For 40 long years they have wandered in the wilderness. During all that rime God nurtured the people's bodies with manna and their spirits with the guarantee that the Land of Israel would someday be theirs. Now they can finish the task that began on the day they left Egypt. They wait first for Moses to look back, to recollect the tale of their journey, to remind them again of Sinai, to go back over the mitzvot . In other words, to take stock of a period m their lives that will never return and to make sure they have learned what they can from it.
Subtle connections bind Torah readings with larger calendrical issues.
For Jews, the months when we read Deuteronomy are devoted to our own looking back. Not for Jews. Summer is the time when Jews look back. First comes our stock-taking as a people. This week's parashah , with which Deuteronomy begins, comes just before Tisha b'Av , the most wrenching memory inherited from antiquity.