(for the week of July 24th, 2010/13 Av, 5770)
Parashat “Va’etchanan”
Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11
This week’s parasha (Torah portion) finds Moses continuing his farewell address to the Israelites. It begins with Moses’ poignant recollection of how he once pleaded with God to reverse the decree prohibiting Moses from crossing over into the Promised Land. God’s initial response is both angry and concise: “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again!” (Deuteronomy 3:26). But God, possibly regretting this initial response, continues by instructing Moses to ascend the top of Mt. Pisgah to look at the Promised Land across the river and then to prepare Joshua to take over leadership of the community (3:28).
Despite Moses’ heartbreaking plea and even with everything Moses has done for both God and the Israelites, the judgment will not be reversed. Moses will not be allowed to enter the land at the head of the people he’s been leading for 40 years. This must have been a very bitter pill for Moses to swallow, an enormous grief to absorb given all the personal sacrifices he has made to carry out God’s command. So, how do we respond to such massive disappointments in our lives? What does the Torah have to teach us about the universal experience of loss?
One midrash (Biblical interpretation) imagines that Moses may have prayed incorrectly in this instance because, unlike Hannah who prayed silently (I Samuel 1:13), in his anguish, Moses raised his voice loudly to God.1 We’ll set aside the theological question of how we possibly could revere a God whose compassion is so shallow that a heartbroken prayer is automatically disqualified because of its volume! This “blame the victim” approach offers only the most bitter kind of comfort (one we recognize as similar to the consolation offered by Job’s so-called friends). If you are suffering, the theory goes, if your prayers were not answered positively, then you must have done something wrong. While there may be some twisted comfort in this ‘reward and punishment’ theory of how the world works, as a theology, I find it both cruel and impossible to sustain. While we, like Moses, sometimes do bear a measure of responsibility for the disappointments and hurts that come our way, just as often, there is no simple logic to justify or explain our suffering. Put simply, sometimes, we suffer deeply and are badly disappointed by life and it’s not anyone’s fault.
That still leaves us with a heartbroken Moses struggling to accept what life (and God) has brought his way. What does Moses do? First, Moses grasps as much of his dream as he can within the boundaries that have been imposed upon him. Moses goes to the top of the mountain. He looks at the beautiful land across the river. And he imagines the people crossing over and fulfilling the promise towards which he’s been leading them. This experience was not the same as going across himself and the moment must have tasted bittersweet at best. Still, it can offer a sort of comfort to find creative ways to grab as much of your dream as possible. Second, Moses continues to live for the things that have given his life meaning. He continues to teach and guide and prepare the people for the next chapter in their story—in other words, Moses tries to continue functioning as the great leader he’s always been. Last, I believe Moses does his best to take comfort in the mystery we name “God”—a reality that sometimes fills our hearts with unexpected, overwhelming blessings and, other times, breaks our hearts with inexplicable sorrows but always holds out the possibility that we have the capacity to be a blessing to others and to live lives of meaning. Are Moses’ responses sufficient to overcome life’s deepest losses? And even if they are, is it possible for most of us to achieve those responses in the face of our own lives’ biggest hurts? I believe the correct answer is: sometimes. You see, it turns out that the Rolling Stones were right. If you can’t always get what you want, sometimes, you still can get enough of what you need to survive and go on living.
1Midrash Genesis Rabbah 2,1.
