The Space Between
Go up to these Mountains of Avarim, and see the land that I am giving to the Children of Israel. (Numbers 27:12)
Every year around this time, the Jewish calendar grows quieter.
Beginning with the Seventeenth of Tammuz, when our tradition remembers the walls of Jerusalem being breached, and continuing until Tisha B'Av, when we remember the destruction of the Temple, we spend three weeks living between the first crack and the final collapse. Judaism could have remembered only the destruction. Instead, it asks us to linger in the space between.
Our Torah portion, Parashat Pinchas, offers another story that unfolds in that same in-between.
God tells Moses to climb a mountain and look out across the Jordan. Moses already knows what awaits him. He has been told that he will see the land, but he will never enter it.
Imagine the scene.
Below him lies the land he has spent forty years walking toward. Somewhere beyond those hills are vineyards he will never harvest, cities he will never enter, and homes where he will never sit at the table.
Every confrontation with Pharaoh. Every step through the wilderness. Every prayer offered for a frightened people. Every disappointment. Every hope.
All of it has led here.
Then God says, "You shall see the land... but you shall not enter it." (Numbers 27:13)
The Torah never tells us what Moses feels. It simply lets us stand beside him on the mountain.
Did he keep looking? Did he simply close his eyes and let the silence settle around him?
We are not told.
What we are told is what happens next.
This is the same Moses who pleaded with God after the Golden Calf. The same Moses who spoke with breathtaking honesty, who questioned, interceded, and refused to give up on the people Israel.
Yet here, there is no recorded protest.
Instead, his first concern is for the people.
"Let the Eternal, God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint someone over the community..." (Numbers 27:16-17)
His first words are not about the dream that has ended. They are about the people who will continue.
Perhaps that is why this Torah portion greets us as these three weeks begin.
The breach of Jerusalem's walls was not yet the end. It was the beginning of living with an ending that could no longer be avoided.
Moses knows that place. His dream comes to an end. His calling does not.
That is the wisdom Moses leaves behind.
Faith is not measured by whether life unfolds as we hoped. Faith is revealed in what we do after we discover that it will not.
Moses cannot change the road before him. He can choose how he walks it. And that choice becomes his final act of leadership.
,שבת שלום
Student Rabbi Ben