“The Torah ends with the people so close they can see the Promised Land, but their arrival there is in the future. The Torah doesn’t end with the end — the conclusion, the fulfillment, the denouement of the story. It doesn’t end with Israel’s arrival in the land. The people are still on the journey. Moses dies. The fulfillment of what was promised to the patriarchs begins in the next book, Joshua.”
Today, Below the Bible Belt, we end the Torah, as we read the last chapter of the Book of Words, exhaling with Moses for the last time. The above quote is by Prof.Richard Elliott Friedman, whose wise commentary and translation was so often our pillar of fire through this wilderness. As we wrap up the Torah and go on to the next section of the Hebrew Bible, he helps us see that even this dramatic end may not be ‘the end’, is actually just one more step towards the longer journey, and was not always considered the final moment of Torah at all:
“This fact that the fulfillment of the promise lays ahead led some of the early modern critical scholars to speak of a six-book work, a Hexateuch, Genesis-Joshua, instead of a Pentateuch, Genesis -Deuteronomy. In fact, scholars who viewed the Torah in terms of its sources saw it continuing into Joshua...The story really culminates in Joshua — with Abraham’s descendants settling in the land and beginning their life there — not in Deuteronomy.
Moses’ farewell song, Ha’azinu, dramatizes this fact: it points to the future.
it really was better to have the Torah end where it does: looking forward. It ends looking to the whole future of the people of Israel — really to the whole future of the world.”
Friedman points out that in the Ha’azinu poem that we read last week, several rare expressions show up for the first time since the first chapters of the Torah - alluding to the creation of the world and the Garden of Eden:
“What does this mean — that instead of directing us forward to Joshua, Moses’ song directs us back to the beginning, to Genesis? It implies: Start over. Read the Torah again. And when you arrive back to this point in a year (or three), start over and read it again. And when we’ve read it many times, and we’ve become clearer and clearer about our past, then, like God (imitatio Dei), we’ll be better equipped to see what our future will be.”
Perhaps no better way to illustrate this fusion between past, present and future, human and divine, as in the last thing Moses does: His kiss of death.
You wouldn’t know it from most English translations but the death of Moses is not just commanded by God’s word as the final word of the Book of Words - it’s actually what happens when the Divine mouth meets the mouth of Moses:
וַיָּ֨מׇת שָׁ֜ם מֹשֶׁ֧ה עֶבֶד־יְהֹוָ֛ה בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מוֹאָ֖ב עַל־פִּ֥י יְהֹוָֽה׃
Moses the servant of Adonai died there, in the land of Moab, by God’s word” (or by God’s Mouth.)
The final word in this verse ‘Pi’ is often translated as ‘God’s word’ or 'command’ but the literal translation is ‘Mouth’.
According to mystical Jewish traditions, the mouth-to-mouth moment, this final kiss, is when Moses exhales himself into the Creator of all life, and vanishes. There is no body left, no grave to visit, no shrine to welcome pilgrims. Moses and the Torah that will bear his name, is sealed with a kiss.
Where does the kiss go? Onwards, inwards, into the beginning, where the spirit of the divine will hover over the deep and Adam will inhale their first breath, and on, and on, and on. We are it, breathing it in, and out, right now.
We kiss the spot in the Torah Scroll each time we start to chant, and now again when we complete these first five books. We bless this moment with the Hebrew word CHAZAK - Strength! a call for inner strength, for tenderness, for stamina and stability that will guide us forward.
Here’s to the strength and stamina as we move onwards on this Below the Bible Belt journey, joining Joshua tomorrow as he prepares to lead us across the Jordan River, into a future full of reminders of what’s it like to learn from the past about the best way to always be present to more moral and loving living, the power of story, and the timeless gift of life. Ongoing. with a kiss.
Image: C. Brancusi, The Kiss
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TODAY! 10/24 1pm ET I will be joined by Dr. Rachel Havrelock, author of The Joshua Generation and Rabbi David Kline, to get ready for the Journey with Joshua.
The Book of Joshua is 24 chapters long and I invite you for a one-month journey of politics and myth, power and conquest, then and now. What’s at stake when land becomes a homeland?
Join us to get ready on this free 60 min. Zoom conversation:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85448738911?pwd=dmRIRndNNDhjaXZsVjh5K3dSYUdLQT09
Meeting ID: 854 4873 8911
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
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Genesis begins with a breath blown into clay; it ends with a kiss. A kiss is breathless---neither in nor out---a fitting entrance into eternity.
What an amazing journey it’s been, traveling with Amichai “Below the Bible Belt” from Leviticus through Deuteronomy! I’m grateful for today’s enlightening session and have already ordered Rabbi Haverlock’s book to accompany me as we enter the Book of Joshua. Yasher koach to Rabbi Amichai for undertaking this labor of love and for sharing his wisdom and brilliant insights with us. Chazak Chazak V'nitchazek!