This week's Torah portion ends with one of the most poignant stories in our Scriptures.
And when Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them: Take to heart all the words with which I have warned you this day. Enjoin them upon your children, that they may observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching. For this is not a trifling thing for you: it is your very life; through it you shall long endure on the land that you are to possess upon crossing the Jordan.
That very day the Lord spoke to Moses: Ascend these heights of Abarim to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab facing Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites as their holding. You shall die on the mountain that you are about to ascend, and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin; for you both broke faith with Me among the Israelite people, at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to uphold My sanctity among the Israelite people. You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it--the land that I am giving to the Israelite people.
How is it possible that Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher, of all people, wasn't permitted to enter the Land of Israel, to take that last step to true redemption? The Torah tells us that no Jew who was a slave in Egypt lived to cross that final frontier. The first generation to settle the land had to be utterly free of the taint of involuntary servitude. But there's obviously more to it. Moses and his brother Aaron were being punished for a past misdeed.
What kind of horrible transgression could have merited such a rebuke? At Kadesh, the Israelites found themselves without water (Numbers 20:1-13). But God told Moses to take his rod and speak to a rock. Water would then spring from the stones. But, instead, Moses struck the rock twice with his rod. The water did gush out, but the fate of Moses and Aaron was decreed on the spot.
It's beyond me at the moment to even try to make sense of this story. An awful lot has been written about it, though. I find it especially odd that it's read on this Shabbat, of all Shabbatot, this Shabbat Shuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. At this season, we're told that true repentance will avert judgment for even the worst of our deeds. That God forgives every iniquity if only we turn our hearts away from evil in an honest attempt to become better people, better parents, better children, better Jews. How is it that a single momentary lapse of faith on the part of our greatest sage was never forgiven?
And this is where we're left hanging, at the end of the regular Shabbat reading cycle. The next and last parasha of Deuteronomy, Ve'zot Habracha, is read on Simchat Torah, the celebration of the giving of the Law, the day after the end of Succot. And on that day we immediately turn all the way back to the beginning and read the first words of Genesis, so that the cycle should always remain unbroken.
Reading Ha'azinu today, I'll tell you what came to my mind as I thought of the rationale behind requiring an entire generation born into slavery to depart this world before their descendants could truly become free to live in peace and freedom. I thought that the same is true of a generation born into a culture of hatred and death, of glory in murder and savagery. I'll leave it there, for now.
Shabbat Shalom.
