on the other hand, which has so many varying opinions and is a system which can help people live meaningful and fulfilling lives following various schools of interpretation, isn’t growing beyond very small circles of Jews.

And it has become a major turnoff to many Jews who do not observe. This is wisdom? This is understanding? What are we doing wrong?

We are not as Jewishly educated as we ought to be. Even our rabbis and educators, and certainly a large majority of our flock, do not have a mastery of Tanach, Talmud and Halachic literature.

We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the education of every child in his/her lifetime, yet we (and our children) can’t read Hebrew, can’t translate Hebrew, and have no patience to tackle a new text. We review the same laws every year, and we still don’t know basic synagogue practice and basic holiday practice. Or what it means to live a life of hatznea leches — living a modest existence in which we do not call unnecessary attention to ourselves.

We preach about lashon hara, but we don’t know the difference between a to’eles (discussion with a purpose) and what is pure besmirching and slander. Even as we wring our hands with dismay at the chillul Hashem, we enjoy reading all the dirt in the press about Jewish people who “look frum” who conduct themselves in ways that are anything but…

We talk about people doing teshuvah, but we are unaccepting of people we believe can’t do teshuvah.

The Jewish criminals don’t represent us. But we are not doing a good enough job of representing ourselves through living and modeling a Torah life that will cause others to say, “This is a great nation, wise and understanding.”

Let the recent mourning period of Av serve as a reminder that we have a long way to go. May we find the strength to live up to our mandate from the Torah, to truly be a model nation.