One of the final mitzvos in the Torah is the mitzvah of hakhel, whereby on the night after the first day yom tov of Sukkos all of Klal Yisrael got together in the Beis Hamikdash to hear certain portions of the Torah read to them. This was a time especially conducive to achdus, for all loans were cancelled on Shmittah, and Sukkos is a time when we leave the material comforts of our own home and dwell in our Sukkahs instead. Thus, the removal of the distractions of money and the material world served to facilitate the nation to fully bond with each other via refocusing on the spiritual side of life and that the entire nation is ultimately part of one neshama. This being the case, we became fitting to repent as a unified nation upon hearing the spiritual lessons which featured in the leining of hakhel.
Parshas Vayelech is essentially Moshe’s last speech to Bnei Yisrael regarding their conduct and faithfulness to HaShem. How did Moshe know that this was going to be his last speech? The Ohr Hachaim (31:1) writes that the opening words ‘vayelech moshe’ hint to the fact that when a tzadik is about to die he can feel part of his neshama departing. The words vayelech moshe mean that part of Moshe went - part of his neshama left him. This is how Moshe knew he was about to leave this world. Another explanation of the words vayelech moshe is that Moshe went into the camp of the people (he left the Levites camp where he resided) to take leave of them, like someone who is leaving his friend and wants to ask permission to do so (Ramban). Indeed, we see that even in his final days, Moshe was always on the move - he was always growing and shedding his spiritual light upon others. Moshe was the ultimate holech.
Parshas Vayelech; Successor to the Crown
If you yawn during the leining of Vayelech you might miss an entire aliyah! However, despite its meagre thirty psukim, there is much to be gleaned from our parsha.. In fact, the final two miztvos of the Torah are mentioned in our sedra.[1] The parsha deals with Moshe’s activities before his death, centring around safeguarding the future of klal yisrael. Moshe prepares Yehoshua the next leader, gives the mitzvah to gather as a people after the Shmittah, and is taught a special shirah to give over to the people for times of trouble. This is an important message in itself; that which occupies Moshe Rabeinu before his death is worrying for others. Just as the start of his leadership ‘career’ was the looking out for his fellow Jews (our introduction to Moshe’s character in the Torah is him stopping the Egyptian hitting a Jew), so too is this prevalent at the end of his ‘career.’
We are going to focus on Moshe ‘prepping’ Yehoshua for leading klal yisrael, or, more specifically, on the character of Yehoshua in general. Each leader of klal yisrael has their defining characteristic. For example, Avraham Avinu’s was chesed, Yitzchak Avinu’s gevurah, Ya’akov Avinu’s tiferes/Torah. What is the defining characteristic of Yehoshua and why was Yehoshua chosen as the one to succeed Moshe Rabeinu?
The gemarra[2] says that people of the generation of Moshe and Yehoshua would say that Moshe’s face shone like the Sun, and Yehoshua’s like the moon. What does this mean? The job of the moon is to reflect the light of the Sun. So too, Yehoshua’s defining characteristic is that he is a reflection of his teacher, Moshe Rabeinu. Thus, Yehoshua is described in the Torah as ‘the helper/server of Moshe,’[3] and he echoes Moshe’s humility in wanting to punish those who were prophesising that he would take over from Moshe and lead the Jews into Eretz Yisrael.[4] Moreover, both Moshe and Yehoshua are described as ‘servants of HaShem.’[5] Additionally, the gemarra[6] says that Yehoshua did not need to prefix his divrei torah by saying ‘this is what Moshe told me,’ since everyone knew that it came from Moshe. In fact, the presents that they gave to Bnei Yisrael show this point; Moshe gave us the Torah, and Yehoshua gave us Eretz Yisrael; the Land that reflects the Torah.
It is in this vein that you will find many similarities between the lives of Moshe and Yehoshua. Moshe splits the Red Sea, Yehoshua splits the Jordan River. Moshe makes the korban pesach with bnei yisrael in Egypt, and Yehoshua makes the next Pesach offering in Gilgal. Moshe headed the first national bris milah before the Pesach offering in Egypt, and Yehoshua oversees the next one in Gilgal. In fact, both married converts (Tzipporah and Rachav respectively) too. Now with all this in mind, we can see a new way to understand a well-known midrash The midrash[7] says that the reason Yehoshua was chosen to lead the people was because he used to set up the benches in the study hall in the desert for Moshe to come in and teach Torah. Many people did beautiful mitzvos of chesed during the desert period; why did this one merit the leadership? Based on the above, we can suggest that Joshua setting up the chairs, apart from being a mitzvah, showed that he was the one to facilitate Moshe's actions - to continue doing things when Moshe was not there (after the Torah study had ended), and thus he merited to continue as leader as the Jewish people after Moshe. He was the moon and Moshe the sun. In short, we have said that the defining characteristic of Yehoshua was that he reflected his teacher, Moshe Rabeinu, and that this led to him being selected as the next leader. After all, the original and ideal plan was that Moshe Rabeinu would lead us into Eretz Yisrael, but he sinned with the rock, and so it is fitting that someone as close to who Moshe was as possible should lead us into the Land in his stead.
