For some of us, a dawning sense of adulthood came with our first awareness of death. Perhaps it was the death of a pet, perhaps it was the passing of a grandparent, but the realization that life had an end, that we would not last forever, changed each one of us in an instant.
Suddenly life was transformed from simple light and joy to a more complex and bittersweet mix. The melody of life switched from the major to a minor key.
That defining moment when we first really knew of death is the entrance to adulthood--the realization of our own finitude and fallibility, the recognition that we must, invariably, lose the ones we love. At that moment, we begin the life long task of learning to savor life's joys despite its pain and inevitable sorrows.
Each of us develops different ways of dealing with death's sting. Some deny its power, acting as through personal greatness can override the inevitable. Some turn to accumulating great wealth, or power, or intellectual acumen in the subconscious hope of joining the immortals and escaping with their lives in hand.
This week's Torah portion speaks of the inevitability of death through the eyes of one great man, Moses.
Surely if there was any Jew deserving of eternal life, this one was. Moses, alone of all humanity, had spoken to God face to face and lived, had liberated God's people and served as shadhan (match-maker) between God and the Jewish people. He had even carried their ketubah, the Torah, and assured its honored place at the center of Jewish life. With so much compassion for the people and so much passion for God, this great prophet, rabbi, and teacher certainly deserved to live forever.
Yet it was not to be. The Torah records that "the Lord said to Moses: 'the time is drawing near for you to die... You are soon to lie with your ancestors.'"
That even Moses has to die becomes a metaphor for the human condition. The rabbis of Midrash Devarim Rabbah explain that unalterable reality as the beginning of all real wisdom: "Rabbi Judah says, 'No one has power over the Angel of Death to be saved from death itself." Each of us, born of flesh-and-blood, must inevitably pass beyond the portals of this world, through death.
The Midrash continues to explore the theme of death: "No one, when about to die, can say, 'I will send my slave in my stead.' Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta says, 'No one can make weapons to overwhelm the Angel of Death.... No one has the power to say [to the Angel of Death], 'Wait for me until I have made up my accounts,' or 'until I have set my house in order, and then I will come.'... On that day there is no respecting of personages."
There is no way to avoid dying, and there is no negotiating with death when one's time has come. "After all the greatness which Moses has enjoyed, when the day of his death came, he could not hold it back." And if Moses could not restrain death, then what hope is there for the rest of us?
Perhaps Moses knew that. Perhaps he was so wise that he recognized this bedrock of the human condition and trained himself his whole life long not to look for salvation from anything that pertains to this world alone. He never pursued wealth as an end in itself, never spend his time amassing great power as a source of self-identification or satisfaction.
Instead, Moses' behavior in the face of death provides a beacon for us all. Moses knew that the enter eternity requires identifying with something eternal. So he cast his lot with the Jewish People, with the Torah, and with God. Those three carry eternity in their midst, and we can too when we bring the three together in the knot of our souls.
By living in the midst of the Jewish community, by making the mitzvot our own personal pathways through life, and by nurturing our awareness of God's love and God's comfort, we train ourselves to survive death--not by evading or denying the inevitable, but by transcending it.
To rise above time, we must link ourselves to the timeless--the household of Israel, the Torah of Israel, and the God of Israel – and through that portal, to all humanity and all creation.
Shabbat Shalom!