October 9, 2020
A Celebration of Moshe’s Life and Death
Vezot Habracha, 5781
Last week as I left my house to walk to shul one morning a neighbor who was driving her car stopped and rolled down her window.
Neighbor: “Rabbi, I have a questions for you.”
Me: “Of course, my dear neighbor, how can I help you”
Neighbor: “I love reading the Hebrew Bible but I just don’t understand, why did Moses have to die before getting into the Promised Land? That’s so sad!”
Me: “That’s a really great question. I am going to have to think about that and get back to you.”
Neighbor: “Please do!”
I am not sure why my wonderful neighbor was thinking about the death of Moses but I do know that as we enter Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah the topic of death is in the air and all around us.
Every day The Washington Post publishes a death count from Covid-19. According to a statistic I saw this week in the New York Times we currently have more than 275,000 deaths in this country than last year. So, yes, death is in the air.
And death is in the air as it relates to the holiday we are about to celebrate.
On Shemini Atzeret we will observe yizkor which asks us to remember those who have died and to bring their presence into our celebratory prayer.
We will also read Kohelet on Shemini Atzeret which encourages us to think about death. As Kohelet states: “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting” (7:2).
On Simchat Torah we will also focus on death, as we will read Vezot Habracha, which tells the story of Moshe Rabbenu’s death.
It is ironic that this portion –a portion of death--is read on the holiday we call Simchat Torah, the Joy of the Torah. Simchat Torah is perhaps the most joyous day on the Jewish calendar – a day of celebration and dancing. And, yet, it is a day where we talk about Moshe dying with his life dream unfulfilled.
The Torah states:
And the LORD said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ‘I will assign it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there.” So Moses the servant of the LORD died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of the LORD. He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, near Beth-peor; and no one knows his burial place to this day.
It is the story of Moshe being told that he will die short of his life’s goal. Moshe then dies and is buried.
While the text is absolutely clear about the fact that we do not know the place of Moshe’s grave, it is deliberately ambiguous about who actually buried Moshe.
The verse states: Vayikbor oto be-gai, and he buried him in Gai.
He buried him? Who is the he? Who buried Moshe? The question is made stronger by the fact that the text states that “no one knows his burial place” (34:6).
Well someone must know Moshe’s burial place! Someone must have buried him.
One approach to this question is to say that actually Gd buried Moshe.
Indeed the Talmud suggests that Hashem is the one who buried Moshe and from this model we learn the importance of participating in the mitzvah of caring for the dead:
“The Holy One, Blessed be He, buried the dead, as it is written: “And he was buried in the valley in the land of Moab” (Deuteronomy 34:6), so too, should you bury the dead” (Sotah, 14a).
Our tradition teaches that the holiest mitzvah is to care for the dead. In order to emphasize this Hashem Yisboruch performed this mitzvah of burying the dead when it came to Moshe Rabbenu’s body. For us as well, if we see an opportunity to engage in the mitzvah of honoring the dead we too should run towards the mitzvah.
The story is told that one time Rabbi Aryeh Levine was seen rushing through the streets of Jerusalem. His friend saw that the great rabbi was running and he knew that he must be going to do a great mitzvah. Wanting to help him, he asked, “Rebbe, where are you running to? Can I help you?”
Rabbi Aryeh Levine responded, “I am running to a levaya.” “Who died,” asked his concerned friend? To his friend’s astonishment, Rabbi Levine responded, “I don’t know who died. I don’t know him at all.” “Then why on earth are you running to his funeral,” asked the friend?
Rabbi Aryeh Levine explained, “ When they announced that this person had died they sent out a written announcement. The announcement said that he died after much pain and suffering. Our sages teach us that when a person suffers tremendously in life they often become spiritually great so I am rushing to partake in the levaya of a great person.” (Ish tzaddik haya, 104. Cited in Pliskin, Love Your Neighbor, 437).
During these days of pandemic it is often the case that many of us cannot be physically present at funerals, but we should strive as much as ossible to honor the dead and we should pray for a time where it will once again be safe enough for us to honor our dead and bury them properly.
A second answer to our question is that Gd did not bury Moshe. Instead it was Moshe who buried himself. This approach finds support in ancient midrashim and a significant number of medieval commentators (cf. Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Seforno).
Ibn Ezra writes: “He buried himself by going into the cave in Gai” (34:6).
Moshe walked himself into the burial cave! Moreover, Moshe did not stumble into the burial crypt like an old and feeble man. The text says: “Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated” (34:7).
This image is so powerful: Moshe walking into the cave in a vigorous manner.
How many of us fantasize for that type of physical departure from the world! A departure where we are not sick or weakened; instead, we just acknowledge that it is time to go and say goodbye and exit stage left.
How many of us would ever be capable of saying goodbye in that manner! Most of us would wait till we are unable to do our job properly; most of us would try to hold out until our bodies and our minds have faded.
Moshe walked off at the height of his strength. That is the image he leaves us with in the Torah.
This indeed is a reason to celebrate. We celebrate that Moshe lived his life fully to the last possible moment and died teaching us the most important lesson we needed to know.
This is why Simchat Torah is a joyous day.
Moshe Rabbenu died. But he left the world at the height of his strength. Our last image of Moshe is of a man visiting the tents of klal yisrael and educating them. Moshe’s final teaching was to bequeath us the Torah as a heritage.
Moshe’s death was inevitable but the way he died is glorious. He did not die cut off from his people or as a shell of a human being. He died while teaching and living his values. When we celebrate on Simchat Torah what we are doing is celebrating the teachings of the Torah and the lessons that up until the very last second of his life Moshe urged us to guard.
I am still going to have to get back to my neighbor about why Moshe Rabbenu was unable to enter the Promised Land. That’s for another time. But in the meantime, we can at least feel confident that Moshe not entering the Promised Land is not a reason to mourn as his death is a reason to celebrate.
This week I called my rebbe, Rabbi Avi Weiss, to wish him a gut moed. We were discussing the death of Moshe and Rabbi Weiss shared with me a powerful lesson that his grandfather, Dovid Weiss, bequeathed to his family. Dovid Weiss was not a wealthy man and he did not leave a large financial inheritance for his children but he did leave them something far more valuable. He wrote a will for his family and in this will he asked all his children to gather once a month on Saturday night for a melave malka. As is the case in most families children often chart their own path. Rabbi Weiss told me that in his family too many relatives charted their own path. Some were Chassidic, some yeshivish, some Mizrachi, and some on a less traveled path, but through it all it was very moving for Rabbi Weiss to see how the Dovid’s children would gather once a month to honor their father’s wish. These Saturday night gatherings kept the family together even as they each moved in their own direction. This was the final teaching of Dovid Weiss.
This year as we celebrate Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah it is a good time to ask ourselves: What do we want our final teaching to be?
Shmuel Herzfeld
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