Weekly Reading – וְזֹאת הַבְּרָכָה – Vezot Ha’Bracha – And This Is the Blessing; Deuteronomy 33:1–34:12; Joshua 1:1–18
What remains of a person when a long life’s journey comes to an end? For Moses, it is not disappointment, but blessing. It is precisely in the last Parasha of the Torah that a surprising truth is revealed: we cannot always determine how something ends, but we can decide what emerges from that ending.
Every year, when we arrive at the Parasha Vezot Habracha, I have the feeling that this is not really an ending at all. Moses takes his leave. He blesses the tribes, ascends Mount Nebo, and departs from this world. The story would seem to end there. Yet just a moment later, we already return to the words: “In the beginning, God created…” As if the Bible wanted to remind us that an ending is not only the place where something stops. Sometimes it is also the place from which something new can emerge. And it is no coincidence that the last Parasha is called “Vezot Habracha...
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