A davar Torah for Shabbat, 15 Tishrei 5787 — First Day of Sukkot
After the teaching of Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein on Simchat Torah, and the closing of Moshe Rabbeinu
The Mishnah
עַלכָּרְחֲךָאַתָּהנוֹצָר, וְעַלכָּרְחֲךָאַתָּהנוֹלָד, וְעַלכָּרְחֲךָאַתָּהחַי, וְעַלכָּרְחֲךָאַתָּהמֵת, וְעַלכָּרְחֲךָאַתָּהעָתִידלִתֵּןדִּיןוְחֶשְׁבּוֹןלִפְנֵימֶלֶךְמַלְכֵיהַמְּלָכִיםהַקָּדוֹשׁבָּרוּךְהוּא.
Against your will you were formed, against your will you were born, against your will you live, against your will you die, and against your will you are destined to give an account and a reckoning before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.
— Rabbi Elazar HaKappar, Pirkei Avot 4:22.
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Life is never the script you write. Hashem writes all of our stories. That is not a slogan for a hard week. It is the operating system of Torah. The soul does not ask to enter the womb. The infant does not ask to leave it.
The sufferer does not always get to choose the hour of rest. And when the body is still, the Mishnah says the story is not over. There is still din v’cheshbon — judgment and an accounting — before the King who cannot be bribed.
Rambam hears in this Mishnah a careful line. The compulsion is over being formed, being born, living, and dying. It is not over fearing Heaven. “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” We do not write the plot. We do write whether we bow inside it.
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What Rabbi Goldstein taught from Moses
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, speaking from the reading of Simchat Torah — Vezot Haberakhah, the death of Moses — taught the sentence this community has been carrying: things do not turn out the way we wish. That is reality. Hashem writes the story. Moses is the greatest Jew in history, and even he does not get the ending he begged for.
On Simchat Torah we dance with the scroll and then we read that the dancer’s teacher dies in Moav. The happiest day of the year closes the Five Books with a man who can see the land and cannot enter it. Rabbi Goldstein’s point is not cruelty.
It is honesty. If Moses’ life is not a prosperity script, yours will not be either. Joy on Simchat Torah is not the joy of getting what you asked. It is the joy of still holding the book whose Author did not consult you.
The Tanakh: Moses asked. The answer was no.
Listen to the prayer. Moses does not hide the wanting.
I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying… Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan, that good hill country, and the Lebanon. But the Lord was angry with me because of you, and would not listen to me. The Lord said to me, Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again.
Deuteronomy 3:23–26.3
Then the last mountain. Hashem shows him everything — the land sworn to the fathers — and closes the door in the same breath.
The Lord said to him, This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, I will give it to your offspring. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the command of the Lord.
Deuteronomy 34:4–5.4
The Torah’s last human sentence is not “and Moses entered.” It is “and there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” The unmatched prophet is the one who did not get in. The children go in. Joshua is filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses laid his hands on him. The story continues without the man who carried it this far.
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Why? The Torah itself gives more than one door into that question. At Mei Merivah, “because you did not trust Me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel.” In Deuteronomy, “the Lord was angry with me because of you” — the generation of the spies.
Rabbi David Fohrman has taught that Moses’ well-meant system of intermediate judges already taught a people how to set a burden down and hire a middleman, and that distance later flowered in the spies. Different doorways. One fact: the greatest Jew in history stands on Nebo and does not write the last line.
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Why this belongs in the sukkah today
Today is not Simchat Torah. Today is the first day of Sukkot, and it falls on Shabbat. In the Diaspora we read Leviticus 22:26–23:44, maftir Numbers 29:12–16, haftarah Zechariah 14.
Next week the cycle will carry us to Hoshana Rabbah, then Shemini Atzeret, then Simchat Torah on 23 Tishrei, when Vezot Haberakhah is leyned in full. But the daily aliyah from Chumash today is already the seventh reading of Vezot Haberakhah: Moses goes up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo.
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So the festival and the death are already speaking to each other. This morning’s festival reading commands:
You shall dwell in booths seven days… so that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 23:42–43.8
A sukkah is a house you did not get to finish. The roof must be schach — plant matter that is detached, that leaks stars, that cannot be a fortress. The Mishnah says we make the sukkah our permanent dwelling for seven days and the house temporary. That is Avot 4:22 built in wood. Against your will you live under a roof you do not control. Hashem made Israel live in booths. The script of security is His, not ours.