The message for us is an important one. Often, we feel that we want to ‘be ourselves’ and have our own expression in the world, and we often take this too far. One example is that we can be resistant to following someone else’s good examples, even though we know that this other person is a person of truth and has good qualities which should be emulated, because we are afraid of losing ‘us’ if we took on something from someone else. We should learn from Yehoshua’s willingness to learn from Moshe Rabeinu and reflect him to be able to open ourselves up a little and learn good things from others. Whilst it is true that individuality and uniqueness is commendable, and indeed, is a characteristic given to each person[8], it is supposed to be used for the good and not as a means of blocking out positive influences. In fact, on a deeper level, copying and internalising the good qualities of someone else does not constitute ‘losing’ your self, but on the contrary, entails finding themselves.
There was one secular town in Israel where Chabad were doing especially well, and the community was really turning around to adopting Torah and mitzvos. They were so successful, that Coca Cola actually approached Chabad and asked them the secret of their success - how could they use it in their marketing to convince people to drink Coke the way that Chabad had been so successful with mitzvos? Coca Cola received the following answer from Chabad; ‘we have a helping hand in that the people we reach out to already have a care and appreciation for Torah deep inside them - we just try to bring that out. You are trying to impose on them something (Coke) that they do not have an innate internal connection to, and so you have a greater challenge.’
The point is a fundamental one. Rav Dessler terms the true essence of a person the ‘ani.’ This ‘ani’ is the character that HaShem created you to be, and the individual reflection of Him in this world. This means that innately and internally, we are good people who want to do good, it is just the yetzer hara, sin, and bad influences that disconnect us from who we really are, and we stop connecting to Torah and mitzvos. A friend of mine said that one can see this innate goodness in each person in everyday life. When someone looks at a baby, there is a natural, positive kindness that the ‘viewer’ displays - this is not fake, but the true internal kindness of a person being revealed. Crucially, it should give us encouragement to realise that when we strive to grow religiously, we already have all the tools, capabilities, and good middos stored inside of us - we are just trying to tap back into that. The point is expressed particularly well in the Rambam[9]. The Rambam is dealing with the cases where the beis din could physically force someone to divorce their wife and give her a get, and asks how this fits with the principle that a get must be given with the will of the husband; if he is only consenting because he is being hit, this is not really a get given with his will? The Rambam answers that deep down this person wants to do the right thing, it is just his yetzer hara that is temporarily blocking him from doing this. This yetzer hara, in turn, is hit away and temporarily ignored due to the beating, and the man is thus really expressing his true self and wish when he says ‘I want to give my wife this get.’
Therefore, copying someone else’s good middos, etc. is not losing yourself, but is actually finding your true self in terms of who you were created to be. On the contrary, allowing negative external influences to influence you is losing your true self. Perhaps this is a deeper explanation to the halacha in the Shulchan Aruch[10] that during these ten days of repentance we are to be careful not to eat non-Jewish bread. Perhaps the idea is that in these ten days where we look to return to our true selves the way HaShem created us, we are to stop ingesting the negative external influences (here represented by non-Jewish bread) which made us veer off course and away from our true ‘ani’ to begin with.
Have a great Shabbes,
[1] The mitzvos of hakhel (a giant national gathering after Shmittah to hear leining in the Beis HaMikdash) and of writing a sefer Torah.
[2] Bava Basra 75a, 7 lines from the bottom
[3] Shemos 24;13, Bamidbar 11;28
[4] Rashi quoting the Midrash Sifre, Bamidbar 11;28
[5] Devarim 34;5 and Yehoshua 24;29 respectively.
[6] Yevamos 96b
[7] Bamidbar Rabbah 21:14
[8] See Mishna Sanhedrin 37a
[9] Yad HaChazakah, Hilchos Geirushin 2;20
[10] Orach Chaim 603
The final mitzvah in the Torah is in our sedra, and it is the mitzvah of writing a sefer torah. Actually, you fulfill a branch of this mitzvah by buying Jewish serafim too! Anyway, the pasuk that tells us this is 'now write for this song and teach it to the Bnei Yisrael...' (31;19) [sefer hachinuch]. You will notice that the Torah is called a 'song' (shirah) here. What is the meaning of this name? Perhaps one idea is the following: I used to walk to yeshiva, and often I would listen to music through my headpones as I walked. I noticed that I might see two people arguing with each other in the street or any other stressful sight like a major traffic jam, but because of the relaxing music in my ears it would all seem different, relaxing, and much less stressful. And the same is true now when I often listen to music on the bus; the music puts you in a different world and you look at things differently. (I am talking about relaxing Jewish music of course, not the heavy metal dustbin-banging modern noise that inexcusably passes for music nowadays!) This is an answer to our above question. The Torah is described as a 'song' because it gives us a completely new perspective on life. It teaches us that HaShem controls the world and everything is there for a reason. And so troubles are not really troubles, they are tests, and all is planned from Above. It is like looking at an argument whilst listening to music - it does not affect you at all for you are in a different world. This is Torah. HaShem should help us that we should appreciate His Torah and Live by It to the max!
