Devarim – Moshe’s path to greatness

We often view the personalities in the Torah as larger than life. I think this comes from a mixture of how great they actually were and the fact that they are the forbearers of our nation so we like to see them as larger than life. And while I am in no way trying to take away from their unbelievable greatness I think it’s easy to miss many valuable lessons with this mindset. Let me show you what I mean.

משה רבינו. We can only begin to imagine what he was like as a leader. A caring, yet strong leader, one who knew how to shield the people and reprimand them within the same hour. Someone who could lovingly look into each Jewish pair of eyes, see straight into their beautiful souls and tell them what their personal and specific vantage point of Hashem would be at הר סיני. If he were alive today we would all feel like we had a personal connection to him and through that to Hashem. He is the teacher of every Jew to ever be born into this world. But at the same time, he was human, and the Torah charts his path of growth for us. But we need to be open to seeing that.

This week’s פרשה begins the 7-day speech he gives to his people before he ascends the mountain to join his Creator in heaven, for eternity this time. And the proclamation that is made אלה הדברים אשר דבר משה אל כל ישראל, these are the words that Moshe spoke to all the Jews, bears a striking contrast to an earlier statement made by Moshe himself almost exactly 41 years earlier. At the סנה, Moshe begs Hashem not to send him to be the one to redeem the Jewish nation and he says לא איש דברים אנכי, I am not a man who can speak words that will be listened to. Moshe wasn’t lying when he said that. He knew himself very well and he meant it when he said that I am not an eloquent speaker. And Hashem’s answer isn’t “you’re wrong, you can speak”, Hashem agrees with him and says I will be with your mouth and Aaron will help you speak. Yet after 41 long years of self-refinement and leadership the eternal proclamation that Moshe spoke the following words to 2.5 million people get recorded by the same Hashem who consented that Moshe was not a man of words.

Another instance of this is at the סנה when Hashem calls to Moshe he turns away because he is scared to look at God. Yet, a mere 2 years later Hashem tells Moshe’s 2 siblings: his prophecy is qualitatively different than yours, פה אל פה אדבר בו… ותמונת יקוק יביט. He stares at me when we speak.

Each and every character in the Torah went through a transformation. A process that was slow and difficult, one that was made up of nothing more and nothing less than one right choice after the other. Consistently seeing Hashem in their lives and choosing the right thing. And when they failed, they stood back up, brushed off and kept on forging ahead.

We know these stories in their entirety so we take the ending for granted, but, at every turn there was a person with a choice, with so much hanging in the balance. Avraham could have very easily followed the world culture of the time and not risked his life to challenge what everyone else accepted as fact. And when those stories were happening there was no one cheering him on. As he is standing up to נמרוד or getting ready to enter a world war to save his estranged nephew, there was no theme music in the background. It was a lonely man doing what he knew was right. I am sure that he was exhausted and tired of being ridiculed and ostracized. At any moment, he could have said to himself “I tried, but this is too much”. Every single story is like this. When Yosef is in מצרים and he is in פוטיפר’s wife’s arms, there was silence in the house and just a teenage boy on his own. The ending as we know it was totally unlikely! If we were flies on the wall we would be thinking, say goodbye to 1/12 of the Jewish nation. And when the מדרש tells us that he saw his father’s face in the window, there was no holographic face that magically appeared! It was a teenage boy with ironclad resolve and a will made of steel who was able to find the strength inside his own head and project that outwardly in the form of his father’s face to save his soul.

Why is this important? And what’s the secret behind living a life like this?

When we are dealing with an internal battle it is exactly the same as how the greatest people who walked the face of the Earth felt. They had doubts, fears, and insecurities just like we do. And here’s the most fascinating part, and I think it is the secret that can teach us how to become great. Every decision that a Jew makes gets recorded. The generations that were closer to the creation of the world had their decisions and battles canonized so that we can learn from them. But our decisions get written in the same place. The Torah. קודשא בריך הוא וישראל ואורייתא חד הוא. The תורה שבעל פה is nothing more than discussions that Jews had amongst themselves. Literally. The reason why it is called the Oral Torah is because it can’t be contained in any size book, it is unwritable due to its size. That part of the Torah is the dynamic and vibrant entity to which, not only are we all connected, but that we make up with our actions and words. The energy that we spend gets materialized and eternalized into the תורה שבעל פה. And the battles that we have and the decisions we make also do. The only difference is that ours are not written down in the same way that our forefathers were.

If we would only know that the same way the Torah makes a proclamation about Moshe that he is the one who speaks these words to all the Jews, there is a voice of Hashem out there saying about each of us, these are the words/actions/battles/victories/struggles of ____________ the beautiful Jew.

We are about to have a day of mourning that we won’t let end until we get what we are longing for. Hashem is up in heaven also longing for His children to come back to him.

השיבנו יקוק אליך ונשובה חדש ימינו כקדם, bring us back to you Hashem, is what we are about to read in a few days. But Hashem says, שובה אלי ואשובה אליכם, return to me and I will return to you. He asks us to make the first step. The same way our incredible predecessors did before us

He believes in us, let’s all believe in ourselves and in those around us.