Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Ha’azinu, Moses’s final song as he signs off his last shift as leader of the Israelites. At the end of the parasha, he is called up to Mount Nebo by God and he dies quietly and alone, so that none may find his grave and turn it into an idol of some sort. On Simchat Torah we read the final portion of the Torah, Moses’s last blessings to the people, and the blessings bestowed upon him at the hour of his death. Where the Torah ends, the Books of the Prophets pick up with Joshua leading the Israelites into the Promised Land. The transition of power in these last two portions is smooth and complete, with no lingering questions or doubts about Joshua’s leadership. 

Recently a student asked me why Moses doesn’t get to enter the Promised Land. The Torah gives us a couple reasons, most notably the incident where God tells Moses to speak to the rock for water and instead Moses hits the rock. But rather than try to explain why Moses was so harshly punished for a pretty reasonable mistake, or address the other verses in the Torah that suggest there may have been other moments of doubt for which Moses was being published, I took a more practical approach in my answer. None of the generation that left Egypt was allowed to enter the Promised Land. Why should Moses be any different? The Torah and its commentaries tells us often that leaders should be held to a higher standard than the common folk, so kal v’chomer, all the more so should Moses not be allowed to lead a people born into freedom into the Holy Land to established a new world order for themselves, if the rest of his generation is not allowed to be a part of that transformation. 

Biblical Israelite culture wasn’t exactly a democracy, because ultimately, God called all the shots and could choose to protect Their special partner Moses over the desires of the people. Yet still, between the humans, democratic values were budding among the Torah laws. Equality among people and a leadership that delegates were early norms established in Judaism, and later, further stances on equality and consensus develop, leading to Jewish communities as early as the Talmudic period declaring that God does not get to dictate how we understand the laws we were given anymore. For true democracy to flourish, new leadership must be allowed in to continue to help younger and future generations grow to their full potential, to help society progress and stay healthy and safe in a changing world. A democracy should not have the same leader or the same small set of leaders in charge for 47, 40, or even 12 years. Change is not only good and possible, it is necessary, and that includes change of leadership as well as among the civilian population. 

In the musical Hamilton, George Washington sings “One Last Time,” in which he proposes that he must set a precedent for willingly giving up power, for term limits, in order to “teach them how to say goodbye.” I think there’s something particularly poignant in that song and that moment in the musical (which I suspect in real history was not quite so noble-minded), that not only does Washington want to step down, but he wants to leave the people with what he thinks they’ll need to move on in his absence. That is essentially what Parashat Ha’azinu is. Moses is ready to say goodbye. He’s not just going to slip away quietly without addressing his people, and neither will he make his final speech self-aggrandizing and an opportunity for the people to thank him for his service. It’s his final reminder of all that he has taught the Israelites in the last 40 years, and what they need to be responsible for when he is gone. It is a clear moment of earnest leadership, leadership that is not about power but about caring for the people. And what the people needed in that moment was a reminder and a farewell, a new leader and a new era. 

On this first Shabbat of 5785, let us hope that this is a new era, a year of healthy and peaceful transitions of power in our country and elsewhere, a year of real change and growth, a year of song and learning and community togetherness. And may this be a year of peace. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.