That question sat with me long before I could explain why, until it found its place: Kraków, at the edge of a war. I went in the war’s first weeks, when Poland’s eastern border was still processing the deluge of Ukrainian women and children who had grabbed what would fit in one bag and fled their homes. Thirty rabbis brought two tons of supplies and a stack of money to do our small part in this humanitarian crisis. We headquartered at the JCC. We walked into Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter, now the city’s hip center, with klezmer spilling out of restaurant doors and mezuzah-shaped keychains in gift shop windows. Jewish culture was on display, preserved as kitsch.
The Rema Synagogue stands across the square, and behind it lies a cemetery the Nazis tried to destroy. Most of the gravestones had been broken or removed and repurposed as paving stones. The ones that remained were put together to form a wall, creating a mosaic of broken names. However, one grave was untouched: that of Moses Isserles, the Rema, whose notes on the Shulchan Aruch continue to shape how many Jews pray, eat, and live. His gravestone is inscribed in Hebrew with the words: “From Moses to Moses, there was none like Moses.”
The line was never intended for him; it had been cut centuries earlier on the tomb of Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon), who is perhaps revered as second only to Moses Rabbenu. Kraków took the epitaph and added to it, so three men with the same name now share the same sentence: Moses, who brought the Torah down from the mountain; Maimonides, who systematized it; and Isserles, who made it applicable to Ashkenazi Jews. They were all true giants and are so highly regarded that people still visit their graves.
This week we study V’zot Habracha, the Torah’s final parsha. Moses makes his final preparations; he goes up the mountain, bestows his final blessings, explains how festivals such as Sukkot are to be celebrated, and then dies. The Torah does not allow him to enter the land he traveled toward for forty years; instead, he sees it and leaves a blessing behind. That is all.
In our tradition, we look up to those who achieved greatness: a lawgiver, a philosopher, or a legal scholar who still guides a Jewish family in Philadelphia to keep milk and meat separate. When we visit the graves of these later Moses figures, we might wonder whether we could ever do what they did. But that is not the right question, and it might even lead us astray.
In City Slickers, the old trail boss, Curly, played by Jack Palance, raises a crooked finger and tells Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, that the secret of life consists of a single thing. Mitch waits anxiously to find out what it is, but Curly does not say. Instead, he tells him, “That’s what you have to find out,” before riding off.
Most of us will not write a Shulchan Aruch or lead people out of slavery. That is not what we are meant to do, and our tradition does not expect it. Instead, it asks for something smaller, and even harder: to find your one thing. This could be the care you bring to your daily work, or the care you show as an adult child, parent, spouse, or friend during a tough time. It might also be something quieter, like serving on a board without recognition, or spending time with someone who is dying and simply wants company.
We have just completed the Yamim Noraim and closed the Torah scroll at its final word, only to open it again at the beginning. This cycle is the lesson: we never truly arrive; we keep returning, year after year, to the same question. What is your one thing? Not so that your name will be carved in stone, but so that when people say, ‘may their memory be a blessing,’ it will truly be so.
Rabbi David Levin is the president of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia and founder of the Jewish Relationships Initiative.