Seeing the Promised Land Through Undimmed Eyes

By KEN BRESLER

Parshat V’zot Haberakhah (Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12)

In what way are we all like Moses?

At least two answers come to mind. The first is that we all die with dreams not completely realized, tasks not quite finished, and journeys still on-going.

In this parshah (you can think of it as the last parshah in the Torah’s cycle, or the one preceding the Torah’s first parshah), Moses dies at a vigorous 120. His eyes are undimmed. God is with him when he dies – and buries Moses. Moses is missed: the Children of Israel sob for 30 days because of his death. Moses is acclaimed as the greatest prophet who has arisen in Israel, presumably not to be superceded.

Before dying, “Moses ascended from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the summit of the cliff that faces Jericho....” I envision the scene suffused with light the color of honey or anointing oil, a lingering glow before the light’s color dropped a shade to orange, on its unstoppable way to sunset.

But there’s something achingly missing, too. God showed Moses “the entire Land...as far as Dan...as far as the western sea...as far as Zoar.” God showed Moses “the Negev and the Plain, the valley of Jericho, city of date palms” – in other words, desert, flatlands, and a low point.

Moses saw far away, far into the distance. He saw a sweep of different terrains. He saw from the huge to the small, from the unfathomably immense sea that can swallow a claimant of the Promised Land, down to a date small enough for a claimant to swallow. Moses could imagine the smell of the Mediterranean and the taste of dates. As the American expression goes, Moses was so close to the Land that he could taste it.

But he could not tread upon it. For a moment’s impatience, because Moses had struck a rock instead of instructing it (Bamidbar (Numbers) 20:7-12), God would not let Moses enter the Promised Land. Moses died with a dream unrealized.

So did Martin Luther King, Jr. On April 3, 1968, King spoke to striking garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee and alluded to this parshah: “I've been to the mountaintop...I would like to live a long life....But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

On the next day, King was assassinated.

We are like Moses and Martin Luther King in that none of us will truly make it to the Promised Land, a place of perfected and lasting justice. We can journey toward it, but never reach it. Social action is the journey; social justice, the destination.

Here is my wish. May we wander with a Moses or march with a King, people whose vision, whose undimmed eyes, allow them to see the Promised Land and describe it to us.

Oh, yes, and the second way that we are all like Moses? We are all servants of God (that is, social activists), as was Moses – unless we decline the assignment, in which case we are reluctant prospective servants of God / social activists, as was Moses at one time, too.

It took a burning bush to turn Moses into a spokesman for the oppressed, a liberator, a law-giver. If you’re not already a social activist, a seeker of justice, what will it take for you to become one?