Separation
A Message for Parashat VaEthanan 2017
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I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so
remembering him.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)[1]
Moshe continued
his final address to the people in Parashat
Va-Et’hanan. He began with a
brief retelling of Ma’amad Har Sinai, and then segued into various
warnings and rebukes of the people. In the midst of this narrative he made a
surprising statement:
And God was incensed with me because of your words and he
swore not to let me cross the Jordan and not to let me come into the goodly
land that Hashem your God is about to give you in estate. (4:21)
His words implied that it was Am Yisrael’s
fault for his barred entrance into the Land of Israel. Indeed, Moshe had
recently made a similar declaration, as recorded in last week’s parashah.
In the context of his retelling of God’s punishment for the sin of the spies,
he declared:
Against me, too, God was incensed because of you, saying,
“You, too, shall not come there…” (1:37)
Why did he say this? Moshe surely remembered
his own actions at Mei Merivah, when God had subsequently informed him,
“Since you did not trust Me to sanctify Me before the eyes of the nation, even
so you shall not bring this assembly to the land that I have given to them”
(Bemidbar 20:12). Why, then, did he now deflect the responsibility from himself
to the nation?
* * * *
Ramban dealt with a different textual
difficulty regarding Moshe’s recollection. He was troubled by its specific
context in this week’s parashah. What was the relevance of Moshe’s
denied entrance into Israel to Ma’amad Har Sinai and his various
warnings and rebukes? Ramban pointed to Moshe’s reminiscence several sentences
earlier, when he detailed God’s command to him upon reception of the luhot:
And God charged me at that time to teach you statutes and laws
for you to do in the land into which you are crossing over to take hold of it. (4:14)
Ramban thus suggested that Moshe was now
setting forth the rationale for his subsequent explanation of the laws of the
Torah. He was fulfilling his responsibility to teach them because he
would soon die.[2]
By connecting Moshe’s obligation to teach the
people with his barred entrance into Israel, Ramban unwittingly opened a
passageway for us to make sense of Moshe’s puzzling attribution of his
punishment to the nation.
* * * *
On its most basic level, God’s command that
Moshe “teach the statutes and laws” meant that he elaborate upon their various
details. More fundamentally, however, this charge constituted Moshe’s
obligation to interpret the Torah, to explain its laws and to
pinpoint their relevance to practical situations. In a word, God’s command to
Moshe at that time began the tradition of Torah she-Be’al Peh – the Oral
Law.
God’s stated system for transmitting the Oral
Law, however, posed a problem. Although it was necessary for Moshe – as
emissary of God – to first introduce the rules and methods for interpreting the
Torah, his continued role as sole decisor of the law would
threaten a developmental stagnancy. The system of halakhah, received
from God, was meant to be dynamic within its received structure. The existence of
a “sole authority” would undermine that function. It would stifle any hope of
future creative interpretation, effectively shuttering all batei midrash
before they could ever open. And even if Moshe were to personally open the
study halls and encourage others to engage in the process of original pesak
halakhah, who would dare to speak up and voice their opinion in the
presence of Moshe?
In his Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund
Freud presented an imaginative description of the life, death and enduring
legacy of Moshe. Freud illustrated a core theme of the work by quoting from
German poet Friedrich von Schiller:
All that is to live in endless song
Must in life-time first be
drown’d.[3]
Freud wrote that sometimes for a tradition to
take hold the “messenger has to be killed.” Noted philosopher Jonathan Lear
suggested that the world of philosophy owes its existence to this phenomenon.
Plato was motivated to invent “philosophy” by the murder of his mentor
Socrates. He did so as an act of mourning and longing for the lost wisdom of
his teacher.[4]
Patrick Miller noted that the “closing” of
the Torah was coincidental with the death of Moshe “in a real sense.” He
explained that Moshe “now moves off the scene, and Israel henceforth will not
be led by a great authority figure but by the living word of the Torah that
Moses taught.”[5] The Hakhamim perhaps hinted at a
similar phenomenon regarding Moshe’s death. They taught that following his
death, 1,700 derashot of the Torah were forgotten, but that Otniel ben
Kenaz, a later leader of the people, heroically restored them with his
“sharpness.” This process of initial forgetfulness and its subsequent
“restoration” was, in a sense, the successful continuity of Torah she-Be’al
Peh.[6]
As Moshe recounted the initial stages of the
oral tradition, he pondered the system’s enduring strengths and deficiencies.
And he then understood God’s decree that he must soon die.
Moshe realized that the system’s vitality
depended upon its adherents’ courage and creativity, and realized that he
paradoxically stood as the obstacle in their path. Political scientist Aaron
Wildavsky explained:
Moses
the eternal teacher would then instead be Moses the permanent master. What
Moses teaches in Deuteronomy is not just law but institutions for the
transmission of law, continuity of leadership to make the law effective. It is
better for the people that Moses die physically than that his character be
assassinated morally.[7]
Moshe flashed back to the nation’s first display
of unhealthy over-dependence upon others, during the sin of the meragelim.
The nation then showed that they were incapable of marching ahead without the
constant guidance and advice of others. And he now realized that his continued
presence threatened the persistence of that flaw.
* * * *
One might
say that the difficulty of rearing children has to do with the ambiguities of
independence. The child must be separate from the parent; the parent must allow
the child to discover his or her own reality…But this separation, though
necessary, is a complex and often tormented experience…In the act of creation,
there is perhaps inevitable sadness, as the work works itself loose from the
vision.
(Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg)[8]
As a parent and teacher, I am often reminded
of this lesson of Moshe. It is at the “transition periods” that I feel it most
– when my children mature and grow more independent or when my students
graduate and move away. In those moments, when my role in their lives begins to
change and sometimes diminish, I reflect upon the core lessons that I have attempted
to teach and remind myself that separation is sometimes necessary for maximal
growth.
[1] “Time does not bring
relief; you all have lied,” in Collected Poems (New York, NY, 2011), pg.
562.
[2] Commentary of Ramban
to the Torah, Devarim 4:21-4.
[3] Cited from Schiller’s The
Gods of Greece, in Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York,
NY, 1967), pg. 130.
[4] Jonathan Lear, Happiness,
Death and the Remainder of Life (Cambridge, MA, 2002), pg. 102-3.
[5] Patrick D. Miller, Deuteronomy:
Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville,
KY, 2011), pg. 244.
[6] Temurah 16a. See,
as well, R. Yisshak Hutner’s Pahad Yisshak: Hanukkah (ma’amar 3,
no. 3) and William Kollbrener’s article for Lehrhaus, “Killing Off the
Rav (So He May Live),” May 15, 2017
<http://www.thelehrhaus.com/commentary-short-articles/2017/5/14/killing-off-the-rav>.
[7] Aaron Wildavsky, Moses
as Political Leader (Jerusalem, IS, 2005), pg. 188.
[8] The Beginning of
Desire: Reflections on Genesis (New York, NY, 1995), pg. 20.