The last portion of the Torah that we read before completing it is Moses giving over the leadership to Joshua. This shows that there will be a continuality in the Torah. From generation to generation.
The Torah Is in Our Hands
We are now coming, basically, to the end of the Torah. In the two parshiyot we read this Shabbat, Nitzavim and Vayelech, Moses is preparing the Jewish people for one of the greatest transitions in our history.
They are about to leave the wilderness and enter the Land of Israel.
Moses gathers the entire nation together—from its leaders and elders to its children, converts, woodcutters, and water carriers. Everyone is included because everyone is part of the covenant. They are no longer going to live in the wilderness under the direct leadership of Moses. They are going to enter the land and build a functioning society based upon the Torah.
And Moses reminds them: Know where you came from, and know where you are going.
This is not a nation built around the claim that one individual had a private revelation and everyone else simply had to believe him. The Jewish national tradition is rooted in a collective experience. The nation stood at Mount Sinai. The nation experienced the Exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the sea, and forty years in the wilderness. Their parents and grandparents lived through these events, and now a new generation must carry that covenant forward.
But remembering the past is not enough.
They are going to a land of milk and honey, where they must create a society. And the society envisioned by the Torah is one in which morality and ethics are fundamental. The God of Israel demands not only ritual observance but justice, honesty, concern for the poor, protection of the vulnerable, fair courts, and ethical behavior between one human being and another.
That is the society Moses is preparing them to build.
There is another enormous transition taking place. Moses knows that he will not be going with them. His days are ending, and Joshua will become the new leader.
In a sense, Moses’ greatest legacy will not be a monument or a building. His legacy will be the Jewish people themselves.
Will they continue to live according to the Torah after he is gone? Will they build the society they were commanded to create?
Moses therefore gives them one of the Torah’s most remarkable teachings:
“It is not in heaven.”
The Torah has been given to human beings. Jewish tradition will not depend upon new voices coming from heaven every time there is a disagreement. Through the system of the Oral Torah, interpretation and application are entrusted to the sages and recognized rabbinic authorities working within the Torah’s own rules and traditions.
Moses is preparing the Jewish people to grow up.
For forty years, he has led them. Now they must move forward without him. They must enter the land, establish their institutions, interpret and apply the Torah, and build a moral and ethical society.
The wilderness is ending.
The responsibility is now in our hands.
Something to think about.
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