Dear Joshua,
It’s me, Moses.
Please forgive my shaky handwriting. It has been many years since I wrote anything down.
Can you believe it has already been forty years since we came to that great desert mountain and came into contact with the One God? Twice, I carried those miraculous tablets, etched with the Laws of Life, down from that mountain peak.
I could not carry them now. I would not have the strength. And I do not just mean that because of the way my hands tremble when I lift my food or the staggered steps I take when I wake in the morning. I do not have the zeal I once did. I cannot go on much longer.
Joshua, I am dying, and I will soon be dead.
I wish desperately that I could walk with you across that Jordan. All I have ever wanted was to arrive with you at that great destination to which we have journeyed.
But the Eternal One has told me that I will not go on much longer. I will die here, in the desert, and be buried in the wilderness sands.
At first, I was affronted. I cried out to my Maker. ‘Why, God? Why can I not pass over to finally see the freedom for which I have longed?’
God, who has given me so many words, remained silent.
I think I have an answer, though.
The truth is I was free the moment I first left Egypt. Before I returned with my staff and my message. Before any of those miracles and signs and visions. Before I even knew the God of Israel watched over us.
I was free as soon as I took my life into my own hands and refused to be part of the Egyptian system any longer. Once I decided not to be a slaver; not to subjugate others, nor to be subjugated, I was already then mentally emancipated.
These years we have spent in the desert were a way to work out what to do with that freedom. We have been reciting these laws and developing these rituals to find ways of living that keep us from ever going back to the oppressive ways of Egypt.
Joshua, this is what I need to tell you. Do not go back there. Not even in your mind. Do not try to own and control people. Do not allow others to own or control you. Let your soul be free, so that you can dedicate it to the God who led you here.
I am writing this down so that you can refer back to it, and remember what the point of it all was. Why we left Egypt. Why we spent all this time trudging thirsty through shrubland. Why we said we would go to that country from which our ancestors came many mythical centuries ago.
The point was not the land. The point was what we might do there. That we might be free. That we might finally see every human being as a living representation of their Creator. That we might cease using each other as means to an end but as ends in themselves. That we might truly know the Oneness of God and the deep mysteries underlying our universe.
That’s why I’m writing this now, as a reminder.
I know, I have said this all many times before. Call this my mishneh torah, my deutero-nominon; the repetition of everything I said before. It needs to be repeated, over and again, because freedom is hard to achieve and subjugation is such an easy default.
Please, read it out loud. Read it many times. Read it all the time. Even when the words feel trite and you feel like you have repeated the same phrases all your life, keep coming back to it. Remind yourself why you are here. Remind yourself what is at stake in this brief life we have been given.
I will say it again. Do not become like them. Do not worship the work of your hands. Do not think that work is the goal. Do not seek to own and control. Do not kill or oppress or endanger. Choose life. Seek God. Find holiness in everything that lives.
Joshua, I worry, even as I write these words, that you will not heed them. I know you want to. Ever since you were a boy, you used to sit at my feet and lap up every word. You were desperate to be closer to Divinity, to reach for higher things.
When I said we could conquer Canaan, only you and your friend Caleb believed me. You saw giants and were certain you could slay them. You had more faith than any of us. You had more faith than I did.
Joshua, there have been times when you carried me. Literally. In the war against the Amalekites, you put your shoulders under my arms and kept me upright. You are so, so faithful.
But where will all that zealotry go, once you are charged with leading people in the land? When you no longer have giants and Amalekites left to fight, what will you do with all your conviction?
I am asking too much of you. I am asking you to remember a life you have not lived.
You never knew Egypt. You were born here, in the wasteland, after we had already fled. You don’t remember what it was like to be owned. You cannot know what it meant to be a subject of a system that meant to destroy you.
In some ways, this means you have always been free, because you were not born a slave. In other ways, it means you have never been free, because you have never had to fight for it. You do not know what it feels like to start moving, then notice you are shackled, and to keep moving still, and to never stop moving, and to keep going with nothing but faith to carry you.
And you cannot know it. Just as I cannot follow you over the Jordan River, you cannot follow me out of Egypt. Some lessons can only be learned by life’s journey, and some journeys can only be made once.
Perhaps, when you go into that new country, you will make the place I dreamed about. Maybe it will flow with milk and honey. It might become a light unto the nations, where everyone lives with equality and dignity, where everyone can walk in the ways of God.
Or perhaps you will make a new Egypt. You, who never knew Egypt, will find new ways to conquer and subjugate and destroy. Maybe you will crown kings and build empires and wage wars.
Then what will the point have been?
I am asking too much of you. I am asking you to build a world I could not, and to do it all without my help. I am asking to you to know things you have not learnt, and to be perfect in ways I was not. I am sorry to put so much pressure on you. It is not fair.
You may not be able to do what I am asking. But at least you can remember. Tell your children where we came from. Teach them where we were trying to go.
And, then, perhaps, when they see new Egypts emerging, or they see that new Zions are possible, they will find paths through the wilderness that you and I could not see. Keep the story alive, so that the dream may continue.
Joshua, I am going to die here.
These words are all you will inherit from me.
I love you, Joshua.
Your friend,
Moses
Sim Lev 