Insight into Parshas Va'eschanan:
By Chaya Mushka and Nechama Krimmer
In this week’s Parsha, parshas Va'eschanan, Moshe pleads with Hashem to allow him to enter Eretz Yisroel. Hashem had decreed in parshas Chukas that Moshe would not enter the land because he disobeyed Hashem at Mei Merevah by hitting the rock to bring forth water, rather than the gentle approach of speaking to the rock, as Rashi explains.
Commentary from our greatest minds, however, from the Midrash to the Rambam to the Ibin Ezra to the Rogatchover Goan, unsatisfied with the pashat, the literal or simplistic explanation of the text, speculate what exactly Moshe's sin was that caused him to deserve such a severe punishment as to be denied seeing his life's work come to fruition. And an even more profound question: Was it a punishment at all?
According to the Midrash, as Moshe begged Hashem to be let into Eretz Yisroel, Hashem proposed a compromise. Moshe would be allowed to enter the land if the Jewish people remained in the desert.
Moshe instantly refused.
The purpose of exiting Egypt and the giving of the Torah was for the Jewish people to enter Eretz Yisroel to toil, work and engage in the physical world and, ultimately, to create a place where Hashem's presence could be revealed: the Beis HaMikdosh, built on the very site where Avraham came to sacrifice his son, Yitzchok. What good would it do anyone for Moshe to enter the land alone?
Moshe saw that the new generation of Yidden before him, those who had not physically left Egypt or directly witnessed Matan Torah, were not on the same spiritual level as the Yidden who had experienced these miracles directly. Moshe's pleas to enter the land had less to do with his own desire to go into the land than they were to allow Moshe to accompany and strengthen the Jewish people spiritually as they toiled physically in the land after 40 years in the desert when Hashem directly provided for all their needs.
But why is it necessary for the Jewish people, or for any person, to have to toil in the physical world? What is the elevated status, in a sense, of the physical over the spiritual? Of the body over the soul?
Our Sages explain that humans are more dear to Hashem than the angels. Why? The angels - the Chayos, the Ophanim, and the Seraphim, which we mention during the Shacharis service before Kriyas Shema every morning -lack one aspect beautiful to Hashem: Free Will. Only humans, the lowliest of all creatures, are granted this highest spiritual gift.
Before Adam and Chava ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, holy and unholy were as separate as black and white. There were no grey areas. However, after they ate from the tree, physical reality took on a bleak, agonizing shade of grey where the holy and unholy were intertwined in a way that it is not easy to discern between them.
Through the Giving of the Torah, the Jewish people were given a manual, so to speak, to dive into the grey and separate the white from the black, the holy from unholy. And the gentile nations, through the Seven Laws of B'nei Noach, the children of Noah.
Furthermore, in one of his talks on parshas Matos-Masei, the Lubavitcher Rebbe explains amazingly that just as the lowly physical world is ultimately for the highest spiritual good and therefore from the highest spiritual source that, so too, the physical body comes from a higher source than the neshama, the soul. The neshama, the Rebbe explains, is a part of Hashem and so, like the angels, it has no Free Will.
It is only through the physical body that Free Will can be executed, therefore separating the holy and the unholy through the study of Torah and the performance of Mitzvos.
This Shabbos is known as Shabbos Nachamu, a comfort to the Jewish people after the mourning that occurred on Tisha B’Av due to the destruction of the Beis HaMikdosh. Shabbos Nachamu is named after the opening lines of the Haftorah for this week, "Nachamu. Nachamu ami". Comfort. Comfort My people!
The ultimate comfort is knowing that the building of the third and final Beis HaMikdosh is upon us. The Freidiker Rebbe, the 6th Rebbe of Chabad, proclaimed that the final Redemption is upon us. All we have to do is "polish the buttons," so to speak.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Moshe of our generation, continued the Frediker Rebbe's work proclaiming, "The time of your Redemption is now. All you have to do is open your eyes" to greet Moshiach.
May we be truly comforted this Shabbos as we prepare for the joyous days ahead, the month of Elul, the High Holidays, and all the festivities of the month of Tishrei. May we celebrate them with true joy, sustenance, good health, inspiration, and revealed good, both physically and spiritually, in the 3rd Beis HaMikdosh in Yerushalyim, with Moshe at the helm!
Footnote:
The Seven Laws of Bnei Noach were first mentioned in Talmud Sanhedrin. In essence, they are the laws which uphold a just society. In Judaism, one does not need to be Jewish to be holy or to be rewarded in this world and the next.
The Seven Laws of the Children of Noah:
Not to worship idols.
Not to curse God.
Not to commit murder.
Not to commit adultery, bestiality, or sexual immorality.
Not to steal.
Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal.
To establish courts of justice.
