blogs/rabbi-huberman

Make me a promise: if I tell you how the great Book of Judaism ends, you'll still agree to read it.

It's a beautiful book - the Torah - and the Sages have made it even more precious with a sweet interpretation at the end.

Spoiler alert! Within the final few paragraphs of the Torah, which we will read this Tuesday during the holiday of Simchat Torah, Moses dies.

It's a bittersweet ending to a challenging life. Exactly one hundred and twenty years after his birth in Egypt, our greatest teacher and leader ascends Mount Nebo to the summit known as Pisgah - opposite the city of Jericho - and, within sight of the Promised Land, he dies.

But how did he die?

The Torah provides a beautiful yet ambiguous phrase which through our history has launched a million conversations.

The Torah says that Moses died "Al Pi Adonai"-literally, "upon the command of God." What is remarkable about the word Pi is that is has two meanings.

One is related to the concept of "will," and the other linked to the word "peh," meaning mouth. 

So while traditional translations of Moses's last moments recount that Moses died according to God's will, our great mystics were inspired by a deeper and perhaps a more spiritual connection.

The Midrash, our ancient collection of myths and explanations, argues that the Torah is actually recounting that God reclaimed Moses's soul by through a gentle kiss.

It is an amazing connection between the end of the Torah and its beginning, in which God creates humanity by literally blowing life into a mass of organic materials.

God's final kiss to Moses reminds us of how fragile our own lives are. Our souls inhabit these