Shabbat Greetings

Rabbi Malinger is currently on sabbatical until Monday, August 18, 2025. Even though he is taking the time to restore his spiritual wellness and taking a course to strengthen professional skills, he wanted to share different perspectives of the weekly Torah portion from his fellow rabbinic colleagues in the Reform Movement – please enjoy.

Rabbi Amy Schneiderman of Columbia, Maryland, shares: We learn in this week’s Torah portion that begins the Book of Deuteronomy, Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22), in Moses’s first summary address to Israel in their final year in the wilderness, he recounts the episode of the spies and excoriates the people for their fear, complaining, and lack of trust in God. Then, peculiarly, Moses adds: Because of you Adonai was incensed with me too, saying, “You shall not enter [the Land] either” (1:37). 

This contradicts the account of Israel’s second stop at Meribah, recounted in Numbers 20: But Adonai said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them” (Numbers 20:12). Moses is barred from entering Eretz Yisrael because of his behavior at Meribah. Yet in Deuteronomy 1:37, Moses blames his fate on the people.

Ramban attempts to resolve this discrepancy by revising Moses’s words: “[Moses] is stating: ‘Behold, the sin you committed then in the affair of the spies withheld from you the good Land, and yet you continued to sin another time [i.e., at Meribah] until you prevented me as well, from crossing [the Jordan River].’” But how does this help? The people did not sin at Meribah. Moses and Aaron failed to trust God; they alone were punished. 

At Meribah, after forty years of grueling leadership, and having lost Miriam, Moses is burned out. Does that account for his revisionist telling and attempt to deflect blame onto Israel? Do we do the same?

Ramban seeks to harmonize the text by suggesting that Moses is not misrepresenting the facts but re-framing them to make a broader point: that Israel’s persistent disobedience created a context in which even their leaders faltered. According to Ramban, Moses is saying, in effect, “Your pattern of rebellion began with the spies and continued until Meribah. That cumulative burden led to the outcome that I, too, would not enter the Land.” This does not deny that the immediate sin at Meribah was Moses’ and Aaron’s alone; rather, it places that failure in a larger narrative of communal strain and provocation. In this view, Moses is not so much deflecting blame as emphasizing the intertwined fate of leader and people.

Yet, our question pushes deeper: is Moses revising history out of burnout, pain, or even bitterness? Possibly. After decades of leading a difficult people, and after the personal loss of his sister, Miriam, Moses may indeed be expressing a more human and emotional perspective. His words in Deuteronomy, spoken on the brink of death, are reflective and sermonic, not merely historical. And yes, we often do the same. In moments of exhaustion or disappointment, we may reinterpret past events to make sense of our present pain. We may blur lines of responsibility, seeking meaning or solace. Moses’ “revision” then is not just a narrative device—it’s a deeply human response, one that invites us to reflect on our own tendencies to re-frame history in light of our emotional truths.

SHABBAT SHALOM