Over the millennia it has been taught that the gematria, numerical of V’Etchanan is 515. We also learn that after pleading with God exactly  five hundred and fifteen times to complete his mission by leading he people into the land, God silences Moshe with the admonition that if he were to ask even one more time God would have no choice but to grant him his desire. Moshe then stands down and is silent.

Why, when so close to realizing his dream, to fulfilling the very reason he was created, would Moshe yield?

In previous lears I answered that Moshe realized that had he entered the land, could only have done so leading the Jewish People into our land as Melech HaMashiach, the Ulimate King, building the permanent Beit HaMikdash, never to be destroyed, Am Yisrael never to be exiled, veritably Olam HaBah, the Eternal Wolrd of Perfection. What’s not to love, to desire, to work to achieve? How on earth could he have just said, in effect, “No, thank you”?

In years past, I merely continued by saying that while perfect, this Eternity would be, somehow, a lower order of perfection and, furthermore, being eternal, would lock all humanity into a permanently defective reality, never to be improved. I would have marveled a the concept of there being orders of perfection, similar to the different orders of perfection that theoretical mathematicians mean when they talk about aleph-null, aleph-one, aleph-two and beyond. But I never really speculated about what would have made these “perfections” defective.

This year I think I have a clue fo begin speculating, hopefully a small insight which can help us really understand not so much the historical anomaly, but our task today to build towards and lead to a more perfect Perfection.

Much is made of the nature of Jewish wisdom which is based on disagreement and debate. The entire Talmudic tradition is in the form of Rabbi So-and-So says the rule is such-and-such while Rabbi says such-and-such. As the question is debated over generations as we try to determine exactly what is reality as reflected into the material world in terms of what actions maybe be mandated, others prohibited. Underlying this Talmudic technique is the plain reality that, as the Maharal from Prague long-ago stated, Since on God is perfect, everything else is necessarily imperfect. In other words, no matter how well studied or experimentally explored an idea, not individual man is capable of containing its truth in its entirely. Which means that any view of reality which hasn’t undergone the full development, so to speak, from the Written Torah through the Oral Torah, the experience of the first two Temples before the seemingly endless Exile which led to the development of this conversation-based reality, is inferior to the later stage of knowledge.

To use another metaphor, it is through the give-and-take of not-knowing requiring questioning and then receiving answers, the giving and receiving and giving and receiving which is also the essence of a fully mature relationship between the masculine and the feminine, which, itself, is the inner narrative of the Zohar and the remainder of our mystical, Kabbalistic tradition.

Had we entered the land with only the Torah received by Moshe at Sinai, without the maturation process, led only by a King, without allowing for the full development of a mature Feminine, although seemingly perfect and eternal, we would have found ourselves condemned to eternal childhood, to Mochin K’tanim, to a limited and smaller consciousness.

And Moshe, no matter how he longed to have fulfilled his individual “destiny” and ambition, embodying the ideal of humility, would never have imposed his selfishness on all future generations. So, a mere hairsbreadth from his desire, obeyed the Creator who told him to cease praying.

May we merit to continue to maturation, to first admit our own inadequacy and incompletion, to allow the other to complete us, and to in the perfect marriage envisioned in Shir HaShirim, Solomon’s immortal love poem, of fully equality and collaboration, Amen Ken Yehi Ratzon