The Courage to Keep Becoming (Ki Tavo)
Rabbi Menachem Creditor and Betsy Stone, Ph.D.
 |
| Butterfly Effect, Robert Roy Britt |
Parashat Ki Tavo arrives as Moses feels his mortality pressing against him. Standing near the end of his life, he tries to pour everything he has learned into the people he has led for forty years - a people who want to be led and resist being led, who demand independence and then plead to be cared for. In psychological terms, they resemble adolescents: “Help me. Leave me alone. Listen to me. Fix this.” Moses has spent a lifetime inside that impossible tension.
Perhaps Moses never wanted this life. He might have remained content as a prince or a shepherd. But human beings often grow most profoundly when life asks us to do what we would not have chosen. Moses’ expansion as a person happens through the demands he initially doubts he can meet. If we are fortunate, we spend our lives near the edge of our capacity - not falling from the cliff, but continually wondering: Can I do this? Can I become the person this moment requires?
By Parshat Ki Tavo, Moses is no longer the person who could have remained peacefully in Midian. Leadership has changed him. Relationship has changed him. Love has changed him. He cares too deeply to withdraw.
This is also how enduring relationships work. A strong and enduring marriage is not one marriage but perhaps 150 marriages: two people continually changing, adapting, and choosing one another again. The relationship changes because the people change; the people change because the relationship matters. What sustains love is not an unchanging history but a renewing commitment.
Pirkei Avot teaches that love dependent upon a particular thing disappears when that thing disappears, while love that is not dependent upon something endures (PA 5:16). Enduring love is not static. It lasts precisely because it can stretch without surrendering its deepest commitment. It makes room for growth, disappointment, repair, and return.
This distinction matters in a time when we speak constantly about “community” while experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and estrangement. Community can remain an abstraction. Connection requires presence. It develops incrementally - in conversation, disagreement, attention, and the willingness to remain beside another person. We cannot simply announce that we are connected. We test and strengthen connection through repeated encounters. We must also recover connection with ourselves - the capacity to sit quietly without immediately reaching for a screen to shield us from solitude.
Ki Tavo commands us to ritualize gratitude by retelling our story: “My ancestor was a wandering Aramean. (Deut. 26:5)” The declaration is not a complete history. It is a statement of commitment. We choose which memories will orient us, which values will guide us, and which story we will carry forward.
That may be the truest form of an ethical will. An ethical will should not say, “This is who you must become.” It should say, “This is how I tried to live. I failed at times, but these are the values that steered me.” Moses sometimes confuses those two messages, as parents and teachers often do. We offer an ethical structure and then struggle to relinquish control over what the next generation will build from it.
Even God, as portrayed in Torah and interpreted by Jewish tradition, must learn to make room for human freedom. Creation requires divine contraction - the willingness to cede power so another can become. Moses ultimately must do the same. He will not complete the journey, but he appoints Joshua and prepares the people to continue without him.
The deepest inheritance Moses leaves is therefore not perfection. It is the courage to keep becoming, the humility to release control, and the love that remains committed even when the future will not look exactly as we imagined. This is the sacred work of leadership, parenthood, friendship, marriage, and Elul: to honor what has been, remain present to what is, and make room for what - and who - may yet emerge.
