It’s Not About Me

By Rabbi Joshua (contextually known as the Hoffer) Hoffman

As the parsha begins, we find Moshe, on the last day of his life, going to speak to the various tribes. The Ramban explains that Moshe went to comfort the people over his coming death, telling them that he was already one hundred twenty years old, and unable to serve as their leader any longer. He tells them that God will lead them into the land and destroy the nations that occupy it, and he then appoints Yehoshua to succeed him as God’s agent, and that God will walk before him as he leads the people.

Later in the parsha, God tells Moshe to bring Yehoshua to the Tent of Meeting so that He can command him to take over the leadership. God then attests that after Moshe’s death, the nation will eventually turn to idol worship, and that, in punishment, He will hide His face from them. He then commands them to write the shira, or song, that will serve as a witness to what will happen. The Talmud says that this is actually a command for each Jew to write his own sefer Torah. One may ask why, on the very day of Moshe’s death, when he was selflessly preparing the people to adapt to their coming loss and accept Yehoshua’s leadership, God told him that, nevertheless, after his death, the people would worship idols. Moreover, how did this declaration connect to what Moshe had been telling the people that they and how did the command to write a sefer Torah serve as a corrective to what would happen?

Perhaps we can explain, that Moshe, in consoling the people before his death, had the specter of the sin of the golden calf before his eyes. The Ramban and others have explained that sin as being generated by a sense of helplessness, that the people had in the wake of Moshe’s absence, when he did not return to the camp when they mistakenly expected him to. Without Moshe to lead them, they thought that they were unable to connect to God, and, therefore, they created the eigel to serve in his place. When God told Moshe that, in punishment, he would destroy the nation and raise up another one from Moshe himself, Moshe pleaded that they be spared, and said that, if not, God should erase his name from the Torah. We have mentioned, in the past, a Chasidic explanation, according to which Moshe was saying that the people sinned because they relied on him too much and did not realize that his own ability to connect with God came from the people themselves. By having his name removed from the Torah, he felt, they would come to realize their own spiritual strength. Perhaps, then, this was what Moshe was telling the people before he died, as well. In consoling them, he told them that he was merely their agent in bringing God’s presence upon them, and that Yehoshua would take his place after his death. In essence, however, it was the people themselves who forged their relationship with God.

Despite Moshe’s efforts to guard the people against slipping back into idolatry in the future, however, God told them that they would fail in this matter after Moshe’s death. As a further means of avoiding this development, God commanded that each of them write his own sefer Torah. They idea behind this was for each person to forge his own relationship with God, through his own involvement with Torah study, as the verse sates “and teach it to the children of Israel to place it in their mouths” (Devorim 31:19). The rabbis tell us that even if the person inherited a sefer Torah from his father, he must write his own copy and not rely on what was done before. Only in this way could each person build his personal relationship with God, and help the nation avoid the kind of calamity that occurred with the eigel, when the people felt unable to connect with God on their own.

We here at Netvort Unlimited wish all Netvortlanders a successful Yom Kippur!