Subject: What’s Stopping You? : Netvort, Vayeilech 5773

What’s Stopping You?

By Rabbi Joshua (restrictedly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

In the beginning of parshas Vayeilech, the Torah relates that Moshe, on the day that he died, went to the Jewish people and told them, “I am one-hundred twenty years old today, and I can no longer go out and come in, and the Lord has said to me “You shall not cross the Yardein” (Devorim 21:23). Rashi explains that the two phrases in Moshe’s statement, that he can no longer go out and come in, and that the Lord had told him not to cross the Yardein, are to be understood as Moshe saying that the people shouldn’t think he could not lead them because he was too weak, because the Torah later tells us that, just before he died, that “his eye did not dim and his moisture did not leave him” (Devorim 34:7). Rather, he was saying that he was not allowed to lead them because the authority had been taken from him and given to Yehoshua. The Ramban disagrees with this interpretation, because the letter “vav” is placed between the phrases, meaning, “and,” implying that two separate things are being said, rather than the word, “because,” which Rashi’s explanation would require. Moshe, then, was first consoling the people over his coming departure, saying that he was too old to benefit them anymore, and, in addition, that God had told him not to cross the Yardein.

Rav Avrohom Aharon Yudelovitch, famed Rabbi of the Eldridge Street shul on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1920’s, writes, in his Darash Av, that one can also read Rashi, on a certain level, in a manner similar to the Ramban, separating the two phrases. He suggests that Moshe was saying that, in fact, he did not have the physical strength to lead them, despite the healthy state of his body, precisely because God had told him not to cross the Yardein. Moshe had developed himself, spiritually, to the point that his body was completely attuned to the word of God, so that he was physically unable to do anything that contravened what He said. Rabbi Yudelovitch says that this quality of Moshe is reflected in the dialogue (see Shemos 22:22-25) between God and Moshe that occurred just before the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai. After already telling Moshe to set up boundaries around the mountain to prevent the people from ascending it, He told Moshe to go down and warn the people not to ascend. Moshe replied that the people could not ascend as the boundaries had already been set, and God told him to warn them again, anyway. Rabbi Yudelovitch explains that for Moshe, once God forbade the people’s ascent to the mountain through having boundaries set up it was inconceivable for anyone to actually act otherwise. God, therefore, told Moshe that the people weren’t on his level and, therefore, needed to be warned again. As Reb Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev remarked, when God told Moshe to descend and warn the people, He was, in effect, saying, “go down from your high level and speak to the people on their level.”

Perhaps we can add to Rabbi Yudelovitch’s remarks that, despite what happened at Mt. Sinai, Moshe, now at the end of his life, truly believed that the people had, through their experiences in the wilderness, developed themselves spiritually to the point that they, too, were unable, physically, to contravene God’s word, and, even if they had not yet reached that level, were certainly capable of reaching it. By telling them that he was not able, in a physical sense, to disobey God’s command, he was, in his humility as well as his love and respect for his people, saying that they, too, could reach this level, and should strive to achieve it.

All of us here at Netvort Enterprises Unlimited wish all of our readers a kesivah vechasimah tovah, a wonderful new year.