(Delivered July 25, 2026)

A dear friend of mine is sitting shiva for his mother this week. Although we have plans to visit in person for Shacharit tomorrow morning, I didn’t want to take the chance that we might oversleep or have car troubles or whatnot. So I attended the zoom shiva yesterday. It was there that I heard my friend use a phrase I’ve been mulling over ever since. He talked about how part of the process of shiva is discerning his mother‘s forever story. After all, now that she’s gone, there are no new memories to make, no new conversations to have together. The file is closed. Her forever story takes shape as memories and moments get sculpted into the architecture of a life.

Part of the poignancy of forever stories is that in some sense, they’re not really forever. Any story is just a snapshot. Just as becoming parents helps us to recast our own parents in a different light; memories and impressions of the past will change as we do. And of course, we almost always have some kind of unfinished business. The file never really closes. Even when someone dies after having lived a long and fruitful life, even when we’ve had the opportunity to say goodbye and thank you, and I’m sorry, and I love you, the mystery of death—its very power—is that it always leaves us with question marks and words unsaid. Likewise, with other moments of transition, moments with significantly less finality, there is still and always the sense of things left undone.

Life’s rhythm comes in stops and starts and ellipses. Even forever stories shift as the light changes, as we grow and change and reconsider.

Our Torah teaches this, with the narrative of Moses’s life as Exhibit A. Throughout Sefer Dvarim—the Book of Deuteronomy—Moses is wrapped up in the drama of an aspect of his life that remains tantalizingly unfinished. In various ways over the course of the book, this theme recurs like a spiral as Moses works it out. And if we are sensitive readers, we can learn from his process.

This week’s reading, Parshat Vaetchanan, begins with a heartrending scene, as Moses pleads with God for the chance to bring his life‘s work all the way to fruition. 

וָאֶתְחַנַּן אֶל־ה’ בָּעֵת הַהִוא
And I implored God at that time

Interestingly, the opening word וָאֶתְחַנַּן takes the root letters for grace חנן (chet nun nun) and puts them in a relatively unusual conjugation for this root: the hitpael. (The Hebrew word for praying לְהִתְפַּלֵל also takes this form.) There isn’t a precise translation that makes sense in English for the hitpael with these two examples. But it can’t be an accident that they take the same form, a form which in more easily translatable cases, indicates the reflexive, or something one does to or for oneself—like, I told myself.

I think, for Moses, there is a sense that he feels his very self depends on God’s answer. 

He continues 

אַתָּה הַחִלּוֹתָ לְהַרְאוֹת אֶת־עַבְדְּךָ אֶת־גָּדְלְךָ
You have just begun to show your servant your greatness…

In other words, You started this thing with me, God. Why does it have to end? This is agonizingly human! We so often say Dayeinu but we don’t always mean it. It’s awfully hard to feel like what we have is enough.

Moses so dearly wants to see the end that sometimes I think he forgets the beginning or begins to devalue it. If someone had said to him, look at where you’ve come from! I think it would be hard for him to hear. But truly, let’s look at where he came from:  

Here is Moses: who dodged genocide as a baby and was rescued for greatness; who grew up in privilege; who was given an extravagant second chance after he made a youthful mistake; who overcame his own perceived limitations to seize an opportunity to do something of enormous consequence; and who became the leader of a people and a revered figure we still talk, think, study, and sing about today.

And yet, this isn’t enough for him. There is a reason our tefillah calls for us to say שַׂבְּעֵֽנוּ מִטּוּבֶךָ—let us be satisfied with Your goodness. It’s so easy to disregard the goodness in front of us, in search of that one more thing that we think will make it all lock into place.

And when Moses asks for that one more thing, saying, אֶעְבְּרָה־נָּא—please let me cross over—you can hear the pain in his voice. Between the alef and the ayin, it’s almost impossible to pronounce this phrase without a little catch in the throat.

The unfinished business of Moses’s world threatens to overcome him in this moment. And yet, as I said, in our times of transition we all tend to think of what is still unfinished, no matter how much wisdom and experience we’ve accrued, no matter how deep and rich our relationships are.

I’m feeling this acutely as the summer passes. In less than a month, my younger son will be starting college. There is nothing like preparing to send your youngest off to college to get you thinking about the passage of time. Looking back on these past two decades, what stays in my mind—more than the cliches of baby’s first steps or first words—are all the things I’ve tried to tuck into my childrens’ souls on the off beats. The summer days of Ima Day Camp, when we went looking at bugs or walking to the local deli for a root beer to share: those days were not about the bugs and the root beer floats per se (although the latter were delicious!) but rather about trying to teach the boys to notice the world around them, to attend to even the smallest creatures, to delight in simple treats that we could prepare together. All those years, we were accruing life experience and deepening our tender connections. And the day when I tossed them the house key so they could tumble home through the woods without me for a Brother Party was more about allowing them the right amount of freedom than it was about the key or the woods. 

And still it feels like so much is unfinished. How have we not yet watched The Shawshank Redemption together? When will I teach him how to whistle? Have I imparted enough of our Jewish values to enable both boys to lead lives of kindness and usefulness? No matter how much I’ve tried, I always wish for more time together. Like Moses’, my voice will surely crack as I say goodbye to him and leave him on campus that first time. 

Through the story of Moshe Rabeinu—Moses, our teacher—the Torah gives over this bittersweet lesson: that nobody, even the greatest and most revered person, gets everything they want. All of us, as we move from stage to stage, want to have more, do more, be more. Like Moses, we watch helplessly as the past shrinks too quickly into the distance. Like Moses, we long for one more chance. And like Moses, eventually, we accept what’s real, stir up our courage and our אֶמֻנָה—our faith—and lovingly toss the house key to the next generation. 

Shabbat shalom!