The Advice We Only Understand Later
Parashat Devarim is unique. For nearly the entire
Chumash, from the book of Exodus and forward, Moshe Rabbeinu is leading the
Jewish people through events as they unfold. But now, standing at the threshold
of Eretz Yisrael, he speaks differently. Devarim is a farewell address. It is a
lifetime of wisdom distilled into one final conversation.
Some of Moshe’s words were understood immediately. Others
would only be understood years—even centuries—later.
There is a remarkable story about Rabbi Yisrael Zev
Gustman, one of the great Torah scholars of the twentieth century.
As a young dayan in Vilna, he once accompanied his
revered teacher, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzzinski, on a walk outside the city.
During that walk, Rabbi Chaim Ozer did something that seemed completely out of
character. Instead of discussing a difficult sugya, he pointed to plants,
shrubs, and trees, explaining which could be eaten and which were poisonous. He
even showed Rabbi Gustman certain places in the forest and told him to remember
them.
Rabbi Gustman could not understand why the gadol hador
was spending precious time teaching botany instead of Torah.
Then came the Holocaust.
Forced to flee into the forests with his wife and
daughter, Rabbi Gustman survived for years on wild vegetation. The lessons that
had seemed so strange suddenly became the difference between life and death.
Only then did he realize that his teacher had been preparing him for a future
neither of them ever discussed openly.
Years later, after rebuilding his life in Jerusalem and
becoming a great Rosh Yeshivah, Rabbi Gustman personally watered the plants
around his yeshivah. A student once wondered why a man of his stature, already
elderly and physically weakened by the horrors of the Holocaust, would do work
that could easily have been left to someone else.
The answer was simple. Those plants represented life.
They reminded him of the Creator’s kindness and of the lessons that had
sustained his family when everything else had been taken away. Every drop of
water he poured onto those plants was an expression of hakarat hatov.
Perhaps that is one of the messages of Sefer Devarim.
There are teachings in life that seem unnecessary today.
There are mitzvot we do not yet appreciate, values we cannot yet understand,
and pieces of advice from parents, teachers, and Torah that seem to have no
immediate relevance.
Then life changes.
Years later, we suddenly discover that those very lessons
have become our strength. We realize that what once seemed unrelated was
actually preparing us for a moment only Hashem could foresee.
That is the greatness of Moshe Rabbeinu’s final words. He
was not speaking only to the generation standing before him. He was speaking to
every generation, including ours. Sometimes we hear his words immediately.
Sometimes we spend years wondering why they were said.
And then one day, life itself whispers the answer:
“Now I understand what Moshe was trying to teach us.”
