Moses’s final message to the Jewish people is that they have to maintain the standard of morality that they achieved in the wilderness.
This week we begin reading Parshat Haazinu, which we will return to after Rosh Hashanah. Haazinu is vitally important because we are approaching the end of Moshe Rabbeinu’s life and leadership.
Think about what Moshe has accomplished. For more than forty years, he has led the Jewish people. He led us out of Egypt, brought us to Mount Sinai, and guided us through forty years in the wilderness.
Yet at the end, Moshe essentially tells the Jewish people: Don’t think this was about me. I’m small potatoes. It was Hashem.
Hashem took us out of Egypt. Hashem protected us. Hashem provided our food and water. Hashem sustained an entire nation through forty years in the wilderness.
But now everything is about to change.
The Jewish people are entering the Land of Israel. There will still be miracles, but life will no longer be one continuous, obvious miracle as it was in the wilderness. The manna will stop falling from heaven. We will have to plant crops, raise animals, build homes, conduct business, establish courts, defend the country, and create a functioning society.
In a sense, for forty years we attended the greatest yeshiva in the history of the world. Moshe Rabbeinu was the Rosh Yeshiva, Aharon was the spiritual guide, and Hashem provided room and board.
Now graduation day has arrived.
And what is the purpose of going to yeshiva? Eventually, you have to take what you learned inside the beit midrash and apply it to the real world.
That is what Moshe is preparing the Jewish people to do.
He is teaching them two essential lessons. First, always remember that Hashem is with you. Second, understand what Hashem expects from you: to build a society based upon morality, ethics, and justice.
That was a revolutionary concept in the ancient world. Among many ancient peoples, religion and morality were not necessarily connected. A person could perform the proper ritual and make the proper sacrifice without believing that his god demanded that he be an ethical human being.
The Torah says something radically different.
Hashem cares not only about the offering you bring, but how you obtained the animal you are offering. You cannot steal someone else’s sheep and then bring it as a korban. An act of religious devotion cannot be built upon an act of injustice.
You cannot separate your relationship with God from the way you treat other human beings.
And Moshe is conveying another crucial message: I am leaving.
For forty years, Moshe has been the indispensable leader of the Jewish people. But now they must learn that ultimately no leader is indispensable.
Leaders come and leaders go. No matter how great a leader may be, eventually that leadership ends—through death, retirement, or replacement.
But the Torah remains.
The institutions remain.
The values remain.
And the responsibility of the people remains.
Once a society has been placed upon the proper path, its future cannot depend entirely upon one individual. What ultimately matters is what we do—as a nation, as a community, and as individuals.
That is an especially powerful message as we approach Rosh Hashanah.
We cannot simply ask who our leaders are or what other people are doing. We have to ask ourselves: What am I doing? Am I taking what I have learned and applying it to the real world? Am I living morally and ethically when I leave the synagogue and enter the marketplace?
Moshe Rabbeinu could bring the Jewish people to the edge of the Promised Land.
But ultimately, they had to walk into it themselves.
And so do we.
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