Mattot/Masei 2009

There is a story I once heard about a Buddhist monk, who became a very important teacher in the Zen sect. When he was a boy, he was assigned to clean the room of the abbot of his temple. The abbot, being a Zen monk, had very little in the way of possessions, but he did have an extremely beautiful tea bowl, that was over one hundred years old. While cleaning the shelf on which the bowl stood, the young monk knocked it over, and it broke.

He immediately went to the abbot, and asked him, “Master, why do people die?”

His master replied “Everything on this earth has it’s time. Nothing lasts forever, and when a man’s time comes, he must go.”

The boy took the broken bowl out from under his robe and said “Master, it was your tea bowl’s time.”

This week we have a double portion, Mattot and Masei, the last two parshiot in the book of Numbers. In Mattot Gd tells Moses to attack the Midianites. After that, Gd tells Moses, you will die. Now I don’t know about you, but if I were Moses, I would have not have been in such a rush to attack the Midianites. This would be an army campaign that might take years of study. Just to be sure we were successful, I might want to go ahead and start a military academy, train up a few officers... no rush!

Moses begins the campaign immediately. The Midianites are defeated in parasha Mattot. But Moses does not die immediately. As we all know, he gives one last, rather long speech, which we will begin reading next week when we start דברים, the book of Deuteronomy. So why then do we have this depressing discussion of Moses’ death now? 

Many scholars believe that the book of דברים was written later than the first four books of the Torah. Some speculate that the actual story of the death of Moses, found at the end of דברים, was originally here, at the end of במדבר. 

We don’t know how Moses felt when he heard about his upcoming death. Even the ancient rabbis who wrote the Midrashim did not speculate on this. But they did comment on the fact that Moses began the campaign against Midian immediately. In fact, the midrash tells us that the people did not want to go to war because they did not want to loose Moses, but Moses insisted.

I remember once reading one of those pieces about the cute things little kids say about Gd. One kid said “Why does Gd let Jews die and then make more of them? Why doesn’t He just keep the Jews He has?” 

Its funny, but also not so funny. None of us would want a world in which no children could be born, but when a death occurs, we ask with the children, ‘why?’ 

Almost two weeks ago we were shocked by the sudden unexpected passing of Michael Saltz, whose tireless work helped keep this synagogue running. I think that one of the lessons of our Torah portion is that it doesn’t matter who you are, everyone dies. It doesn’t matter how good you are, it doesn’t matter what you do for others, it doesn’t matter how much Gd loves you. It doesn’t matter if you are a Moses or a Miriam. It doesn’t matter if you are a Mike Saltz.

And the timing will come when it comes, at a good time or at a bad time. If it comes before you get to the promised land, there will be a Joshua who will lead the people in your place. Life will go on, for better or for worse. It will never be the same, but it will go on.

Why must we die? Why must we die too soon? This is a question that we cannot answer. We don’t even know if there is an answer. But neither do we know why we were born. If there is a reason for one, there must be a reason for the other. We don’t deserve the sadness of death, but neither do we deserve the joy of life. It was a wonderful, unexpected gift, even though it does not last forever.

Perhaps we should just be grateful for the life we have received, all the more precious because we know it is limited.

We are sad about Mike, and it is proper to be sad. We are sad about all of those who have departed this synagogue, all of our family members and love ones who have gone before us. Let our tears be mixed with gratitude for their lives, and our pain tempered with the sweetness of the love we feel for them.