Judaism
Vayelech
“He said to them, ‘Today I am 120 years old. I can no longer go or come, and the Lord said to me, ‘You shall not cross this Jordan’” Deuteronomy 31:2
September 9, 2021 15:09
“He said to them, ‘Today I am 120 years old. I can no longer go or come, and the Lord said to me, ‘You shall not cross this Jordan’” Deuteronomy 31:2
September 9, 2021 15:09If you were the leader of a movement or a nation and had the one last opportunity to inspire them, what important truths would you share? This was the agonising question Moses surely contemplated on the day he was informed would be his last.
What could he say to the nascent nation he had liberated from the brink of spiritual death who still struggled to reconcile the demons of their idolatrous past with the brilliant destiny of their priestly future?
What would you have said if you were in Moshe’s shoes?
Here is what Moses chose to do: he communicated to his people the very last of the mitzvot, mitzvah 613.
Mitzvah 613 is a directive for every Jew to write a Sefer Torah or have one written on one’s behalf, as the verse states, “Now write for yourselves this song,” meaning to say, “Write for yourselves a Torah which contains this song”.
Perhaps, what Moses was trying to convey to the Jewish people was that for Judaism to survive the test of time, it would not be enough for the Jewish people to have a communal stake in the Torah they inherited collectively; every Jew would need to see to it to write their own personal Torah.
On that fateful day Moses taught that if you want Judaism to be real and meaningful to your children, communities, and future generations, you cannot rely only on the prophets and philosophers, seers and sages, rabbis and rebbes, but must personalise, process and own your Judaism, and become a contributing partner in your family’s spiritual and moral life.
You see, in life there are two general categories, the things we outsource and the things we wouldn’t dare outsource, and successful individuals are those who know the difference between the two.
During Moses’s final sermon, his parting words of wisdom to the Jewish people were: do not outsource the Jewish identity and values of your children to others, do not rely exclusively on Judaism’s great twin communal institutions, the synagogue and the school. Instead, invest the time and energy and play a personal part in writing your own family’s Sefer Torah.
This is how the Torah will live on.