Many of the world religions share a great deal: a sense of wonder and marvel at the simple fact of existence, the miracle of creation and of life, the mystery of human consciousness, the intrusion of the sacred into the profane, the love of our fellow human beings and the pursuit of peace and of justice. Like other faiths, Judaism also cultivates an awareness of these laudable qualities. Just as many of the world’s religions trace their discovery of these traits to the example of a founder, so Judaism sees many of its highest values embodied in Moshe Rabbenu, our teacher Moses.
Today’s Torah portion is the opening chapters of Devarim, the Book of Words, known in English as Deuteronomy. The entire book, except for the last few verses, is presented as Moses’ Farewell Address to the Jewish people. Standing at the border of the Promised Land, Moses is also on the border between life and death. Now, at the end of his unparalleled career, he recounts the significance of his half-decade of leadership, and charges the Jewish people with continued fidelity to God and to Torah.
As Moses begins his great speech, it is worth taking a moment to consider the legacy that this great prophet leaves to us. What special lessons do we derive from the life and teachings of Moses?
• First and foremost, Moses teaches that holiness and ethics cannot be separated from each other without doing serious harm to each. A sense of the sacred that isn’t harnessed to the service of morality is one that will sacrifice children, women, or prisoners of war for the sake of ritual punctiliousness. Unless religion is in constant communion with moral rigor, its own way of marking time and of accessing holiness can become a source of human hatred and suffering, a way to justify bigotry and callousness. On the other hand, ethics that isn’t regularly rehearsed through ritual discipline quickly reduces to lip service. Absent the commanding voice of God, our values melt into mere preferences, as extended aesthetics. By fusing morality with religion, Moses fashioned a powerful tool for moral uplift and spiritual depth. Mosaic religion is a profoundly moral spirituality. Mosaic ethics is intoxicated with God.
• Moses teaches us that decency is measured not by lofty pronouncements, but by prosaic details of everyday living. Rather than presenting a complex philosophy or a systemic theology teaching us how to think, Moses focused on how to behave. The laws and teachings of the Torah don’t impose a trickle down goodness, one that relies on right thinking to lead to right behavior. Instead, by mandating proper behavior, the Torah expects deeds of goodness to construct an implicit theology—one built on the painstaking work of compassion, of caring, and of justice. By making our diets sacred, by infusing the cycles of our lives and our calendar with holy days and holy times, we express our beliefs through our actions. And that theology has stood the test of time.
• Moses teaches us the power of passion. He was a man who loved his people irreducibly and who loved his God without limit. Standing before the Jewish people, he argued forcefully for the God who brought them to freedom and to Sinai. Standing before God, Moses spoke on behalf of each and every Jew, defending his people before their maker. Moses exemplifies the ability to love deeply and to sustain multiple loyalties while remaining true to an all-embracing integrity that unites ones loves in a higher expression of conviction. His passion for God and for Israel created the necessary bridge that allowed God and Israel to fashion a brit (covenant) that expressed itself first in the Torah, and then unfolds in the ensuing commentaries and interpretations of each succeeding age. Passion can unite. Passion can change the world.
• Finally, Moses teaches us that love and faith must ultimately express themselves in a commitment to one’s fellow human beings and to all living things. Faith in God as Creator and as Lawgiver implies a dedication to God’s creation and to justice. Moses exemplified that capacity for empathy and the courage to transform the world. He worked against the injustices he saw, and created a framework in which is descendants could continue to walk in his footsteps by applying his insights beyond the limits of his own vision.
There is one key way in which Judaism diverges from other faiths. Many of the founders of the world’s faiths gave their names to the traditions that emerge from their teachings: hence, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity. Moses was convinced that the one who matters is God, and that he was significant only as God’s prophet. The fact that our faith does not bear his name, that we neither pray to or through him, that we don’t recount his life’s history as the embodiment of human perfection constitutes his greatest tribute, and a sure mark of his success.
His memory is a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom.