Prayer Without Limit
D’var Torah for
Parashat Va’etchanan
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
The imagery of this week’s portion, Va’etchanan (“I pleaded,” Deut. 3:23—7:11) is rich and powerful. Moses pleads with God to be allowed to enter
the Promised Land, but is told instead to climb a mountain and merely view the
land from afar. Moses is not granted his
prayer. He will not be able to enter the
land to which he led his people; it will be Joshua, the warrior, who will lead
them onward instead.
And so, overcoming anger and frustration, Moses turns to the
people and proceeds to remind them of their own encounter with God, forty years
earlier, at Mount Sinai. The fiery
mountain, the smoke and clouds and God’s booming voice are recalled, the
people’s fear and wish that Moses speak for God, the commandments and
ordinances that are powerfully uttered and willingly accepted. It is a moment that Moses urges the
Israelites to remember forever, to carry with them throughout the generations,
throughout their journeys. It is the
crux of their relationship with God, the power behind their survival and the
context for their purpose on earth.
One would think that after all Moses had done for the
Israelites—and for God—he would be granted his prayer. Yes, Moses had made some mistakes, but then
who of us does not? Yet shouldn’t his
relationship with God—direct, upfront, face-to-face—count for something? If ever there was anyone whose pleas and
prayers at this moment should have been heard, it would be Moses!
There is much discussion of whether God’s refusal to accept
Moses’s prayer was justified or not, whether the punishment was proportional to
the sin. Leadership has its own heavy
price; even Moses was not exempt from responsibility; his momentary loss of faith
(striking the rock instead of commanding it to yield water) bore long-term
repercussions.
But there’s another lesson that is less often talked about
in this story, and that is the limit of prayer.
I thought about this yesterday while watching a moving story
about one of the fallen soldiers in Operation Protective Edge. Shai Kushnir, z”l, of blessed memory, was an
only child, his father’s only son, the only connection to the future that his
family, immigrants from Russia, would ever have. As an only child, Shai had to get his
father’s signature before he could join a combat unit. For a long time, the father refused to honor
Shai’s wishes. In the end, however, he
couldn’t resist his son’s pleas any more.
Tears streaming down his face, the father told how, if he could change
anything at all, if he could go back in time to any one moment, the moment he
signed that paper would be it. “There’s
nothing left now,” he said, his voice breaking.
Shai’s grandmother, her head covered with a mourning veil,
spoke tearfully with her heavy Russian accent.
“Why does there have to be war?” she cried over and over. “There is room for everyone here. Why do they have to fight wars?”
For several days, her husband, Shai’s grandfather, had lied
to her. Hoping to spare her worry and
pain, he didn’t tell her that Shai was fighting deep in Gaza; he was in the
Golan, up north, he told her instead.
And so Shai’s grandmother turned her gaze to the mountains, to the
distant north, and she prayed. Devoutly,
she said the “Sh’ma” twice a day, beseeching God to protect her only
grandchild, to keep him safe from harm, distant from war. There was a pause in her story. Then, looking up, she said, “I guess God
didn’t hear my prayers.”
How many other such prayers were not heard? How many pleas made by parents, grandparents,
brothers, sisters, girlfriends, boyfriends, fiancées and children were not
accepted by God? It would be blasphemous
to say that God accepted some prayers but not others. We don’t understand God’s vast plans, but if
goodness and prayer held any guarantee at all, none of those killed and wounded
would be hurt, and there would be no evil in the world at all.
But isn’t the purpose of prayer to protect us? Is the lesson
that Moses teaches us in Va’etchanan
not that, as long as we say the “Sh’ma” and the “V’ahavta,” that as long as we
obey the Ten Commandments, we would be safe and that our life would be blessed
and long?
This, however, is the real lesson of this powerful
portion. This is what Moses learns when
he pleads for the privilege of leading his people into the Promised Land. Only when he understands and internalizes the
reason behind God’s refusal can he turn to the Israelites and teach them what
he just learned.
What Moses had hoped for was not merely to continue leading
his people. Nor did he wish—for more
than a moment, at any rate—for his sin to be forgiven. Moses was too wise, too old, too humble to
wish for those. Moses’s greatness was
always in his great concern for his people.
What he truly prayed for was to have that moment of holiness, the encounter
of God and Israel at Sinai, to last forever.
More than anything else, he wished that the holy experience they all
sensed together then would never end.
His most devout prayer was that God’s holiness would encompass the
entire people, forever, like a tallit that was all blue, endless as the vast
heaven, with no loose threads or overhanging fringes.
But that was not to be.
Heaven and earth are not one and the same. Reality has its own rules. There’s death, and pain and suffering. There are victories and there are
losses. There’s a time for war and a time
for peace.
That’s why Moses enjoins his people to remember the moment when they
heard and saw God’s presence at the Mountain, to keep it in their minds and
hearts. Wherever else life might take
them, that’s where holiness would exist for them.
Prayer might not protect us from bullets, missiles and bombs,
but prayer does keep us on a path of justice, love and compassion.
In yet another touching moment associated with Operation
Protective Edge, Lt. Eitan, the commanding officer of Hadar Goldin, z”l, came
to pay a condolence visit at Hadar’s home.
Hadar, you might remember, was the soldier who, for a couple of days,
was feared kidnapped by Hamas.
Terrorists emerged from a tunnel, fired on our soldiers and snatched Hadar’s
body before running back into their hellhole.
It was Lt. Eitan who, upon realizing that his friend’s body was missing,
without a moment’s hesitation and against IDF regulations, leaped into the
tunnel and chased the terrorists. Now,
with the fighting nearly over, he came to return Hadar’s personal effects to
his family. One by one, he gave them
Hadar’s notebook, cell phone, prayer book and his tefillin (phylacteries).
Hadar, of blessed memory, was an observant Jew. He wore a kippah on his head; he observed the
Commandments; he said the Sh’ma and the V’ahavta three times a day. He carried the memory of Israel’s eternal encounter
with God in his heart, mind and body.
That didn’t save his life, but that is what made him a good person, a
righteous man, a true hero in Israel.
Prayer has its limits, as so many of us have come to know
and understand. But prayer also has
enormous power. It brings holiness into
our life, surrounding us with an eternal tallit that has no ends, sheltering us
in God’s embrace even in the midst of war.
This is what Moses came to understand at this pivotal—and
possibly greatest—moment in his life, when he accepted God’s verdict, when he
realized that now it was Joshua’s turn to lead the Israelites, into battle,
into the gritty reality of life, into the Promised Land.
© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman
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