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Zechariah, which we read today, does not promise that history will follow our draft. He promises that the Lord will be King over all the earth, and that the remnant of the nations will go up year by year to bow and to keep the feast of booths. The nations do not write that ending either. Jerusalem does not ask Washington for permission to be the place the world is told to climb.
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The joy that is left
Kohelet, the scroll of this season, says there is a time to be born and a time to die. You do not pick the first. You rarely pick the second. What you pick is whether, in the days between, you will call the work “hevel” and walk away, or call the work “the gift of God” and eat your bread in the sukkah anyway.
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Moses asked again and again. The Torah uses va’etchanan — I pleaded. Hashem said, rav-lach. Enough. And then Moses does the last thing a man can do when the script is taken from him: he blesses the son of Jacob. Vezot haberakhah. This is the blessing. He does not get the land. He gives the people his last words. That is surrender that still has hands.
Hag Sukkot
Shabbat and Sukkot meet this year on the same night. Rest, and a hut that can blow. Against your will you were born. Against your will you sit here, some of you far from the land Moses only saw.
Hashem writes the story. Our work is not to seize the pen. Our work is to dwell in the booth, to bless the children who will cross, and to give the account without pretending we authored the days.
Shabbat shalom. Chag sameach.
Hazan Gavriel ben David
Beit HaShoavah — Amarillo
Notes
1. Mishnah Avot 4:22 (some older printings number this mishnah later in chapter 4; the text is the same). The speaker is R. Elazar HaKappar. Full mishnah also teaches that the born are to die, the dead to live again, and the living to be judged; that He is designer, creator, discerner, judge, witness, and litigant; and that the grave is not a refuge.
2. Rambam on Avot 4:22, citing Berakhot 33b: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” Rambam notes the Mishnah does not say “against your will you sin.” Choice remains inside a life you did not request.
3. Deuteronomy 3:23–26. The verb va’etchanan is related to chinun, a plea for unearned grace. Rashi: Moses asked for a free gift, not wages.
4. Deuteronomy 34:1–5, the seventh aliyah of Vezot Haberakhah and the close of the Chumash. Cf. Deuteronomy 32:48–52, Ha’azinu: “You shall see the land from a distance, but you shall not enter.”
5. Deuteronomy 34:9–10. Joshua is filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses laid hands on him. The epitaph: lo-kam navi od b’Yisrael k’Moshe.
6. Numbers 20:12 (Mei Merivah). Deuteronomy 1:37; 3:26; 4:21 (“because of you”). Rabbi David Fohrman, Why Couldn’t Moses Enter the Land?, on Exodus 18 and the judges as a technical solution that created distance. Sotah 14a: Moses wanted the land for its commandments, not its fruit.
7. Diaspora leyning, first day of Sukkot when it falls on Shabbat, 15 Tishrei 5787 / 26 September 2026: Leviticus 22:26–23:44; Numbers 29:12–16; Zechariah 14:1–21. Simchat Torah in the Diaspora this year: 23 Tishrei / 4 October 2026, reading Deuteronomy 33:1–34:12 and Genesis 1:1–2:3. Daily Chumash today (Chabad cycle): Vezot Haberakhah, seventh portion, Deuteronomy 34:1–12.
8. Leviticus 23:33–44 is the festival list in this morning’s reading. Verses 42–43 give the reason for the sukkah: so generations will know that Hashem seated Israel in booths at the Exodus.
9. Mishnah Sukkah 2:9; Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 639:1 — dwell in the sukkah as one dwells in the house. The roof must be schach through which rain and stars can enter; a sealed fortress is invalid.
10. Zechariah 14:9, 16–19, today’s haftarah. The feast of booths becomes the pilgrimage of the nations after the war for Jerusalem.
11. Ecclesiastes 3:1–2; 3:13; 5:17–18. In many years Kohelet is read on Shabbat Chol HaMoed Sukkot. Because the first day is Shabbat this year, some communities read Kohelet on Shemini Atzeret. The scroll still belongs to the season.