Live and Let Live

Unlike most of us, Moshe had a handle on life’s greatest uncertainty—death. Once God decreed that Moshe would not enter the Land, he knew, more or less, when his life would end. For the rest of us, death remains an uncertainty whose timing we can never know.

The Lord said to Moshe: “Behold, your days [yamekha] to die have drawn near…” (Deuteronomy 31:14).

The sages, renowned for their fastidious reading of Scripture, paid close attention to the unusual wording of this verse. From the phrase “your days” [yamekha], they inferred that Moshe was privy to a knowledge of the timing of his death that is denied to the rest of us. This insight led to a contemplative story:

Our Rabbis said: A story which happened during the days of Rabbi Shimon ben Ḥalafta, who went to a brit milah. The father of the baby made a feast and gave them to drink wine that was aged seven years. He said to them: “I am aging this wine for the wedding feast of my son.” They were feasting until midnight. Rabbi Shimon ben Ḥalafta, who was confident in his strength, departed at midnight to go to his city.

On the way, he encountered the angel of death and saw that he looked strange. He said to him: “Who are you?” He replied: “The emissary of the Omnipresent.” Rabbi Shimon asked him: “Why do you look strange?” The angel answered: “It is because of the conversations of human beings. They say: ‘This and that we intend to do in the future,’ but they do not know when they will be called to die. That man with whom you were dining, who said to you, ‘I am aging this wine for the wedding feast of my son’—the time for his son to be taken will arrive in thirty days.”

Rabbi Shimon then asked: “Show me my time.” The angel replied: “I have no control over you, or over those like you. At times, the Holy One, blessed be He, desires good deeds and adds life to you, as it is stated: ‘The fear of the Lord will add days’” (Proverbs 10:27).

The Rabbis conclude: “The death of the righteous is onerous before the Holy One, blessed be He.” From where is this derived? “Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His pious ones” (Psalms 116:15). The Rabbis then return to our verse. God could have said to Moshe simply, “Behold, you are going to die.” But He did not. Instead, He “forsook him and attributed his death to the days”: “Behold, your days are approaching to die.” (Devarim Rabbah 9:1)

This tragic story is a rabbinic attempt to confront the precarious nature of human existence. None of us knows when our lives will end. Yet precisely because we do not know, we are challenged to make use of every bit of the time given to us—to “cram in,” as it were, as much of what is truly important as we possibly can.

But what is the role of Rabbi Shimon ben Ḥalafta in this story?

He is a liminal character, living on the borderline between life and death. He remains at the celebration until late at night and then sets out alone for his city. He is confident in his own strength and has no apparent fear of what might confront him along the way. Yet it is precisely on this journey, between the celebration of new life and the return to his own home, that he encounters the angel of death.

The angel reveals to him the truth of human existence: our plans stretch far into the future, while our actual lives may be frighteningly ephemeral. The father at the brit milah is already aging wine for his son’s wedding, yet the angel knows that the child will die within thirty days.

Naturally, Rabbi Shimon wants to know his own fate. But here the story takes an unexpected turn. The angel tells him that he has no control over him, or over people like him. God may desire their good deeds and, as a result, “add days” to their lives.

The rabbis obviously do not mean this as an empirical proposition. They are offering a moral and theological teaching: we cannot control the length of our lives, but we can influence what we do with the time we have. Good deeds do not provide us with a guarantee of longevity. They provide something more meaningful: they give our days value.

And this brings us back to Moshe.

Moshe is, perhaps, the ultimate example of a righteous person whose death is “precious in the eyes of the Lord.” Even Moshe, however, must eventually leave this world. The rabbis could have understood God’s words simply as a statement about the end of Moshe’s life: “You are going to die.” But Scripture chooses different words: “Behold, your days are approaching to die.”

It is not simply Moshe who is coming to an end. It is his days.

There is something profoundly moving in that distinction. We tend to think of life as something we possess—a span of years that belongs to us. The Torah reminds us otherwise. We are given days. Some are long, some painfully short; some are filled with joy, others with sorrow. But none are ours to keep.

What is ours is what we do with them.

Moshe could not determine how many days he would have. Rabbi Shimon could not determine when the angel would come. Neither can we. But we can determine, at least to some degree, what those days will contain: whom we love, what we teach, whom we help, what acts of kindness we perform, and what legacy we leave behind.

Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of the Torah’s words. “Your days are approaching to die” is not merely a statement about death. It is a summons about life. Since our days are finite, every day matters. And the question we ultimately face is not how many days we have been given, but what we have done with them.