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DEUTERONOMY — 34:5 died

DEUT1730 What do we learn from the death of Moses? For each of us, even for the greatest, there is a Jordan we will not cross, a promised land we will not enter, a destination we will not reach. That is what R. Tarfon meant when he said: "It is not for you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it" (Mishna Avot 2:16). What be began, others will continue. What matters is that we undertook the journey. We did not stand still.

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DEUTERONOMY — 34:6 buried

DEUT1733 [T]he sages said that the three characteristics most important to Jewish character are modesty, compassion, and kindness (Numbers Rabba 8:4). Hesed, what I have defined elsewhere as "love as deed," (Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World (NewYork: Schocken, 2005), 44-56] is central to the Jewish value system. The sages based it on the acts of God Himself. R. Simlai taught: "The Torah begins with an act of kindness and ends with an act of kindness. It begins with God clothing the naked: "The Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them" (Genesis 3:21) – and it ends with Him caring for the dead: "and He [God] buried [Moses] in the valley" [this verse] (Sota 14a). Hesed -- providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, or assistance to the poor; visiting the sick, comforting mourners, and providing a dignified burial for all – – became constitutive of Jewish life. During the many centuries of exile and dispersion Jewish communities were built around these needs. There were hevrot, "friendly societies," for each of them.

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DEUTERONOMY — 34:6 place

DEUT1743 [M]ore than any other religious literature, the Torah makes an absolute distinction between heaven and earth, between God and human beings. Because God is God, there is space for humans to be human. In Judaism the line dividing them is never blurred. How rare this is was pointed out by Walter Kaufmann: "in India, Jina and the Buddha, founders of two new religions in the sixth century BCE, came to be worshiped later by their followers. In China, Confucius and Lao-tze came to be deified. To the non-Christian, Jesus seems to represent a parallel case. In Greece, the heroes of the past were held to have been sired by a God or to have been born of Goddesses, and the dividing line between Gods and men became fluid. In Egypt, the Pharaoh was considered divine." (The Faith of a Heretic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 187-8). In Israel, says Kaufmann, "no man was ever worshiped or accorded even semi-divine status. This is one of the most extraordinary facts about the religion of the Old Testament." (Ibid., 188). There never was a cult of Moses or any other biblical figure. That is why "no man knows Moses' burial place to this day" [this verse] so that it could never become a place of pilgrimage. No religion has held a higher view of humanity than the book that tells us we are each in the image and likeness of God. Yet none has been more honest about the failings of even the greatest. God does not ask us to be perfect. He asks us, instead, to take risks in pursuit of the right and the good, and to acknowledge the mistakes we will inevitably make. In Judaism the moral life is about learning and growing, knowing that even the greatest have feelings and even the worst of saving graces. It calls for humility about ourselves and generosity toward others. This unique blend of idealism and realism is morality at its most demanding and mature.

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DEUTERONOMY — 34:7 unabated

DEUT1744 [What do we learn from the death of Moses?] … Never lose the idealism of youth. The Torah says of Moses that at the age of 120, "his eye was undimmed and his natural energy unabated" [this verse]. I used to think that these were two complementary phrases until I realised that the first is the explanation of the second. That Moses' "eye was undimmed" means that he never lost the passion for justice that he had as a young man. It is there, as vigorous in Deuteronomy as it was in Exodus. We are as young as our ideals. Give away to cynicism and you rapidly age.

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