When I was in high school, word spread throughout my local community that a rare opportunity was about to appear. The Kaliver Rebbe, a Hasidic leader known for his prophetic abilities, was invited to a local shul where he would accept visitors from people to receive advice and a blessing. The rumor was that women struggling with infertility would receive a blessing from him and give birth within a year, that young men having difficulty finding someone to marry would suddenly have success after meeting with him. Some of my classmates were excited to have the opportunity; I was skeptical but very curious about what it would be like to talk to him.
A few of my friends and I packed into my car and drove to the shul where the Kaliver was holding count, where we found the line of people waiting to see him wound around the entire building. We waited more than an hour to see him. A friend of mine who spoke to him before me came out with a look of utter shock on his face, convinced the Rebbe had peered into his soul. Another classmate came out in tears. This heightened my curiosity but also instilled in me a deep fear. Was this guy for real? Would he be able to see something about me that even I don't realize yet but will recognize as true once he says it?
When my turn came, I stepped into the office where he was sitting, and saw that he was surrounded by young men as his assistants. As I was pushed forward to the Kaliver Rebbe, the Rebbe looked at my face and proceeded to falsely claim my parents don't love me enough. He asked me where I was planning to study Torah in Israel, but then told me I should study somewhere else. He said I was a simple boy. but I could learn ש״ס if I learn one דף at a time. Then he pinched me really hard in the cheek and his aids sent me out of the room.
Rather than be inspired or in awe, I felt scandalized, like I had been insulted and robbed of my dignity. I was furious, convinced he was a charlatan. But almost everyone else who met with the Kaliver Rebbe did not feel that way – they were convinced of his unique access to G-d. The instinct to believe in the prophetic abilities of seemingly holy people was far from unique to the Five Towns, however.
Rabbi Yakov Nagen points out that in the Monty Python film Life of Brian, the main character, Brian Cohen, tries his best to avoid being treated like a prophet, to avoid the hero worship I saw given to the Kaliver Rebbe. Brian tries to encourage an enthusiastic crowd following him to think for themselves, to recognize themselves as individuals, as people with their own moral agency. Ironically, however, as he tells this to them, they just ritually repeat after him, deifying his words while ignoring their message.
Tomorrow, on שמחת תורה, as we finish the תורה, we will read about a similar effort on the part of הקב״ה to avoid the deification of משה רבינו. On one hand, the Torah does cite משה's unique status and his accomplishments. The פרשה begins with:
וְזֹאת הַבְּרָכָה אֲשֶׁר בֵּרַךְ מֹשֶׁה אִישׁ הָאֱלֹקים אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לִפְנֵי מוֹתוֹ׃
This is the blessing with which Moses, man of G-d, blessed the Israelites before he died.
He's a man of G-d, a term that Scripture reserves for very few men in history, such as אליהו, אלישע, דוד and literal angels. The תורה describes משה as unique in his prophetic abilities, as:
וְלֹא־קָם נָבִיא עוֹד בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל כְּמֹשֶׁה אֲשֶׁר יְדָעוֹ ה׳ פָּנִים אֶל־פָּנִים׃
Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom Hashem came to know out, face to face,
The entire תורה itself is attributed to משה, as if he was solely responsible for our access to it:
תּוֹרָה צִוָּה־לָנוּ מֹשֶׁה מוֹרָשָׁה קְהִלַּת יַעֲקֹב׃
When Moses charged us with the Torah as the heritage of the congregation of Jacob.
Given all of this, we would expect משה's death to be a major event in Jewish history, to be something that would be accompanied with much fanfare, with the pageantry afforded to the deaths of divine beings. Maybe his body should lie in state or he should be buried by Joshua himself, assigned a prominent burial place. Maybe he should have ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot. But that is not what happens at all.
Instead, משה dies alone on a mountain, with no one to bury him but הקב״ה Himself. His body is left buried on an unmarked spot on a mountain somewhere on the eastern side of the Jordan River.
וַיִּקְבֹּר אֹתוֹ בַגַּי בְּאֶרֶץ מוֹאָב מוּל בֵּית פְּעוֹר וְלֹא־יָדַע אִישׁ אֶת־קְבֻרָתוֹ עַד הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה׃
[God] buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, near Beth-peor; and no one knows his burial place to this day.
Then he is mourned for 30 days, after which the Jewish People move on, acting as if their lives have not just been fundamentally altered by the loss of the man who took them out of Egypt, gave them the Torah, and escorted them through the Wilderness:
וַיִּבְכּוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת־מֹשֶׁה בְּעַרְבֹת מוֹאָב שְׁלֹשִׁים יוֹם וַיִּתְּמוּ יְמֵי בְכִי אֵבֶל מֹשֶׁה׃
And the Israelites bewailed Moses in the steppes of Moab for thirty days and then the period of crying and mourning for Moses ended.
