This week’s d’var Torah is dedicated to my colleague long ago, Rabbi James Diamond, z”l, a sensitive chacham who first brought this Midrash to my attention and who died tragically—gone in the blink of an eye.

This week's Torah portion, Ve’etchanan, begins with Moshe recalling his plea to God to be allowed to enter the land.

“I entreated God at that time, saying, ‘God, You took the initiative to show Your servant Your magnanimity and Your strong hand, for who is like You, God, in heaven or on earth, who can match Your deeds and Your might… Please let me cross over and see the good land that is on the west side of the Jordan River, including the good mountain and “the Lebanon.”’ But God became angry with me for your sake, and He did not heed me. God said to me, ‘That is enough. Speak to Me no more regarding this matter. Ascend to the peak of the Mount and lift up your eyes westward, northward, southward, and eastward, and see it with your own eyes—for you will not cross this Jordan River.’”

The following Midrash Tanchumah (Ve’etchanan 6) understands this conversation to be less about Moshe entering the land and more about the existential perplexity of death:

“Though he grows as high as the sky, his head reaching the clouds, he perishes forever, like his dung. Those who saw him will say, ‘Where is he?’ (Job 20:6). With reference to what does this verse speak? It speaks about the day of death. Even if someone ascends to the heavens and has made wings like a bird, when his time to die arrives, his wings are broken and he falls before the angel of death like an animal before the butcher… Moshe said to God, ‘Legs which have gone up to the heavens, and a face which has received the Divine presence, and hands which have received the Torah from Your hands, will lick the dust?’”

This Midrash offers us no exit. Heavenly reward, Torah, the human soul—none of it is used here to resolve the existential conundrum. The human who can fathom the infinite, who is unique, who is self-aware, enters this existence against their will and leaves it the same. To open one's eyes to this, to read such a Midrash, is to court nihilism or madness.

What I find most interesting is that this is a religious text. We understand when Camus says, in The Myth of Sisyphus, “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Camus does not engage with ultimate meaning; he does not know the reason for being. He stands staring at the absurdity of life, at “the unreasonable silence of the world.” But Moshe is just the opposite—he knows the reason for life, he knows the ultimate meaning better than anyone else. He has been to the mountain for 40 days and nights. And yet, says the Midrash, he clings to life. Unlike the Vilna Gaon, who famously cried upon his deathbed, holding his tzitzit in his hand, and declared, “How difficult it is to leave this world of action, where by a mitzvah as simple as this, which costs but a few pennies, one can merit seeing the face of the Shechinah,” Moshe is struck by the absurdity of death itself.

Moshe tries argument after argument to no avail. Finally, God informs him that it is Joshua’s turn. “So is the way of the world: every generation has its own interpreters and its own leaders. Until now it was your lot to serve, and now Joshua’s time to lead has arrived…”

This convinced Moshe. Perhaps because, in this sense, he and his mission live on. The ultimate purpose of our lives is to lead, to assist, to help in the way only we can. Only we can know how best to do this in our generation, our community, our family. What a blessing it is to be a Jew—to be a link in the chain of our long history, to be part of the nation chosen to teach and to guide. Let us not forget our mission, so that the lives we lead will be truly meaningful.