We open the Book of Devarim — Deuteronomy — this week, and we find Moses doing something extraordinary. He is not leading. He is not performing miracles. He is not receiving commandments on a mountain. He is talking.
Listen to how the book begins…”Eileh ha-d’varim” — these are the words. These are the words that Moses spoke to all of Israel. After forty years of wandering — forty years of manna, of complaints, of golden calves and spies — Moses stands before his people and simply speaks to them. This book is said to be one full narration. So try to imagine this speech as his farewell address. Really one long, loving, heartbreaking farewell.
And embedded within all of those words is a moment so quiet you might miss it. A moment that changes everything.
Moses looks at this people he has carried — sometimes on his back, sometimes in his heart, sometimes against his will — and he says some of the most heartbreaking words of the Torah: I cannot go with you further. But you will not go alone.
“Vayetzav et Yehoshua” — and he commanded Joshua. He charged him, he strengthened him, he appointed him. He stood before all the people and said: this man. Follow this man.
Can you imagine what that felt like? Not for Moses — though we’ll get to that — but for the people? Try to put yourself in their place. Every child born in the desert knew only Moses and nothing of slavery. For forty years, Moses had been the voice of God on earth to them. When they were afraid, Moses stretched out his staff. When they were thirsty, Moses spoke to a rock. When they sinned, Moses interceded on their behalf and talked God out of destroying them entirely. Moses was not just a leader. Moses was home. Moses was safety. Moses was the only world they had known since Egypt. Moses was the father who protected you, the uncle that snuck you candy when your mom wasn’t looking and your brother who always stood up for you, even when he knew you were in the wrong.
And now Moses was saying: it’s Joshua now.
Joshua, who had been Moses’ aide since youth. Joshua, who had fought Amalek and stood watch at the base of Sinai. Joshua, who was, in every way, faithful and capable and good — but who was not Moses, who never claimed to be like Moses and who would never hold the same status as Moses. åThe Midrash tells us that when Moses transferred his authority to Joshua, something remarkable happened. The elders of Israel — the sages, the wise ones — they felt it. They said: “The face of Moses was like the face of the sun; the face of Joshua is like the face of the moon.” The sun had set. A different light was rising.
And here is the question that text asks us, quietly but urgently: will you receive the moonlight?
Because this is the test the Israelites faced at the border of the Promised Land. Not the military test of conquering Canaan. Not the spiritual test of resisting idolatry. The first test — the threshold test — was simpler and harder than all of those: can you trust a new leader?
Not because Joshua would lead exactly like Moses. He wouldn’t. No leader is the same as the one before. But it is not because Joshua would have the same gifts, the same intimacy with God, the same gravitas. He didn’t. But because a journey always means movement. There is no journey without movement. Remember, the Jewish story is always one of movement. Adam and Eve moved from teh
Garden of Eden. Abraham moved from Ur of the Chaldees. Joseph moved to find his brothers and ended up in Egypt. Jacob and his family journeyed to
Egypt and, of course, the whole book of Exodus is one long journey, both physically and spiritually. The Jewish story knows that the same feet that crossed the sea cannot stay planted on one bank forever. Because the Promised Land was forward, not backward — and you can only reach forward by letting go.
The Torah is wise about this. It does not ask the people to stop loving Moses. It does not ask them to forget him, or to diminish what he was to them. The grief was real and it was honored — thirty days of weeping when Moses died, an act of mourning the Torah records for almost no one else. Love Moses. Grieve Moses. That is human and holy.
But then: rise up. “Kum, avor” — arise and cross over. That is what God says to Joshua. Arise. Cross over. The mourning has its time, and then the movement begins again.
B’nai Israel finds itself on its own journey, doesn’t it?
Our congregation stands at its own threshold. We are in a time of transition, searching for new rabbinic leadership, welcoming new faces into our community, beginning a new chapter whose shape we cannot yet fully see. And if we are honest with ourselves, some of us feel what those Israelites felt. The longing for the familiar. The ache of change. The question — unspoken but real — of whether what comes next can possibly be as meaningful as what came before.
That feeling is not weakness. That feeling is love. It means this community matters to you. It means the relationships you have built here, the moments of holiness you have shared here, have left their mark on your soul. You are not wrong to feel it.
But Parashat Devarim calls us further. It reminds us that no community lives frozen in amber. We must not be dinosaurs. No congregation is meant to be a monument to its past. I once heard that a congregation not on fire is a pit of ash. Burnt out and losing heat. We must not ever become that. We are a people of the journey — Am Yisrael — and a journey, by its very nature, requires movement and fire and spirit.
The new leader who comes to us will not be a replica of who came before. They will bring their own gifts, their own voice, their own way of illuminating Torah. They will see horizons that have not yet been named, open doors we didn’t know were there, help us ask questions we haven’t thought to ask. That is not a loss. That is exactly what leadership is supposed to do.
Joshua looked out at the Land of Israel and saw possibility where the spies had once seen only giants. The same land. Different eyes. New vistas.
What vistas might open for us if we follow with open hands?
The Talmud teaches that every teacher has something unique to give — “Shinei panim b’Torah” — each face illuminates Torah differently. The Torah Moses gave was irreplaceable. And the Torah Joshua would teach — the Torah of living in the land, of building rather than wandering, of taking root — that Torah was also irreplaceable. Neither diminishes the other. They are chapters in the same story.
We are being offered a new chapter.
So let us do what the Israelites did at their best: let us hold our history with gratitude, and let us face our future with courage. Let us be worthy of the leaders who will choose to walk with us. Let us be the kind of congregation that makes a new rabbi think: yes, this is where I am supposed to be. Let us be open. Let us be generous. Let us be ready.
Moses gave his people words. His last gift to them was not a miracle — it was language. It was the act of saying: I see you. I name what we have been through together. And I trust you to go on.
Eilu Dvarim – These are the words that we must carry forward.
Kum, Avor – Rise, and cross over.
And may the new horizons ahead of us be filled, as ours always have been, with the presence of the One who never stops walking with us.
Shabbat Shalom.
