Parshat Ha'Azinu - Loss of Intelligence
by Rabbi Lobel

“Yeshurun (Israel), became fat and strayed away. You became fat, you became thick, you became corpulent, and deserted G-d, your maker.” (Deuteronomy 32:15)

Moses, in his final words, tells the Jewish nation that they will stray from Torah and pinpoints exactly the reason why. The Children of Israel will become thickheaded to the values of the Torah and entertain new ideas to evaluate what is right and wrong.

The Sforno explains that this verse is not aimed directly at the laymen but speaks to everybody. The leaders of Israel, those responsible for establishing the standards of Jewish values, became thick from over indulgence in the materialistic world and lost the ability to understand the subtleties within the Torah.

A person can’t remove himself from the physical world and survive. Nor is he required to deny himself those physical pleasures that G-d has permitted. However, failing to exercise proper restraint and overindulging in material pleasures fattens the mind to the point it does not think straight and twists the voices of reason.

There are many reasons why overindulgence convolutes the mind. The end result is a compromise of values due to loss of reason.