Parshas Vezos Haberachah & Bereishis: Every End is a New Beginning

As we travel, Rabbi Ben and I are constantly moving.  Sometimes, we get the timing just right: we leave at the perfect moment, just when we are tired enough of a place to want to leave, but early enough that we still hold it fondly in our memories and wish to return one day.  But more often than not, and especially because we travel as a couple (and even though we became ‘one person’ under the chuppah, we do still have different feelings about things from time to time), we can rarely strike that perfect balance.  Either we leave too early and depart wishing desperately that we didn’t have to go, missing the place even before we’ve left it… Or we stay too long and we can’t get out of there fast enough, wishing never to see that place again.

Either way, we are leaving one place behind and entering a new one.  To leave one place necessarily means that we are entering another.  There is no alternative.  We leave Israel and enter Jordan, we leave India and enter Nepal, we leave Fiji and enter Australia.  No matter what our feelings about the place left behind, there is always something fresh and new and exciting in entering another place, even if it is one we have visited before.

This week on Simchas Torah we will read Parshas Vezos Haberachah, the last parsha in the Torah.  It is a powerful parsha, a description of Moses’s last day, where he gives his final blessings to all the tribes, gets one last, good, long look at the land of Israel he will never enter, and then dies.  It’s a heavy parsha and could even be understood to be a bit depressing.  After all, as we are reminded in the very last line of the Torah, never again has there been a prophet like Moses.  Yet, we read it on Simchas Torah, a day of joy and celebration of the Torah.  How can this be?

A hint can be found in the tradition that, at the end of the parsha, everyone in the congregation shouts, “Chazak! Chazak! Venischazeik!” (“Be strong! Be strong! And may we be strangthened!”)  We have reached the end and we need to ask Hashem to strengthen us.  And He does: by giving us the Torah and giving us a day to focus on celebrating it.  And so we spend the night of Simchas Torah dancing with the Torah, drinking l’chaims, and being joyful.  The Torah has ended, but yet it endures forever.

This year, Simchas Torah is followed immediately by Shabbat Parshas Bereishis and this too can teach us a lesson or two. First, we see that the Torah, which we “ended” the previous day, has not ended at all! Instead, we have simply started it again. We can learn from that that everything in life that seems to be an ending is not an ending after all… instead it is the start of a new opportunity, a new experience. We go from the death of the greatest prophet of all time to, the very next day celebration the beginning of G-d’s creation of the heavens and the earth.  It’s an amazing transformation!

Second, we see that the yearly Torah readings are cyclical, like our festivals and our holidays.  Indeed, all life events can, through the lens of Judaism, be viewed as cycles. In fact, in Judaism we even have the concept of gilgulim, or reincarnations, where a soul that still needs refinement can begin again as a new life in this world, seeking throughout generation after generation of life spans, to purify and perfect itself.  Even death, in Judaism, is not the end… it is just an opportunity to have a new beginning.

This is the reality of life.  Every end is a new beginning.  We may be leaving behind one place, one city, one relationship, one job or school, one stage of our lives… but we are always entering a new one.  Judaism teaches us that yes, the past is important, it shapes who we are and teaches us important lessons, but we are not to cry over something when it ends.  Rather, we are to look forward to the new beginning that is already starting.

Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom!

Chazak! Chazak! Venischazeik!