There are more famous opening sentences than closing sentences.
“Call me Ishmael.”
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
Even those who are not so biblio-curious could likely identify which books these are from—spoiler alert—Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
But what about last lines? How many final sentences can you remember?
Interestingly, the Torah itself has one of the most famous last lines:
וּלְכֹל הַיָּד הַחֲזָקָה וּלְכֹל הַמּוֹרָא הַגָּדוֹל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה מֹשֶׁה לְעֵינֵי כׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל׃
And for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel.
But that is not the only last line of the Torah.
Sefer Devarim is, in a sense, the beginning of a new Torah. Or at least the Torah from a new perspective. As opposed to the other books of the Torah, the entire Sefer Devarim is written in first-person through the eyes of Moshe. The nature of the sefer is clearly different than those before it.
In fact, in his introduction to Devarim the Abarbenel asks whether we should consider Sefer Devarim equally with the other books of the Torah. Is Sefer Devarim the word of God said from Moshe’s perspective or is this book really Moshe’s perspective that was later canonized within the Torah?
At the heart of Sefer Devarim is the question: What exactly is the nature of Sefer Devarim?
The unique status of Sefer Devarim raises another question about last sentences. In a sense, the Torah as the unmediated word of God really ends with Sefer Bamidbar. After Sefer Bamidbar, the Torah is given over through the eyes of Moshe. So how does the final book of the unmediated Torah of Hashem end before introducing Sefer Devarim? In short, pretty anti-climatically.
Sefer Bamidbar ends by returning to the story of the daughters of Tzelofchad, who were concerned that they would not inherit their father after his passing. In the final act of Hashem’s Torah before the reins are, so to speak, handed over to Moshe, we revisit an inheritance dispute. Why is this the last story we read in the Torah before stepping into the Torah through Moshe’s eyes in Sefer Devarim?
To understand this, let’s explore the life and legacy of Sarah Schenirer and the Beis Yaakov movement.
Read the rest on Substack, and listen to the full shiur above!