Let us learn two psukim with Rashi.

In the parsha, two references to events occurring on a "this day" take place:

"Be attentive and listen Yisrael: This day you have become a people of Hashem, your G-d..." (27: 9).

And:

" … But Hashem did not give you a heart to know or eyes to see, or ears to hear, until this day..." (29: 2,3).

About the first reference, Rashi comments: "Every day the commandments (Torah) shall be for you as if you entered the covenant just then." As an explanation for the words "this day," Rashi's homiletic sounding point seems to go beyond a simple reading. On Rashi's view, the words do not mean that the covenant was established, literally, on "this day"-that happened at Mount Sinai and previously-rather "this day" refers somehow to a day that is perpetually available, a day on which the covenant can be accepted in practice, or everyday.

The second reference would not permit a similar reading. This verse refers to a new perceptions or awareness: "this day" they saw and heard differently and are now able to recognize the kindness of G-d. Rashi explains that G-d did not immediately grant the ability to perceive the kindnesses of Heaven and enable the people to cleave to Him: those abilities developed and now came to fruition in some special way.

For Rashi, recognition that all "goodness and bounty" comes from Hashem and that we feel compelled to express thanks is basic to a religious sensibility. This cultivated appreciation can develop further into a distinctly religious state: "cleaving" to Hashem.

Even when the people left Egypt and participated in their own miraculous history, they did not know if the wondrous redemption they had experienced would need to continue in a long process or reach some kind of final culmination. The people knew they would end up in the promised land but did not sense the purpose orienting them in the desert.

With "this day", Moshe testified, the people had achieved a new understanding: the land of Israel is the destination but it will also change us. In the land, the miraculous desert existence will come to an end and a natural existence in which thanking G-d for goodness and "cleaving" to G-d will become a constant opportunity.

For Rashi then, there are two distinct uses of the phrase "this day." First, it is a day in the past (covenant at Sinai) which recurs with a kind of immediacy that allows us to participate in it long afterwards. Second, it is a day that takes place on the eve of the entry of the people to the land but brings with it a new religious dimension.

In each case, the force of "this day" transcends the calendar.

Gut Shabbos
Chaim Brovender