The Altar on Mount Eval

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1. "Great Stones" and "Whole Stones"

   Parashat Ki Tavo

   Rabbi Amnon Bazak

   Moshe commands Bnei Yisrael to erect large stones and write the Torah upon them when they have entered into the Promised Land. He also commands them to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings on an altar. How does the Torah link the two commandments? What is the significance of writing the Torah on stones? Did Joshua perform the commands exactly as the Torah describes them?

2. Chapter 4 Conclusion: The Memorial of the Twelve Stones

   Rabbi Michael Hattin

   Yehoshua removes twelve stones from the waters of the Yarden to be carried by the people, as God had commanded - but places twelve OTHER stones in their place. What is the purpose of Yehoshua’s additional act? We will attempt to explain the significance of the stones through a comparison to the story of Eliyahu on Mt. Carmel.

3. The King of Ai and the Altar at Mount Eval

   Rabbi Michael Hattin

   The text highlights the moral dimension of the conflict, emphasizing that Israel's wars of conquest must not be exercises in gratuitous bloodshed, unrestrained plunder and cruel vengeance. While it is necessary to put the inhabitants of Ai to death in the course of the battle, their king, the symbol of their temporal might and power, is dispatched without recourse to torture, while his body is shortly thereafter removed from the gallows and buried without mutilation, two telling departures from the conventions of ancient warfare. The placement of the passage describing the assembly at Mount Eval is to emphatically declare that Israel can only survive the passage over the Yarden and the entry into Canaan if they put God's Torah at the forefront of their concerns and their mission as His people as their national objective.

4. The Ceremony of the Stones

   Rabbi Chanoch Waxman | 33 minutes

   What is the purpose and significance of the plastered stones and rough altar to be set up upon entry to the land? Comparing the ceremony at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal with the ceremony of the Covenant at Sinai, and reviewing Abraham's altars and his Covenant with God upon his entry to the Land reveals that the command in our Parsha is intrinsically connected to both.

5. The Covenant of Arvot Moav- Audio

   Prof. Jonathan Grossman | 12 minutes

   Moshe speaks of Bnei Yisrael being singled out “on this day” and commands them to set up stones and an altar at Mount Ebal upon entering the Land of Israel. Why does Moshe speak of sealing a covenant on the steppes of Moab, to be completed in the Land of Israel? Shouldn’t the covenant at Sinai suffice?

6. The Tragedy of Yoshiyahu

   Rabbi Alex Israel

   Yoshiyahu's dramatic religious revolution led him to two erroneous conclusions, giving him the confidence to confront Pharaoh Nekho who lead his army through Israel in order to confront the emerging Babylonian empire. Firstly, he believed that the religious level that was achieved was one that would make God support him against an idolatrous king. Secondly, he believed that the revolution was sincere and accepted among the people, when in fact in the short amount of time since the major change it was imposiible to uproot norms and beliefs that had set in over such a long period. This folly decision led to his death by the archers' arrows ending abruptly the reign of a righteous king. The lack of real change among the people means that wheels of Hurban that were set in motion by Menashe were not stopped - though they might have had the chage been sincere.

   Modern Biblical scholars claim that Devarim was the Sefer Torah that Yoshiyahu discovered and it was written in his time and not by Moshe. The claim of the 7th century authorship is refuted by a series of simple proofs.

7. Tanakh and Archaeology

   Part 7 - The Era of Settlement

   Rabbi Amnon Bazak

   All scholars working in the field of biblical archaeology recognize the existence of a significant process of settlement in the central mountainous region of Eretz Yisrael, starting from the 13^th century B.C.E., as manifest in the establishment of hundreds of small points of settlement bearing a unique character. The main controversy among archaeologists concerns the question of the identity of these new settlers. The minimalist school maintains that what became known as Am Yisrael was actually formed out of a collection of local nomadic groups who abandoned their villages on the coastal plain or in the Negev, and settled in these new areas.