Torah Study Blog

The Jewish holiday season comes to a close this weekend with the holiday of Simchat Torah, or the “Rejoicing of the Torah.” In pre-covid times, at Temple Israel we would unfurl the entire Torah scroll so that the congregation can see it all – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – and celebrate this millennium-old document. A Torah reader would chant the final words of Deuteronomy and then, immediately, begin reading the first words of Genesis; so that we are never “finished” with the Torah.

The writing of all five books of the Torah is attributed to Moses. But this becomes problematic in the final chapter of Deuteronomy when we learn that:

Moses went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo ... and the Lord showed him the whole land ... And the Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ‘I will assign it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there.”

So Moses the servant of the Lord died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of the Lord. He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab ...; and no one know his burial place to this day. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated.” Deuteronomy 34: 1-7)

According to this narrative, Moses did not die a natural death; he was as lively as ever. He was vigorous! He was an active and vital part of the community until God tells him to die - and then he dies. Isn’t that how we would all like to die? The medieval commentator Rashi claimed that the description that Moses died at the command of the Lord literally meant that God used his mouth – he kissed Moses, and then Moses died. A very peaceful and beautiful way to go.

But the medieval commentators also remarked on the dichotomy that the words of the Torah describe the death of Moses, but the words are also all attributed to Moses. How could he have died and then written about it?

Medieval commentators also wondered about the use of the pronoun in the sentence, “He buried him.” Who is the “He” that buried him? Did God bury Moses himself? But this brings up a new obstacle: Jewish laws tells us that a dead body is impure (Numbers 19:11). It is inconceivable that God would be near an impurity. The medieval commentator Abarbanel solves this conflict by stating that, ever since he ascended Mount Sinai, Moses abstained from all human appetites: which is another way of saying Moses did not live like other humans, and therefore had no ritual uncleanliness.

The medieval commentator Rashbam tells us that the literal translation of the phase would be, “He was buried;” a translation with which our own Rabbi Jaech and our scholar-in-residence, S. David Sperling, agree. But this plain translation brings with it its own set of problems. If Moses was buried by a person, that person knows where Moses was buried. However, the passage in Deuteronomy tells us that, “no one know his burial place to this day.”

The medieval commentator Hizkuni tells us that it is better that no one knows where Moses was buried for two reasons: First, people like the idea of being buried near important people. If people knew where Moses was buried, they would want to cement their own immortality by being near the great leader in perpetuity. Additionally, when the Messiah comes and dead bodies are re-animated, people buried near Moses are sure to be re- animated, too.

The second reason is that keeping the death and burial of Moses so secretive makes it harder for people to try to raise Moses from the dead to consult with him. In 1 Samuel 28, King Saul procures the services of a medium to bring up the Prophet Samuel in order to consult with him. But there are passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that specifically forbid trying to speak with the dead. Because we have an example in the Bible of someone speaking with the dead, and prohibitions against it, we know that this was an action that was practiced in biblical times.

Statements in the Torah that forbid something are meaningful to scholars today. There would be no need to forbid an action that was never done. In other words, there was no reason to state the painfully obvious. The Torah does not tell us that the sky was blue. Everyone was in agreement that it was blue. But statements that forbid, or deny, are significant. Passages in Leviticus say it is forbidden to have sex with your brother’s wife, or your

neighbor’s wife. Leviticus also forbids stealing and insulting the deaf. These are just a tiny sampling of forbidden actions. Because they are listed, they must have been happening.

The statement that “no one knows” is a denial that should give us pause. If everyone in biblical times agreed that no one knew the location of Moses’s grave, that fact would not need to be stated.

In 1868, Frederick Klein was a missionary in modern-day Jordan when he was shown a stone with ancient lettering on it, which he thought might be important. Today that stone is known as the Moabite Stone, or the Mesha Stele, and is an extra-biblical source that has some parallels to the biblical tales and proves that at least some parts of the Bible are based in historic fact.

The Moabite Stone recounts a time when the Moabite king waged war against Israel in an effort to take over the town of Nebo, a town located in modern-day Jordan. The Moabites were successful, according to the text, killing all 7000 inhabitants and taking the vessels devoted to the worship of the Israelite god, Yahweh.

This text tells us that there was an important Israelite shrine containing artifacts to Yahweh in the town called Nebo. You’ll recall from the passage in Deuteronomy that Moses died at Mount Nebo and was buried. The text on the Moabite Stone hints at the possibility that there could have been a Moses-figure, and it is conceivable that a shrine grew at the location that was known as the burial place of this Moses-figure.

Irrefutable proof of a burial place of Moses, or even that the man Moses himself existed, has not been found. However, the fact that the Torah makes a statement that no one knows where Moses was buried is evidence that some people claimed otherwise.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter