Vzōs habroḥo and the World to Come / וזאת הברכה און עלום הבא

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim (Tōrah commentaries) written by an orthodox atheist transsexual anarchist, with guest posts from comrades. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance, and it's crucial that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. We aim to offer comment which is true to the pshat (i.e. engages with the plain meaning of the text, especially when it's difficult) and uses Tōrah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

An appeal

My friend Mahmoud was shot in the stomach after the ceasefire was announced but before it took affect. He's had surgery already and is scheduled for another operation in two weeks, but it costs $3,000. Please share and donate if you can (the fundraiser needs to hit $6,000 to cover his surgery).

Content note

Genocide in Palestine

The final parsha in Tōrah begins with “This is the blessing." We read it on Simḥas Tōrah and begin the cycle of study again with Bereshis.

Mōshe gives each tribe a blessing, ascends the mountain, looks out on the land, and dies. The people mourn, and Yehoshua (Joshua) takes his place as leader of the Israelites.

The narrative closes with Mōshe's death and the unfulfilled promise, the unfinished ending. Hashem buries Mōshe, and "to this day" no one knows where. The people do not cross into the land.

The holy land is a future.

It is the world to come, not yet to be: not yet in the narrative, and not yet in our lifetimes. Tōrah is a glimpse into this future: we can see it with our eyes, but we shall not enter now. It does not matter that people have walked into the physical land: the promised land is not just a geography, but a temporal-spatial time-place. We are always, forever, not yet entering. We finish the last book of Tōrah, our story incomplete, and we immediately start over.