Moses Readies the People for His Absence

This week, my sister is sending her youngest child off to college. Ironically, my niece will be attending the University of Maryland, where my son Jonah is also a student. My sister asked friends and family to make short videos with advice for someone going off to college for the first time. It made me reflect on the advice I gave to my own children as they embarked on their first steps toward independence. What words of wisdom did we share with them? Yet more important than any advice we offered in those final moments was the question of whether we had truly prepared them for this journey into independence. We knew that any last-minute advice might not stick. The weight of the life lessons we had tried to impart over the past 18 years pressed heavily on us, just as I’m sure it does on my sister now.

In our weekly Torah reading cycle, Parshat Ekev, we find ourselves in the middle of Moses’ speeches to the people as they prepare to leave him and cross over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. What advice, what words of wisdom, does Moses offer? Did he also feel the weight of wondering whether the laws and teachings he had imparted over the past forty years would take root in their hearts as they journeyed through the desert?

Like Moses, there comes a time when we must let go of those we have guided. We must trust that we have instilled in them the morals and ethics we hope they will embody. We have to believe that we have given them the tools they need to thrive. Ultimately, like Moses with the Israelites, we must leave it to them to find their way in their new world.

For all those who have children going off to college or leaving the nest for the next chapter of their lives, may we find the strength and courage to navigate this transition.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Bradley Tecktiel