This week Moses begins his final summation. Following a lengthy recitation of blessings and curses, Moses speaks to the people and reminds them of all that God has done for them and that up until this day “the Eternal has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear” (29:3) One may read this verse as a reproach to the people who, after 40 years, still do not appreciate all that has been done for them. Or the verse can be read as if to say, now, after the Wilderness experience of all these years, you can now understand, see and hear. The Art Scroll commentary sums it up this way: “Only now, after forty years of miraculous survival and the beginning of a conquest that was clearly accomplished by God, could the people fully appreciate the awesome degree of gratitude and allegiance they owed Him. As the Sages say (Avodah Zarah 5b) a student does not fully understand his teacher until after forty years”.
I think this passage speaks volumes to us. As someone once said, “we look forwards but understand backwards”. As we get older, we begin to really grasp and understand life. Indeed, it is our forties that so much of life begins to change. We may be at the height of our careers, but it is a time that we often start to deal with changes, changes in our bodies, family life, relationships and perhaps, the first real dawning of our own mortality. As we enter the final days preparation for the Holidays, and maybe, begin our life review, we may be able to see more clearly the reasons for the choices we have made, and understand what those choices may mean for us as we grow older. This sense of growth and understanding can be, for some, liberating. For others, these reflections may be a challenge, landing someone in the land of regret.
Yet, this is a time for us to hear the voices of tradition, voices of our history, voices that ask us, as this season of reflection dawns, to have the courage to break free from that which limits and controls us, and to have the courage and faith in our self to cross into the new year with hope, faith and purpose.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Richard F Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
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