The Science of the Deterrent

How do we persuade people to act in their own best interests? Can we?

Ki Tavo 5786 D’var – Nance Morris Adler  29 August 2026

When teaching about Revelation at Sinai in my Theology course, I will talk about the fact that there are two versions of the Aseret HaDibrot – the Ten Utterances or Commandments. Those given in Shemot on Mt. Sinai by God directly during Revelation, and those as retold by Moses forty years later in D’varim to the generations that did not experience Sinai. There are several differences in the two versions – the wording of the commandment connected to Shabbat being the most significant. God, at Sinai, commands us to Zachor – Remember – the Sabbath Day. Moses, in his retelling, uses the word Shamor – to guard or observe. When I am teaching this to my middle school students, I will talk about Moses’s experiences with the Hebrews over the past 40 years. He is keenly aware of their short memories.   They have frustrated him repeatedly with their lack of faith even just days after a major miracle. They complain about the lack of food and God provides manna. Despite midrash saying manna could taste like whatever you wanted, they complain it isn’t meat. So, God provides meat – a lot of meat –  and they complain it is too much (which was actually the point I think). They make Moses so angry that he strikes a rock and demands water from it, rather than asking in God’s name for it to give them water. For this outburst and seeming lack of faith, he loses his right to enter the Promised Land and Aaron dies shortly afterward. So, I tell my students, Moses knew that memory was not a strong suit for B’nei Israel and that they were going to need a more active command if they were going to actually honor and keep the Sabbath Day holy. 

You may be asking what does this have to do with Ki Tavo – the actual parsha this week? As I was rereading the parsha, I was bothered, not for the first time, by the harshness of the curses or admonitions found in it. My personal Jewish theology is based on the idea that “God is Love” or to paraphrase Rabbi David Hartman in “The God Who Hates Lies” – if you read something in the Torah or find a halachic interpretation that does not seem to be grounded in love, read it again and find a more generous interpretation. Like Rabbi Hartman, I believe in a God that acts from love and a Judaism rooted in that love. So, a whole list of horrific threats about what will happen if I fall short in my observance does not sit well with me. I went looking for some help in making sense of it from another of the sources of my understanding of Judaism – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book “Heavenly Torah.” 

When I teach about the authorship of Torah across movements of Judaism, I will share that Devarim is often seen as the first book of midrash. While this likely seems unproblematic for most of those in this room, I did not think it was a traditional viewpoint until I heard it from an Orthodox Rabbi who came to give a God Talk for my 8th graders years ago. This rabbi stated that the first four books of the Torah were the direct word of God and that the fifth book was Moses’s words. This view supports my own midrash on why Moses says “observe” rather than “remember.” I had not followed up by researching what rabbinic texts supported this idea. So, when I opened up “Heavenly Torah” to read Heschel’s thoughts on D’varim, imagine my pleasure to find out that he begins by discussing just whose words are found in this fifth book of Torah. 

The first section heading reads “Moses Delivered the Curses in Deuteronomy by His Own Mouth” and it immediately deals with curses or admonitions of Ki Tavo by citing the rules about reading curses in the Torah. He quotes the law from Mishnah that “one does not create a break in the curses.” when chanting them from the Torah. This is a rule with which I, as a gabbai, am quite familiar. The text then continues that Amora Abbaye said “The Mishna only refers to the curses in Leviticus; however one may divide the curses in Deuteronomy. What is the reason? The former were framed in the plural, and Moses transmitted them from on high, whereas the latter were framed in the singular and Moses delivered them by his own mouth.”  Heschel then lists others who also state that the curses in Ki Tavo are “delivered by Moses on his own.” Even Rashi asserts this “These curses were delivered by Moses by his own mouth.” Rashi’s proof text is the use of first person pronouns in Leviticus “if you do not obey me…I will…” versus “the Lord will…” in Ki Tavo. Heschel points out that there is no objection or discussion in the Gemara about Abbaye’s claim! Imagine the Sages not arguing about something that seems so clearly controversial – or was it? 