Why does he have such a modest funeral, so little pomp and circumstance surrounding his death? One answer is cited by the medieval Midrashic work, מדרש לקח טוב:
ומפני מה לא נודע קבורתו של משה? כדי שלא יהו ישראל הולכין ומניחין שם בית המקדש ומזבחים ומקטרים שם וכדי שלא יטמאו אומות העול' את קברו בפסיליהם ובתועבותיהם:
Why is the burial spot of Moshe unknown? So that the Jewish People do not go and place there a Holy Temple and offer sacrifices and incense there and so that the Nations of the World do not contaminate his burial spot with with their idols
In other words, there was a fear that משה would suffer the fate of Brian Cohen, be worshipped as if he were a divine being in his own right, as if what was holy about משה were his body rather than the lessons he imparted.
But another מדרש adds another element to this picture. The מדרש points out that הקב״ה engages in three classic forms of kindness over the course of the Torah. At its beginning, after אדם and חוה eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and are ashamed of their nakedness, G-d creates clothing for them to wear, to replace the fig leaves. Many years later, when אברהם was still recovering from his circumcision at the age of 99, G-d visited him. Finally, at the end of the Torah, when משה dies, the Torah says that G-d Himself buried משה in the Valley of Moab. The מדרש teaches us the concept of Imitatio Dei, that just as G-d clothed the naked, so should we; just as G-d visited the sick, so must we; and just as G-d buried the dead with dignity, so should we.
Rabbi Norman Lamm, however, questions the מדרש's assertion about G-d's burial of משה. Even if we grant that there was a need to avoid deifying משה and that is why he had to be buried away from all other people, how could the מדרש call הקב״ה burying משה a kindness, a paradigm of גמילות חסדים?
After all, משה had prayed fervently not to die, to have the opportunity to enter the Promised Land, even in death, according to חז״ל. He had defended G-d's people against enemies foreign and domestic, lead them through years of sin and subsequent wandering, watched the entire generation he liberated die in the Wilderness. He was the most humble of men, never seeking power or authority for himself, only accepting the mission of leadership when it was thrust upon him against his will and despite his protestations. He was the most loyal servant of ה׳ to have ever lived. And yet, because of one mistake, G-d denied him the one thing he wanted, which was to make it to the end of the journey, to step into the Land of Israel. In what way is G-d's burial of him now a kindness of any kind? How could we consider it גמילות חסדים?
Rabbi Lamm offers three suggestions of how ה׳ burying משה was a form of kindness. It may be that the חסד referred to by the מדרש was not toward משה but rather toward the Jewish People. By denying משה access to the end of his journey, to a final triumph, by giving him a modest burial ceremony, ה׳ enabled the Jewish People to realize that he was only human.
Not only should he not be deified, but he was just like them – flawed, talented but not guaranteed to accomplish every goal, to see every mission to its completion. It was necessary for משה to die, to be denied his request to enter Israel, to be buried alone by G-d Himself, to show us that even if לא קם כמשה, that doesn't mean no one can ever try. משה was mortal and so are we; we can aspire to be like him, doing much on behalf of our people while making mistakes and facing insurmountable challenges along the way. We can take on missions that we may not ourselves complete, knowing that we will have to pass on the baton to someone else. If משה didn't die the way he did, we would not know this is true.
Second, says Rabbi Lamm, משה dying alone and without fanfare was a kindness to יהושע, to משה's successor. If משה was treated as someone unique in history and had received a funeral for the ages, it would have been nearly impossible for יהושע to take on the mantle and for the Jewish People to give him proper respect.
But most importantly, says Rabbi Lamm, משה dying in the way he did was actually a kindness to משה himself. If משה had died in dramatic fashion with an event unique in world history, the funeral might have been the focus in the minds of the Jewish People. His legacy would always be tied to the elaborate nature of his funeral. But by denying him such a burial, by dying in intimate privacy with הקב״ה and having G-d Himself do the burial, he received a dignified end without it overshadowing what he did in his lifetime. Instead of being mythologized or deified in his death, משה's legacy is what he said and did in his life.
The מדרש says that משה's burial was a kindness to repay the kindness of משה carrying the coffin of יוסף הצדיק on their way out of Egypt. When יוסף was removed from Egypt, his body was taken from a land that worshipped the dead, that had a culture of treating dead leaders as if they are divine beings. Taking יוסף out of Egypt, just like burying משה in the Wilderness, ensured that their legacy would be what they did in life, not what happened to them in death. Instead of being remembered for their mummified remains, they are remembered for their actions and words in life.
Jews don't worship the dead; we don't stage elaborate events for our loved ones with music and fancy food. We don't have open wakes and we don't bury the dead in fancy, expensive coffins. We don't cremate and preserve their remains in an urn above the fireplace. Our burial rituals are simple, basic, and done quickly after burial. We remember the dead through prayer and through performing מצוות, acts of kindness and generosity and devotion to G-d, on their behalf, as a reflection of who they were and what they would want us to be. We don't celebrate their death, remember them only for their end, but rather elevate their memory through carrying out their legacy.
As we say יזכור today, let us think about the impact they had on us, not only in their last moments or even years, but over a lifetime. May our simple words on their behalf enable us to preserve and pass on not only their names and the anniversary of their death but also the lessons and values they instilled in us.
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