Those Who Can Teach
Originally published on Gimme Some Torah by Rabbi Eli Garfinkel on September 3, 2026.
This is the 1,000th post of Gimme Some Torah!
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֗ם בֶּן־מֵאָה֩ וְעֶשְׂרִ֨ים שָׁנָ֤ה אָנֹכִי֙ הַיּ֔וֹם לֹא־אוּכַ֥ל ע֖וֹד לָצֵ֣את וְלָב֑וֹא וַֽיהֹוָה֙ אָמַ֣ר אֵלַ֔י לֹ֥א תַעֲבֹ֖ר אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּ֥ן הַזֶּֽה׃
He said to them: I am now one hundred and twenty years old, I can no longer be active. Moreover, the LORD has said to me, “You shall not go across yonder Jordan.”
Moses tells the nation that he is now 120 years old and can no longer be active as their leader. (The literal translation is “I cannot go and come.”) Rashi gives us the standard rabbinic interpretations of this expression, namely that the Moses was not weak from old age or senility.
One such explanation holds that Moses no longer had God’s permission to lead because Joshua had been chosen. The other says that Moses could no longer lead because “the wellsprings of wisdom were stopped up for him,” meaning that God had essentially disconnected him (See B. Sotah 13b).
Rabbi Israel Hopstein of Kozhnitz (bio), also known as the Kozhnitzer Maggid, took issue with the idea that God had separated Moses from the Torah’s wisdom:
Rashi’s interpretation of “I can no longer be active” is that the traditions and wellsprings of wisdom were blocked for him. I do not understand this idea. How could the Master of all the prophets, who was 120 at death and died with such ecstatic joy that God took his life with a kiss, end up with his wisdom taken away from him?!
To the contrary! Moses’s wisdom grew in accordance with the strengthening of his holiness.. .It may be that the matter is the opposite. Because of Moses’s deep comprehension on that day and on account of his attachment (דְבֵיקוּת–d’veikut) to the living God, he was no longer able to separate himself from God and transmit wisdom and Torah to Israel, who were beneath his spiritual level.
Rabbi Hopstein’s interpretation makes sense to me. He’s saying that Moses did not lose any of his wisdom or Torah knowledge. Instead, he lost the ability to teach what he knew. Knowing something and being able to teach it effectively are very different things.
According to Rabbi Hopstein, Moses lost the knack he had for teaching Torah to others. He was the greatest educator—that’s why we call him Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our Teacher. But he became so close to God that he could no longer relate to the educational needs of his people. Like Icarus who flew too close to the Sun, Moses’s attachment to God became so strong that he could no longer separate himself from the Holy One long enough to teach anything.
America has always had a pretty strong anti-intellectual streak. That’s why we have sayings like, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’” Judaism tells us the polar opposite. The Talmud (B. Megillah 29a) says that a Torah scholar who studied only for his own knowledge should (ideally) be mourned by a crowd of 600,000 people. There is, however, no limit to the honor deserved by those departed scholars who taught Torah to others.
GST will resume after Rosh Hashanah on Tuesday, Sept. 15. I wish all of you a Shanah Tovah Umtukah, a happy and sweet new year!
Photo by Igal Ness on Unsplash
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