By Akiva Olitzky, USY Vice President of Jewish Life
At the start of Simchat Torah, we close out our Torah reading cycle and complete the Torah. As we do so, this year, I am thinking about Moshe. For almost his entire life, Moshe had to navigate leading an entire people on their trek while enduring their constant complaining. Moshe never completes the journey and passes away after giving one final emotional speech.
When we first meet Moshe, he has no confidence in his ability to lead and speak on behalf of the people. He protests that: “כְבַד פֶּה וּכְבַד לָשׁוֹן אָנֹכִי” – “I am heavy of tongue and heavy of mouth.” This leaves plenty of room for interpretation: does he have a speech impediment? Does he have a physical challenge or disability?
We are left wondering now that we’ve read through the entire Torah, if any of those were the case, then why was Moshe able to give such a powerful speech before his death? Perhaps the answer lies within the 40 years that Bnei Yisrael traveled.
For 40 years, Moshe had to navigate the group’s disrespect and lack of faith. That hardened him. Yes, he failed here and there, most notably with striking the rock. But it also made him rise to the occasion. Moshe was still able to corral the troops, to push his people forward. He still dragged them kicking and screaming to the Holy Land.
Maybe the main reason Moshe couldn’t speak initially was not something physical, but something psychological. Maybe it was a direct result of a lack of confidence. When we reflect on those decades of wandering, if the journey had been easy, Moshe may have never found his voice. No doubt Moshe never crossed into Israel, but Moshe DID find his confidence in the end, not as a result of the destination, but because of the journey.
This idea speaks directly to our observance of the high holy days. On Yom Kippur, we “afflicted our souls,” denying ourselves the pleasures of eating and drinking. On Yom Kippur, we accepted our failures with the hope of arriving at the joy of Simchat Torah. On Yom Kippur, we caused ourselves to suffer so that we could overcome. That was our journey. It helped us accept and acknowledge and focus on our failures and missteps. Through our trials and tribulations, we bettered ourselves, and we discovered a better version of ourselves.
For some, the joy of Simchat Torah is celebrating with the Torah and celebrating the completion of the cycle. But that’s not my take this year. The joy of Simchat Torah is the joy in our ability to write our next chapter of Torah. Just as each time we read the Torah, each reading is through the lens of every previous reading (that is, we never read it without thinking of every other time we’ve read it), our journey helps us replay each year through the lens of each year leading up to it. And we come out the other side, God-willing, inscribed in the Book of Life. Confident. And ready. To start all over again.
Sign up to receive communications and news from USY
