Tonight is Shemini Atzeret, the holy day that caps Sukkot and finally closes out our entire run of High Holy Days. The run that took us from the month of Elul through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and now here we are at the conclusion.
The Chasidic Rebbes describe Shemini Atzeret as an eyt ratzon, a particularly gentle time, a tender time. They describe it as the lull after the wedding banquet is over; the quiet and private meal that the couple shares after the rowdy guests have gone home. This is the tenor of Shemini Atzeret: a last, quiet, loving breath of the Days of Awe.
Shemini Atzeret also always coincides with Simchat Torah, where we finish our Torah-reading cycle and pick it up again at the beginning. We typically celebrate Simchat Torah with song and dance and joy. But if we look closely, we can discern a similar quiet moment of breath after the end of Deuteronomy, before we scroll back to Genesis.
A moment of breath after the death of Moshe, our teacher and prophet. There is a hardness to his death, a long anticipation. And once he lets go, it is as if Torah itself exhales.
The exhale after a long-anticipated death is something we are experiencing this week in our own community, with three deaths over the past two days – that of Rinat’s mother and of Cynthia’s father and of our beloved little Nia. We find ourselves tonight in the quiet bewilderment; in the gentle uncharted space between ending and beginning, and we feel that whether our loved one is 5 or 95: the lull, the gasp, the exhale, when it has at last happened. As we begin to exchange anxiety and dread for grief.
Moshe’s story is full of anxiety and dread. Torah is characteristically terse. But midrash paints the scene of Moshe’s death with tremendous color. It’s not a happy story – Moshe is not allowed to enter the Promised Land. God lets him climb the mountain and see it from afar. But that’s as far as he’s going. And he dies right there on the mountaintop.
Our midrash doesn’t like the seeming unfairness of this. To our midrashists, 120 years of life were insufficient reward for someone of such importance, who gave up everything at God’s behest to hold a monumental and often thankless task.
In the midrash, Moshe does not accept the decree sitting down. He is bitter and tries to persuade God to let him enter the land. God says, “Do not speak to Me about this again. Ask me anything else and I will do it.”
Moshe doesn’t believe it. He remembers that God forgave the Children of Israel some very serious sins; certainly God would forgive him for his relatively minor ones. He puts on sackcloth and draws a circle in chalk on the ground and says, “I will not move from this circle until you lift the decree.” He prays and pleads until the Heaven and Earth and all of Creation think the world was going to end.
God then announces in every gate and level of Heaven that Moshe's prayer should not be accepted and tells the archangels to lock the gates against Moshe’s prayer, which is so strong it feels like a sword, since Moshe is reciting God’s own name in them. Moshe continues to pray, saying, “You know how I suffered with the People of Israel to get them to accept You and Your commandments. And now you’re telling me I can't cross the Jordan River? Shouldn't that be my payment for spending 40 years making these into a Holy People?”
The wicked angel Sama’el, chief of all the accusing angels, grows impatient and, smirking, says, “When is the hour of Moshe’s death going to come, so I can go down and snatch his soul from him?” But still the Universe hesitates because there is no prophet as righteous as Moshe.
Moshe proposes alternatives. “God, let me live forever outside the land. Or let me come into the land as a beast of the field.”
“Enough,” God says.
“Then let me stay in this world as a bird flying by day and returning to its nest at night.”
“Enough,” God says. And Moshe knows that nothing in the animal world will save him from death.
God says to the archangel Gavriel, “Gavriel! Go bring Moshe’s soul, his neshamah. Gavriel balks. “Master of the Universe, Moshe is someone worth 600,000 people! How can I witness his death? And someone with such beautiful words in him, how can I do him harm?”
So God says to the archangel Mikha’el, “Go bring Moshe’s soul, his neshamah. Mikha’el balks. “Master of the Universe, I was his teacher and he was my student. How can I witness his death?”
Then God says to the wicked Sama’el, “Go bring Moshe’s soul, his neshamah.” Eagerly Sama’el draws his sword and approaches Moshe. But Moshe is sitting and writing God’s name and the light in his face is like the light of the sun, and he looks like an angel. And Samael is frightened and says, “Clearly the angels cannot take Moshe’s soul.”
At last a Heavenly Voice, a bat kol, comes down and says, “Moshe, stop. It is time for your death.”
Moshe responds, saying, “Do you remember the day you revealed yourself to me at the Burning Bush, and you said, go bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt? Do you remember how I spent 40 days and 40 nights on Mt. Sinai? Now please, do not put me in the hands of the Angel of Death!”
Then God says, “Don't be frightened. I myself will take you.”
So, says the midrash, God comes down from the highest heaven to take Moshe’s soul, and three Ministering Angels come too: Mikha’el, Gavriel and Zagzag’el, the angel of the Burning Bush. Mikha’el sets up the bed for Moshe and Gavriel dresses him. Zagzag’el stands at Moshe’s feet, with Mikha’el on one side and Gavriel on the other.
Then the Holy One says, “Moshe, close your eyes.” And he does. God says, “Put your hands on your chest.” And he does. “And put your feet together.” And he does.
Then the Holy One calls out directly to the soul – the neshamah – inside Moshe’s body and says to her, “My daughter! 120 years is enough time to be in Moshe’s body. It is time to depart, do not delay.”
And she replies, “Master of the Universe! I know you created me and placed me in Moshe’s body for 120 years. And there was no better person for me to be in all this time. I love him and do not want to depart from him!”
God says, “Neshamah. Get out! I will raise you up to the highest heaven, and I will seat you at the foot for the Throne of Glory, among the heavenly beings.” And she replies, “Please just let me stay in the body of Moshe.”
Then the Holy One draws near and kisses Moshe and takes his soul from him while kissing his mouth.
Then God weeps, saying, “There shall never again arise a prophet like Moshe in Israel.” And the heavens weeps and the earth weeps. And the Children of Israel say, “May the memory of the righteous be for a blessing; may his soul have life in the World to Come. Amen and amen.”
And so our midrash wrestles with the unfairness of death. Not just for Moshe, not just for people living to the age of 120, but for all of us. All of us who suffer through life in this world, lives full of discovery and wonder, and also full of toil and pain and loss. It is not easy to be embodied in this dimension. We are like the primordial vessels – Divine light barely containable. We remember that our souls were part of something greater, but still, this world of form and substance, of family and friendship and love, is so appealing. Even in suffering we don’t want to let go.
I’d like to think that at the end we too are surrounded by angels. And despite all the talk of an angel of death, that God does not actually delegate this most important and tender of tasks. And that it is with a kiss that each of our souls is ultimately drawn out and up and back into the great light. And in each instance, that moment is followed by a great exhale; a gasp of wonder as if witnessing a butterfly, raised from a caterpillar, taking its first flight. A gasp. An exhale. Wonder. Mystery.
And then the rerolling of the scroll to another beginning.
The featured image is a collage made of two Chagall paintings, “Death of Moses” and “Jeune Fille en Marche.”