This piece by Rabbi Kenigsberg was first published in the Hanassi Highlights, Wednesday 22 Jiuly. You can read it in Hebrew, thanks to ChatGPT, here.
The opening of Parshat Va'etchanan is one of the Torah’s
most poignant moments. After forty years of leading the Jewish people through
the wilderness, Moshe Rabbeinu asks for just one thing: the privilege of
entering Eretz Yisrael.
Chazal famously note that the numerical value of the word Va'etchanan
is 515, teaching that Moshe prayed no fewer than 515 times to be allowed into
the Land. Few images capture the power of perseverance in prayer more vividly
than this. Moshe refuses to give up, pouring out his heart again and again,
even as the answer seems increasingly out of reach.
Yet only a few verses later we encounter a puzzling
statement. Addressing the people, Moshe says: "Hashem became angry with me
because of you, and He did not listen to me."
The words seem difficult. The Torah itself makes clear that
Moshe Rabbeinu's inability to enter the Land was connected to the events at Mei
Merivah. How, then, can he say that Hashem refused his prayer "because of
you"?
Rav Soloveitchik, however, hears
something even deeper in these verses.
Notice the opening word: Va'etchanan - I
pleaded. It is singular. It is the prayer of one person standing alone.
Throughout his life, Moshe Rabbeinu never prayed only for
himself. After the sin of the Golden Calf, after the episode of the spies, and
on countless other occasions, he stood before Hashem on behalf of the Jewish
people. Their suffering became his suffering; their fate became his concern.
This time was different.
According to the Midrash, had the people joined Moshe in
prayer, the decree might have been overturned. The sin at Mei Merivah was
indeed his own. But the loneliness of Va'etchanan - the fact that he
carried this burden without the prayers of those for whom he had prayed so
often --- belonged to the people.
Perhaps this is one of the enduring lessons of communal
life.
A shul is not merely a place where people happen to pray in
the same room. It is a place where a community gathers to carry one another's
hopes, worries and burdens before Hashem. We rejoice together, we mourn
together, and we pray not only for ourselves but for all those around us too.
Shabbat Nachamu, the first Shabbat after Tisha b'Av, marks
the beginning of comfort and rebuilding. Perhaps that rebuilding begins not
only with grand visions of redemption but with simple acts of responsibility
for one another. The journey from the loneliness of Churban to the consolation
of Nechamah is paved by communities that notice one another, care for
one another, and pray for one another.
May we take to heart the lesson of Va'etchanan: that
no Jew should ever have to stand before Hashem alone. May our tefillot, offered
together and for one another, bring comfort, healing and redemption to all of
Am Yisrael.
Shabbat Shalom!