So this moving of the admonitions from God’s words to Moses’s helps my concerns. But if this is Moses cursing B’nei Israel for future breaches in the Covenant, on what authority is he doing so? Is there a tradition in Judaism of admonishing a group of people? And if so, where does it come from? Heschel brings in a text that shows the timing of the admonitions – “It was in the fortieth year…” So Moses is close to his death, he has had forty years with this kvetchy group that has driven him to lose his patience more times than he can count. He is surely stinging from the loss of his brother and his own punishment. But where might he have gotten the idea that he could admonish them and give them such dire warnings about their behavior and its possible consequences? Rabbi Heschel refers us back to Bereshit 49 where Jacob, on his death bed, calls together his sons to “…tell you what is to befall you in the days to come.”  What follows is a mix of blessings and admonishments. Jacob breaks down the character of each of his sons and predicts what their, and their tribes, futures will bring based on these character traits. “Simeon and Levi are a pair; Their weapons are tools of lawlessness. Let not my person be included in their council.” “You, O Judah, your brothers shall praise; Your hands shall be on the nape of your foes…the scepter shall not depart from Judah…” Many sons get blessings that seem to be also curses – you will be constantly attacked – but you will win! Certainly none of this compares to what Moses has to say to those about to enter the Promised Land, but one could argue the stakes were a bit higher for Moses’s listeners than Jacob’s sons gathered at their dying father’s bedside. Heschel also mentions that Moses is compared to Joshua, Samuel and David who also all delivered deathbed speeches which aimed to influence the behavior of their listeners. 

Before returning to our sages, I want to talk about another thing I think about when I read these threats. My concern is about how ineffective threats are – even when the threats include that you will be reduced to eating your loved ones.  I of course have the benefit of hindsight and knowing that they do not work to keep the Israelites from going astray – repeatedly – after “gods not known to you” and building altars to Ba’al and Ashteroth. Have we learned anything in 3000 years?  Does it now work to tell people that terrible things will happen if they don’t change their behaviors? And I don’t just mean do threats cause people to change, I mean are humans better about thinking about the presented evidence and making better choices? Does it cause people to think about what they’re doing and to make changes in how they behave and what they do? Think of climate change, think of issues with education, think of any other number of problems in the world where experts have been warning loudly for years about what will happen if humans don’t alter their ways.  Even as these warnings come true people continue to act as if their actions don’t matter. If curses as severe and gruesome and horrific as the ones in this reading didn’t serve to cause B’nai Israel to adhere to the rules then and scientific evidence and the clear realities around us don’t work today, then what will cause people to make better choices?

I don’t really have an answer beyond things I have talked about in previous divrei Torah, so for today we will return to Heschel and my core complaint – the horrific nature of these curses and how jarring they feel in the context of a loving God. According to Abaye, “Moses delivered the curses…by his own mouth” and “the curses are seen to include all of the book of Devarim.” How do we know this? The Admonitions of Ki Tavo are seen as core to D’varim, which is also known as “The Book of Admonitions” so if they are the “curses of Moses” then we can infer that the entire book is Moses’s words. I am not alone in being bothered by the severity of these admonitions and Heschel quotes Rabbi Levi who said  “Come and see how unlike the divine characteristics are human characteristics: for the Holy and Blessed One blessed Israel with twenty-two letters and cursed them with eight, whereas Moses blessed them with eight and cursed them with twenty-two.” Moses has explained God’s commandments to the gathered community of B’nei Israel. The commandments are God’s. Moses’s explanations and the admonishments that follow were, according to many Sages, Moses’s own embellishment. He had, after all, led these people for 40 years and perhaps knew better than anyone, even an all-knowing God, just how recalcitrant they could be. While those raised in Egypt who had a “slave” mentality had died in the wilderness, their mindset had not necessarily entirely died out with them. Moses also understood the task at hand when they entered the Promised Land. Settling the land, ridding it of idol worshippers who might lead them astray, establishing not only a new civilization but also a new religious cult in this new land was going to take strict discipline. Moses also knew that he would not be there to keep them in hand. Moses perhaps felt that the all too human characteristics at play needed human admonishments to keep them at bay. 

The science of the deterrent – the idea that we can somehow incentivize people to not do certain things – really has not made a lot of progress since Moses rattled off his list of terrible consequences if the Covenant with God was not upheld to the letter. We live in the age of FAFO (shul approved definition “fool around and find out”) and people voting for  “face eating leopards” only to be shocked when their own faces get eaten as well. People seem to be highly resistant to hearing perfectly reasonable advice, to looking at the heaps of evidence in front of them as to what a certain course of action will result in and therefore making a wise choice. Telling people that a specific behavior will result in a terrible outcome and them actually choosing to avoid that behavior seems less and less likely each day. And I don’t say that  just because I teach middle schoolers. We all think that whatever IT is won’t apply to us.  That the person speaking is ill informed.  That no one will find out and so on. But usually that person isn’t God, or even Moshe Rabbeinu. Moses says in  Chapter 29 – after he has admonished the people “Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.”  How do we get people to have eyes to see and ears to hear and a mind that understands that some behaviors will have seriously negative outcomes and others will have more positive outcomes? Or that while behavior may not be harmful to us directly, it may be harmful to those around us or to the world in general? And how do we get them to care?

This post was given as the d’var Torah – sermon – at Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle on 26 August 2026.