Yesterday and Tomorrow

Yesterday’s choice doesn’t have to be tomorrow’s choice. This is what’s being whispered into your ears in this season of repentance. It’s also the beating-heart of this revised version of my second Rosh Hashanah Sermon.

Choice is still available to you. Even when self-doubt is like yeast in your head. What you do next is yet-to-be determined. Your choice about what’s ahead remains ever-available. 

Legend has it that when God first meets Moses at the Burning Bush, Moses asks a surprising question. He asks why God is freeing Israel from slavery. “After all,” Moses wants to know, “What have the Israelites done to deserve your redemption?” 

“It’s not what they have done, but what they will yet do” says God. “I’m not freeing you for who you are now, but for who you will be. Because one day you will accept my Torah and make a covenant with me” (Ex. Rabba 3:4).  

We meet a very different Moses in this week’s portion of Torah. He’s at the twilight of his peerless prophetic calling. He’s readying Joshua to succeed him. “I can no longer go-out and come” Moses says, acknowledging his limits going forward. Yet, for me, the first word of the portion, for which it’s named, tells us “Moses went forth” (va-yeilech Moshe) (Deut. 31:1). How could the Torah use the same word for God’s initial call to Abraham (lech lecha) here at the end of Moses’s 120 year life? 

Because even in the end of our lives, we have the capacity to revisit and revise. I find it utterly compelling that Moses, with the 613th final commandment, reframes the mitzvah of having a personal share in writing a Torah scroll, as composing a song. That’s how he makes teachings touching. Melodious. 

May this harmonize with another seasonal message whispering inside you: It’s not about how you make the mistakes you make. It’s how you make up for them that counts. 

A Sweet Shabbat and Shana to you.