This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 7:21 pm
Shabbat Ends: 8:17 pm

Torah Message:

Loose Change

“For you shall not cross this Jordan” (3:27)

A dark night. A passenger jumps down from a bus. As he jumps, some small change falls from his pocket.

Too embarrassed to ask the driver to wait so he can use the headlights of the bus to collect his nickels and dimes from the sidewalk, the passenger quickly reaches into his pocket and places a twenty-dollar bill on the ground in the vicinity of his small change. He shouts to the driver, “Hold the bus! There’s a twenty-dollar bill of mine somewhere down here on the ground!”

In the bright headlamps the passenger sees not only the twenty-dollar bill but the scattered small change as well, and he quickly scoops them both up and is on his way.

G-d was adamant that Moshe should not enter the Land of Israel. One reason was that Moshe should be buried in the desert along with his generation so that his personal merit would ensure that they would arise at the time of the Resurrection of the Dead.

G-d wanted Moshe to be the twenty-dollar bill amongst the small change, to make sure that not a nickel would get lost.

• Source: based on Devarim Rabbah 2:5