“Does it have to end this way?” asks Moses.
“Please, God, I beg you, let me cross the Jordan.”[1]
Forty years of struggle. Forty years of exile. Forty years of wandering. And here Moses stands, on the brink of realising the end of all his labours, only to be denied access.
“God,” says Moses, “you are so strong, so great and so incomparable. Please give me a taste of the Promised Land. Please let me see Lebanon.”
“No,” answers God. “This is enough for you. Don’t speak to me any more on this matter. It’s over.”
How can we feel anything but pity for this great leader, reduced to grovelling as he is faced with death and disappointment?
All that is left in the Torah narrative now, taking us through these last parshiyot of Deuteronomy, is Moses’s final speech and death. Here, in the height of summer, just after Tish b’Av, in the slow climb to Rosh Hashanah, all that is left is to wrap up the story. We join Moses at this juncture, looking back over the wandering in the desert, to the miraculous revelation at Sinai, over slavery in Egypt, back through our ancestors Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, back all the way to God’s creation of the universe. And what do we feel? For all our hope and joy, this part of the story invites mostly longing and despair as we ourselves wonder if the story had to end this way.
The rabbis who devised our lectionary cycle asked the same question. At one time, scholars argue, the Torah was not a Pentateuch – a collection of five books – but a Hexateach – a collection of six. Whereas the Torah we know begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy, a previous version of the Scroll continued into the sixth book of the Hebrew Bible, the book of Joshua.[2]
In Joshua, the Hebrews move into the Land of Israel, conquer it, colonise it and either drive out or subjugate the tribes living there. Some of the stories from this are famous: Joshua’s success in the battle of Jericho, where he tore down the city walls with the sound of the shofar is among the most popular stories we teach in cheder.[3]
For Progressive Jews, it is probably a mercy that we don’t have to regularly read such violent texts today. But from a literary point of view, concluding with Joshua makes far more sense. Concluding here, as we do, with Moses’s demise in Deuteronomy leaves us on a cliff-hanger. Quite literally, as Moses stands on a mountain overlooking the Jordan. We do not know what becomes of the Israelites.
If we ended with Joshua, everything would be wrapped up. The leader dies but the nation is born. The journey is long but the land was reached. If we wanted to make a comfortable, Disney version of the Torah, Joshua would be its climax.
So, why do we today end with Deuteronomy? Do we have to end it this way? Some scholars guess that the answer is yes. In exile, they argue, the trauma of losing the land of Israel was too great. Our rabbis could not stand the great hardship of being removed from their holy land, so they cut off the story early and relegated Joshua to the prophetic texts.
This explanation is highly unsatisfying, and unlikely to be true. The lectionary we have was not devised in the immediate aftermath of exile, when the trauma of dispersion was raw, but in Babylon some time between the 2nd and 6th centuries. During this period, Jews were not outside of the Land of Israel because they were trapped, but because they didn’t particularly want to return. Our rabbis went back and forth between Palestine and Babylon, sharing the teachings of the two communities with each other. Some migrated, but migration out of Eretz Israel to the more prosperous Babylon was more common than the other way around.
The rabbis of the Talmud developed theological positions about their relationship with this country. Some said they were forbidden to move to the Land of Israel. Some said it was only forbidden if they attempted to move en masse. Others said they were entitled. Others still felt it was mandatory.[4]
The reason for such vast divergence in opinion was not simply a tension between their religious text centred on Israel and their economic life in Babylon. It was that Israel, to them, was not simply a location between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan, but a symbol of Messianic hope.
Prophets like Haggai[5] and Malachi[6] had assured their ancestors that return to Jerusalem would herald the end of days and the coming of the Messianic age. As a result, the land was more a metaphor for emancipation than a location where they could live.
Israel, Jerusalem, Zion – these words signified something far greater than physical space. They pointed to a time of complete liberation. Arriving there was not reaching a destination but reaching the climax of history – when justice would reign supreme. I believe, then, that the Torah had to end with Deuteronomy not because the Jews were distanced from the land of Israel, but because they were so removed from the vision of social justice that this word symbolised.
In Progressive Judaism especially, that is what this national language signifies. On a theological level, it does not speak to us about aspirations for migration or statehood, but about our sacred task on earth to perfect the world. The Reformers who founded our movement taught that the task of every Jew was to heal what was broken in humanity and advance all of us towards a messianic age of truth and righteousness..
The language of our liturgy reflects this interpretation. In the weekday amidah, we recite that God will build Jerusalem and bring forth a sprouting of justice.[7] Our prayers are structured to give Jerusalem a deep meaning no matter where we live, as a locus for reflection on our hope of living in a world of justice. Jerusalem can stand as a meaningful word to everyone regardless of their political opinions about Zionism and the State of Israel because it does not refer to an earthly city but to a Heavenly kingdom
It was, undoubtedly, this interpretation of the Promised Land that Martin Luther King had in mind when he gave his last speech. Preaching in Memphis, at the height of the black civil rights struggle, that great Christian minister concluded his sermon to his congregation:
“I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”[8]
The next day, he was assassinated. King’s Zion – an America where Black people would live with equality, dignity and safety, was not realised in his lifetime. Nor has it yet been realised in ours. But we can have no doubt that he took the world closer on its journey to that destination.
The story of Moses ended with Deuteronomy. Martin Luther King’s ended in 1968. And what about us? Must our story end this way too? Must we finish our lives glimpsing at the world of social justice to come from the other side of the river, or may we yet cross the Jordan into a world where the whole of humanity is emancipated?
We cannot know what the products of our efforts will be. All we can do is try. Together, without Moses, we the Jewish people must continue to march. And although we can see our endpoint only faintly, we must walk towards it with the certainty that it exists. We must try to perfect the world, hopeful that for somebody, someday, it will not have to end this way.
Shabbat shalom.
I gave this sermon on Saturday 17th August 2019 at Kehillat Kernow, in Cornwall.
[1] Deut 3:25
[2] cf Wellhausen
[3] Joshua 6
[4] Ketubot 111a-111b
[5] Haggai 2:9
[6] Malachi 3:1-4
[7] Forms of Prayer 2008, p. 81
[8] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm
Sim Lev 