The Sin of Moses

One of my most poignant memories is standing on the top of Mt. Nebo, in Jordan, where Moses died. Behind me was the dry, endlessly repeating “wilderness”; ahead, the first glimpse of water and the life that springs up around it--the Promised Land. What, I couldn’t help wondering, could Moses have done to deserve the cruel half-granting of his request to G-d: “Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan” (Deuteronomy 3:25).

The children of Yocheved and Amram*
are wearing out--too many years of lifting
the people’s spirits with a dance or a well,
approaching on their behalf the blinding fire
of Adoshem*, suffering their whining.
Miriam goes first, buried without fanfare,
as though she simply gave out, a spring gone dry,
leaving them without water. Then Aaron—
his vestments stripped like shorn epaulets—
is left by son and brother on Mt. Hor.
And though he lives, Moses learns his sentence:
to gaze across the Jordan, its green banks shocking
after so much sand, and breathe his last,
like in a fable, granted only the half
of his wish he meant as metaphor--to see,
but not cross over. G-d could always cite
a reason, having made them out of dust,
to find them undeserving: striking a rock,
smelting a calf, claiming a prophet’s mantle—
one was as flimsy as another. If death
is punishment, no one is innocent.

*The parents of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam
*A respectful term for G-d, which avoids saying the name used in prayer