You Say You Want To Live Forever…
A Rabbi ruminates on this year, this life, and what comes next.
Rabbi Sara Mason-Barkin, 8.14.2020
Parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilech
Congregation Beth Israel, Scottsdale, Arizona
When we think about Moses, we remember him in his old age. Picture him in your mind’s eye. Do you see him with his long, white beard? Do you see him, with hardened wisdom in his eyes? The heavy wrinkles that tell the story of carrying a multitude of People through a vast and wild desert? When we picture Moses, we imagine a man, a leader, who holds in his very soul the generations enslaved in Egypt, the generations who died in the desert,
and the ones who were born on those same sands, destined to live the rest of their lives without him, in the promised land.
As our story goes, Moses lived to be 120 years old. He is both a main character and our primary narrator. Turning to the end of the book of Deuteronomy, we listen. He retells his story, and makes it our story.
This week the CBI book club finished our fifth book since the beginning of the pandemic. Each book has been wonderful in its own ways, mostly because reading together is a shared experience. And, whether we like the book or not, the words take root within us and lead us, at the very least, to a lively conversation.
And this month’s book was no exception. As an Elul exercise in High Holy Day preparation, we read Eternal Life, a novel by Dara Horn. As an author, Horn’s genre interweaves Jewish text and history with modern questions and ideas that strike a chord with us, here, today.
Eternal Life is the story of Rachel, an ordinary, aging woman — who also has a particular problem. She is a young mother living in Temple-era Jerusalem, when her son falls ill. As most mother’s would, she will do anything she can to save his life. And in a moment of terror and desperation, she makes a vow: she accepts the burden of Eternal Life in order to save her son.
And the vow works. But she never could have imagined at 18 years old what it would be like to still be alive, 2,000 years later. Whatever Rachel tries to do, she simply cannot die.Instead, she ages, and then experiences an almost-death, starting over once again at the age of eighteen.
And to think — Moses seemed old!
Imagine what one could witness over the course of 2,000 years. Rachel gives birth to hundreds of children. She lives through wars. She falls in love. She grieves. She comes of age again, and again, and again. Each new child reminds her of another that she’s lost, each new lesson reminds her of one she has learned before. While the trappings of daily life change around her, Rachel understands that life goes on, mostly unchanged.
In Nitzavim, this first parasha of this week’s double portion, Moses directs a ceremony establishing a covenant with God:
וְלֹ֥א אִתְּכֶ֖ם לְבַדְּכֶ֑ם אָנֹכִ֗י כֹּרֵת֙ אֶת־הַבְּרִ֣ית הַזֹּ֔את וְאֶת־הָאָלָ֖ה הַזֹּֽאת׃
V’lo etchem l’vadcheim Adonai koreit et-habrit hazot v’et-ha’alah hazot.
I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone,
כִּי֩ אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֨ר יֶשְׁנ֜וֹ פֹּ֗ה עִמָּ֙נוּ֙ עֹמֵ֣ד הַיּ֔וֹם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵ֑ינוּ
וְאֵ֨ת אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵינֶ֛נּוּ פֹּ֖ה עִמָּ֥נוּ הַיּֽוֹם׃
Ki et-asher yeshno po imanu omeid hayom lifnei Adonai Eloheinu
v’eit asher eineinu po imanu hayom.
But both with those who are standing here with us this day before Adonai our God and with those who are not with us here this day.
The Eitz Hayim commentary explains that by making the promise with ‘those who are not with us here this day’ means that “… The mutual commitments made here by God and by the people Israel are binding for all future generations….” (pg 1166)
Whether we hope to live into our nineties, or ad mea v’esrim, to one hundred and twenty, or for two-thousand years, this covenant is always ours.
It is our past, and it is our present. Parashat Nitzavim affirms the eternal nature of our promise.
This reminds me of a moment we are sad to miss in all of our socially distant b’nai mitzvah:
In regular times, we pass the Torah down from the hands of grandparents, to parents, to child. In our mind’s eye we see not only the family standing on the bima before us,but also the 2,000 years of people who had to pass Torah from hand to hand in order to arrive at this day. Then we look the other way, and see the 2,000 years of people yet to come who will receive Torah from the hands of this week’s young person. Even as the circumstances of this strange time force us to eliminate the physical ceremony, the room still fills with the presence, and the teaching and the love of every generation.
Speaking to our B’nai Mitzvah students we acknowledge:
when you chant these ancient words, we see that our covenant thrives in you.
As the ancient rabbis taught, ein muchar u’mukdam ba’Torah, or ‘there is no beginning or ending in the Torah.’ It’s teaching is not bound by the practicalities of time, or age, or seasons.What was ours 2,000 years ago is ours still. It not only withstands tragedy, and trauma, but carries us through as well.
This week, commemorating the events of September 11, 2001 — all of us who lived through that day remember where we were. And I’m sure that most of remember, too, the shabbat that followed. We remember where we prayed, how we cried, how our community brought a touch of comfort and consistency as the world around us changed.
What is, perhaps, most devasting — and most inspiring — about the tragedy of 2020 and Covid19 is our inability to gather in the way that our tradition prescribes. And yet, in spite of this, we have still found our ways to elevate the relevance of Torah, for its wisdom to carry us forward. Like our ancestors who covered the floors of the synagogue with sand so no persecutor would hear their footsteps, or the generations who sewed the pages of the siddur into the lining of their coats so it would not be forgotten, we refuse to allow circumstances to break an eternal promise.
After every almost-death, Rachel, the immortal heroine of Dara Horn’s novel, becomes eighteen again. Each time, she starts over with what she calls the next ‘version’ of herself. And in each time around, she is slightly more evolved, slightly changed from the version before, slightly new even though she is always ancient. Every past remains a part of her. Every baby she has rocked, every husband she has loved. And while surprises are rare once one has lived for 2,000 years, there are, still, a few. Ein muchar u’mukdam ba’Rachel, there is no beginning and no ending for Rachel.
We are unlikely to live forever.
Yesh muchar u’mukdam lanu -
We do have a beginning, and we do have an end.
We also have our own chance at becoming another version of ourselves.
Another change to start again.
The Jewish new year arrives next week. And once we enter 5781, immediately we turn to face our future. Traditionally, on Yom Kippur men wear kittels — a white robe worn for important life moments, and also in death. We fast, we forgo luxuries like leather and makeup and showers, we release ourselves from the earthly entrapments of this life. On that holiest day of atonement, our fingertips brush another realm, quite nearly touching a life beyond this one. We acknowledge our fragility, our mortality, our destiny. And as we pass through the gates at the end of Neilah, we come back to earth. At this moment our next version begins.
None of us knows exactly how long we will live.
Surely, It won’t be 2,000 years.
And it probably won’t be 120 years, either.
But we still are called to the mountain, nodding our heads as Moses reminds us that time is irrelevant when it comes to holy promises.
And so, with each new year, with each new version of ourselves, we have a chance to start again. We carry with us the wisdom of the past versions, and all of the generations before. We hold fast to our Torah, the winding scroll that connects our beginning to our ending, and back again.
It is true that this life will end.
And it is also true that we are eternal.
With the new year upon us, may the best version of ourselves and our people be the one that carries on. With an ancient promise in our hearts and lasting covenant in our mouths, we look forward. And there, we glimpse a life that waits beyond.
