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Parshot/Festivals

The meaning of life

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RABBI DAVID SHAW


Sandton Shul

He described how as a young boy on the island of Crete he had witnessed an accident during the German occupation of his remote village during the Second World War. He witnessed a motorcycle with a side-car that had crashed and when everyone had left the accident scene and everything was cleared away, all that remained were some pieces of broken mirror littering the road.

He found one piece of the shinny glass and since it was jagged he proceeded to round it off with some stone, fashioning it into a coin-sized mirror which he carried around in his wallet. He began to play with it and became intrigued by how he could reflect light into holes, crevasses and into dark closets, places where the sun would never shine.

It became a game and as he grew up, almost an obsession to bring light to places which knew only darkness. His childhood game became nothing less than a metaphor for what he might do with his life: to take truth, understanding, wisdom and knowledge and to shine that into many dark places by reflecting it there, just as his mirror reflected the light from its source, the sun.

In Pinchas, this week’s parsha, we read of Joshua’s appointment by G-d to lead the Jewish people. “Take Yehoshua the son of Nun, a man of spirit” (Bamidbar 27:18).The Gemara in Baba Batra (75a) mentions the reaction of the Elders to his appointment: “The face of Moshe was like the face of the sun, the face of Joshua is like the face of the moon. Woe for this shame, woe for this humiliation.”

Most of our commentators understand this, exactly like the Rashbam. “In so short a time, the glory of Israel’s leadership has been so diminished, for although Joshua was a prophet and a leader as was Moshe, he could never attain Moshe’s glory. How sad for us.”

The Chafetz Chayim understood the Torah’s words very differently. In the words of Rabbi Yehuda Zev Segal zt’l, the late Manchester Rosh Yeshiva, true, Joshua’s lustre paled beside the brilliance of Moshe Rabeinu.

However, they now all realised that at least he was a moon, a reflection of Moshe’s brilliance and yet, even so, he had outshone all of them, to go on and grow and to ultimately become Moshe’s replacement, by being able to reflect the light of his master to all those dark places, across space and across time.

He began as less than elders but finished as so much more. It was for this that they lamented, woe for this shame, woe for this humiliation. Anyone who would have striven and struggled, to the extent that Joshua did, to reflect his mentor’s light, could have risen to the heights that Joshua did. He did it. They did not.

As the moon to the sun reflects its light and as Joshua to Moshe reflected his light, may we all reflect and shine G-d’s light to all those places which without us would remain otherwise always dark. That is the meaning of life!

Shabbat Shalom and may your week be blessed!

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