Hello and welcome to the days of returning.
We are now in the 10 days between Rosh haShanah (head of change in Hebrew) and Yom Kippor (Hebrew for day of atonement. It is also called Yom haKipporim which means: the day like Purim). These 10 days are called days of repentance, however the Hebrew word for repentance, tshuvah, really means an answer or a return. You see, on Rosh haShanah we invoked the beginning of change. Now we are in the days of returning to the path that haShem (god) wanted us to be on, and Yom Kippor is the day that haShem purifies us of all the mistakes we have made, so we can be pure as we start back on the road our souls tell us we should walk (which is halachah which comes from the Hebrew verb to walk/go).
Coincidentally, the parsha (Torah portion) that we read this shabbat is called Vayaylech which means: and he walked/went. The parsha begins with Moshe (Moses) going and speaking his final words to the people. He starts by telling them that he is 120 and can no longer continue to lead them. Instead Y’hoshua (Joshua) will lead the people across the Jordan river and god will be before them, helping them as he did earlier against the Emorites (which translates as: the speakers). After telling them this, Moshe tells them to be strong and courageous because god will not abandon them. Moshe then brings Y’hoshua to come to him before the people and tells him the same thing.
Moshe wrote all of this Torah (teachings) down and gave it to the cohanim (Hebrew for priests) and to the elders of Yisrael (Israel) and he commanded them that every 7 years, during the holy days of Succot, the Torah should be read to everybody so that everybody can learn and be in awe of haShem (god) and know to do what the Torah asks them to do.
God then tells Moshe that he is close to death and that he and Y’hoshua should go to the Tent of Meeting, which they do, and the cloud of haShem stands at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and god tells Moshe that he will lie with his ancestors and the people will stray and follow after the strange deities/powers of the land they are about to enter. When this happens, god will hide from them and bad things will happen to them. Moshe is also told that the people need to write for themselves and learn “this song” because this song is to be god’s witness against the children of Yisrael. For, when the people come in and eat, and are satisfied and fat, they will turn to other deities/powers and forget haShem and break the brit (covenant). The song will bear witness because it will not be forgotten from their childrens’ mouths. Moshe, of course, writes the song and teaches it to the people, and he finishes writing the torah and gives to the cohanim to put beside the ark of the covenant of haShem and that it should stay there as a witness for all the people. Moshe then calls for the people to gather to teach them this song, and this is how we end our parsha.
I find it interesting how the Torah always seems to relate to what is happening today. In the beginning of this week, we had the holiday of Rosh haShanah, which literally means the head of change, and then we read on shabbat about the change in leadership of the children of Yisrael. The question that came to me as I was reading the parsha is why do we need this change? Or another way of asking the question is: in what way is the leadership changing? This is quite relevant to us if we consider the people as a whole to represent each one of us as individuals. When we look at the question from this perspective, we find ourselves asking: how is our head space, and thinking changing as we go from Rosh haShanah to Yom Kippor? To understand this, we need to go and look at the people.
Moshe, the exiting leader, is about drawing out. He was named by the Pharaoh’s daughter when she drew him out of the river. She is the offspring of what oppresses us, and she provides us with hope of being drawn out of confinement and into freedom. Y’hoshua’s name comes from the word meaning, “To save.” So, in one sense, Moshe is drawing us out of the frying pan and into the fire, and we are willing to go into the fire only when we have a leader whose essence is to save us from (the worst of) the fire.
It is also interesting that within a few weeks of the transfer of power, we find ourselves back with haShem creating the world anew. Y’hoshua essentially becomes a bridge between Moshe’s drawing us out of what we were slaves to, and haShem creating a brand new world. The question is how does he connect these two points so that we have an infinite circle instead of a finite line with two end points?
To answer this we need to understand Y’hoshua’s name. He is there to save us from a finite existence where we can only go through one transition of growth, and turn it into an infinite cycle of growth, of breaking out of our narrow places (the meaning of Mitzrayim or Egypt in Hebrew), and with what we have gained from leaving Egypt, creating new worlds, which allow us to see where we are still trapped, and to then free ourselves again to create a fresh world again…and again…and again.
But Y’hoshua is about more than just this. He is pure faith. Everything we have read about him up to this point shows him to believe 100% in haShem and in Moshe. Why does he become leader now? Because we are about to jump into the abyss, the unknown, a new year. And the only way we can make the transition is with complete faith that we will safely make it through. Our internal leader therefore must have complete faith that we can go forward into a year of change, to really show that we have changed and done tshuvah (returned back to the path of our essence), and that we are new people deserving of a new, good year, and that we will not fall back into our Mitzrayim/old ways.
When we can do this, we are really re-creating ourselves, which means that we are also re-creating the world. This is exactly where we find ourselves when we come down from the holydays and read the parsha Breisheit (The beginning of the book of Genesis). Our faithful leader now becomes god, for just as god is creating the world, so are we – both inside and outside. This is why we read this parsha this week – the week of the head of change; this is why we have a change in leadership: so we can go from knowing to faith and into the abyss in order to create a new world – a new us.
Shanah tovah and shavuah tov/have a good year and a good week,
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.