Parashat Vayeilech

            Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeilech, tells us of Moses’s final preparations for the Israelites to cross into the Holy Land and for his own death. The parasha ends with God telling him to compose his ethical will in the form of an epic poem This poem is next week’s Torah portion, the final reading of the yearly cycle before we reroll the scroll on Simchat Torah. Moses formally hands over leadership to Joshua, having already ordained him back in the Book of Numbers. He declares that even the children of this generation about to cross into the Holy Land, those who did not experience the hardships of Egypt or of the years wandering in the desert, shall hear the story and receive the Torah, shall be expected to follow the commandments, and be a part of this chain of the Jewish People. 

            This Shabbat Shuvah, as we are in the midst of our season of introspection, looking at our past, present, and future, this is a good time to think about what legacy we pass down. What histories have we absorbed, and what are the stories we will want to be sure our descendants know? What are the laws and precepts we will wish we had taught better, what are the values we wish we had learned more clearly and earlier on in our own lives? We learn from our histories - personal, communal, and global - so that we can do better in the future. We teach these lessons and hope that our students or children will learn to rise above even what we could imagine, that they will take what we have taught them and integrate that information with their own disparate experiences and continue to address life’s problems as the arise and their subject matter changes. 

            The Torah is our Tree of Life. It is the baseline for all these lessons and stories we as Jews inherit and pass down. It gives us our roots and we extend our branches. We are the next link in this great chain stretching from Moses to our own unimagineable descendants. May we accept this Torah, planting our roots in Judaism, and may we pass on this Torah, extending our branches out to others in need of a limb to hang on to. May we learn from our histories, and may we teach our hard-earned lessons. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.