Shavuot Yizkor

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Monday, June 9, 2008

Shavuot is best known for being the day of the Giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai, but by tradition it is also identified as Moses’ yarzheit, this being another explanation for our reciting yizkor on this holiday. There is poignancy in Moses’ life coming to an end on the anniversary of the day he achieved his greatest glory. On Mt Sinai, he stood between God and the people of Israel. As the mountain quaked and the sky filled with thunder and lightening, the people were afraid, but Moses was fearless in his encounter with the Divine.

Now 40 years later, Moses is portrayed as fragile and afraid to die. In the Midrash he resorts to subterfuge. Told the day of his death, he gets up early that morning and spends the whole day writing scrolls of Torah, one for each tribe. He reasons thus: If I busy myself with Torah throughout the day, the sun will set, and the decree against me will be nullified. And the Midrash tells us that God liked this idea, and asked the sun to set, so that Moses would not have to die. But the sun would not allow the laws of nature to be violated, and God understanding that He too had to obey the laws that he had put into motion, allows Moses to die.

Rabbi Elliot Gertel, writing about this Midrash, points to two important lessons one can learn from this story.

The first is that Torah and good deeds should never be considered an insurance policy. The study of Torah and the performance of mitzvot are good in and of themselves but they are not a talisman that can protect us from all illness and tragedy. The reward of a mitzvah is that mitzvah, as Pirke Avot teaches. The reward is the sense that life is meaningful and well spent, the reward is the enhancement of our existence.

The second lesson is that God would have preferred Moses to live, as God doesn’t want any of us to die, and yet God accepts the limitations of the natural world, where humans are prey to illness and weakness and death. We are with God when we affirm life wherever possible, yet understand God is with us, when we need to face the reality that life is finite.

As we prepare to recite Yizkor this afternoon, we struggle with our desire to find that magic which will spare us all pain and suffering. May we be protected from that double despair that comes from feeling that our goodness has been betrayed if we must walk through the valley of the shadow. May we also find God as a friend and ally, as Moses did, and face our difficulties with the knowledge we are not alone.