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July 13, 2001/Tamuz 22, 5761, Vol. 53, No.40
At life's end, Moses moves beyond despair
Torah Study
RABBI JAMES ROSENBERG
Pinchas/Numbers 25:10-30:1
One of the most touching moments in parashat Pinchas occurs when God says to Moses: "Ascend these heights of Abarim and view the land that I have given to the Israelite people. When you have seen it, you too shall be gathered to your kin, just as your brother Aaron was." (Numbers 27:12-13)
Here, we find Moses near the end of his life, so close to achieving his goal of leading the Jewish people into the Promised Land. Soon he will climb Mount Nebo, from whose heights he will be able to see the land of Canaan, shimmering in the hot sun across the Jordan.
So close, but yet so far, for Moses will never set foot in Canaan. Before he has a chance to realize his dream, he will die somewhere in the mountain range of Pisgah. Nobody will even know the location of his grave.
For thirty-eight years, Moses has been haunted by the knowledge of his ultimate fate. Nevertheless, for thirty-eight years, he has continued to lead his people through a trackless desert.
Thirty-eight years of frustration and disappointment. Thirty-eight years of heat and sand, of hunger and thirst, of endless bickering and outright rebellion. And all that time, Moses has known that because of his moment of petulance at the waters of Meribah in the wilderness of Zin, God will keep him from ever setting foot in the Promised Land.
In many ways, we can learn much from Moses' final stage of life. While we admire the strong Moses, the mighty Moses who leads his people through the wilderness and does battle against Israel's enemies, we can hardly identify with him because he seems larger than life, like Michelangelo's gigantic statue of Moses in Rome.
In his last days, however, Moses assumes a profoundly human quality. In a very real sense, he seems more deeply heroic, for he no longer appears invincible. Like every man and woman, Moses, too, is forced to face failure, frustration and ultimately death. Like so many of us, he lives to see his dreams not quite shattered but not quite realized, either.
He must die as he lived, unable to penetrate the absurd ambiguity of human existence.
But Moses faces his end with dignity, courage, faith and an abiding trust in God, whose deeds are perfect.
Before Moses takes his final journey to the place where he will die, alone in God's presence, he asks God to appoint his successor, Joshua, to lead Israel across the Jordan and into Canaan: "Let Adonai, source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community, who shall go out before them and come in before them." (Numbers 27:16-17)
To the very end, Moses is a man for others.
The Moses we meet in parashat Pinchas is a man who has learned how to move beyond despair into a solemn and sacred acceptance of his mortality. This is a man who can teach us all how to reach down into the depths of our being and discover the profoundly humanizing sense of our vulnerability, a vulnerability that opens us up to the pain of others.
So it is not his almost superhuman deeds that make Moses our hero. Rather, it is the supreme wisdom and courage with which Moses confronts his own humanity that endow him with a truly heroic stature.
James B. Rosenberg is the rabbi of Temple Habonim in Barrington, RI, and the poetry editor of the CCAR Journal.
Torat Hayim, produced by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, is on the Internet at www.uahc.org/growth.
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