Category: Devarim

How does one transition? Leave a job, a place, a time? How does one move forward when something is ending and yet there is also a beginning. This is the moment we find ourselves in this week’s parsha of Vayelekh. Moses’s time as a leader of an enslaved people brought to freedom is now coming to an end. Yet the Children of Israel are at the beginning of the next part of this nation’s history — entering the Land of Israel and fulfilling a promise given to Abraham over 400 year before. How does Moses handle this transition? What is his transition plan?

First, he communicates clearly that his time as their leader is over:

Moses went and spoke these things to all Israel. He said to them: “I am now 120 years old, I can no longer be active. Moreover, the LORD has said to me, “You shall not go across yonder Jordan” (Deuteronomy 31:1-2).

Second, he reassures the Children of Israel that God will continue to take care of them and bring them into the land that was promised them (verses 3-6). Then Moses clearly passes leadership to his successor Joshua (verses 7-8). Finally, he writes down his words so that they will be remembered in perpetuity carried in the Ark (verse 9).

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“Write this song for yourselves and teach it to the Children of Israel — put it in your mouths…the mouths of your descendants will not forget it” (Deut. 31.19, 21).

This command to learn Haazinu off by heart lies heavy on my tongue yet the numbers of my Rosh Hashanahs pile up and, although year by year I commit a few more verses to memory, I am a sieve that loses more than it holds. The few nuggets that don’t slither out suffice for a haiku, a limerick, a brief ballad. Not what Haazinu deserves; Haazinu as poetic art is an ode to God, to our and Moses’ relationship with God and to the magnificence of Torah.

Testimonial to God’s power, testimony to the punishment awaiting if we sin, Haazinu is a meta-poetic perspective on the words of the Torah. It contains Moses’ lyrical last words as a leader, his verbal injunction to follow the written words of the Torah (Deut. 31.24, 30). The words form a strange “future perfect” retrospective of “you will have disobeyed me and this will have been your punishment.”

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In Parshat Vayelech, Moses, who knows he is about to die, is at a defining moment – he has recently outlined curses that will befall the people if they abandon God, and he has minimal time left on earth to mobilize not only the people before him, but also scores of future generations, to enduringly seek God and the Torah. A daunting task at best.

The steps Moses takes to mobilize the people in the final moments of his life are similar to steps outlined in a leadership practice called “public narrative,” designed by Professor Marshall Ganz of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Professor Ganz coaches leaders worldwide to inspire collective action by speaking to the collective about stories of the self (the leader), us (the collective), and now (the urgency of acting right now).

Ganz finds roots for this practice from the subjects of Hillel the Sage’s famous reflective questions:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? (Self)

But if I am only for myself, what am I? (Us)

And if not now, when?” (Now)

— Pirkei Avot 1:14

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As a parent, I find myself talking to my children over and over again about making good decisions and taking responsibility for their actions. It is not an easy message to convey. In a time when many leaders deny accountability for their words and their actions, it is not simple to remind ourselves and our children that the choices we make and the words we speak matter, and that they have long term consequences both for us and for others.

In Parshat Netzavim, God tells us once again:

“I call heaven and earth today to bear witness against you: I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse; and you shall choose life, so that you will live, you and your offspring” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

The greatest gift God has given us as human beings is the freedom of choice and the ability to create our own destinies. Unlike the heavens and the earth, whose roles were set in motion long ago, we can choose how we want to act, if we would like to pursue life or death and if we are in search of blessing or curse.

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This week’s Torah portion is a challenge. It is not for the faint of heart. Just mention Parashat Ki Tavo and people think: Oh, the Tokhehah. And being told you’re doing things wrong is nobody’s favorite thing — not even when God is the one letting you know. Still, while that may be a reason to avoid the Latter Prophets of the Bible, with their rebuke and rejoinders to the Children of Israel, Ki Tavo should be safe — nobody has done anything wrong yet, so what’s to worry?

But doing the wrong thing is apparently part of our nature. Indeed, by presenting the punishment for wrong-doing before the wrong-doing has even taken place, Parashat Ki Tavo goes beyond a threat to keep us in line. Rather, it seems acknowledge the done deal: we will do wrong and we willbe punished.

This “given” demands interpretation, for the moment we confront the claim that something is part of the human condition, we are left to take it up with the Creator. We can argue that the flaw is in the design, and we should not be blamed for our shortcomings. But if we also take it as a given that God’s prototype is not faulty, we must reflect anew on the human propensity to do wrong and suffer rebuke and punishment.

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Who is the Moses of our generation? Should we look for one? If so, where? This parsha discusses many different kinds of leadership, and suggests a surprising answer: leadership after Moses does not belong to a single person, but rather to different kinds of people, with different backgrounds and roles.

The book of Deuteronomy is the farewell speech by Moses to his people, and in it he needs to get them ready to live and thrive as a people after his death. In this parsha, Moses answers an important question for the people: who will lead them when he is gone? He does not answer it by naming a specific person, rather by describing kinds of leaders: judges, priests (and Levites), prophets and kings. All of these are potential leaders, and all have different functions.

Read the full article on the Times of Israel