Taste of Torah
20 Elul 5786 / September 2, 2026

Parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilech
Ad Me-ah V’esrim! (To 120!)
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 29:9-31:30
Haftarah Portion: Isaiah 61:10-63:9

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In the second portion of our double parashah this week, Moses declares to the people: “I am now one hundred and twenty years old, I can no longer be active. Moreover, Adonai has said to me, ‘You shall not go across yonder Jordan’” (Deuteronomy 31:2). In addition to his age, Moses also refers to God’s decree that he will not bring the people into the promised land (Numbers 20:12). The verse’s generally lovely rendering from The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition barrels past an important detail: What is translated as “now” is actually in Hebrew the word hayom, which is the Hebrew word for “today.”

That is to say, Moses is speaking on his birthday!

As the next, final chapters of Deuteronomy will reveal, it is also Moses’s death-day (Deuteronomy 34:5). Indeed, Jewish tradition holds that Moses was born and died on the same day (according to the Talmud, on the seventh of Adar[i]). An auspicious date, indeed.

His age is of interest as well: 120 years is decreed by God as a typological lifespan. After the extraordinary ages of people recorded in the listing of genealogies in Genesis 5 (e.g., 777 years for Lamech and 905 years for Enosh), God places a specific restriction on human longevity: “My breath shall not abide in humankind forever, since it too is flesh; let the days allowed them be one hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3). The decision comes just before the story of Noah, and it is also understood by our rabbis as “a reference to the interval of time remaining before the Flood. The figure would then represent three conventional generations of forty years each.”[ii] Which explains why the rule is not ironclad: Our patriarchs, and even some of the matriarchs, make it past 120. Abraham lives to 175 (Genesis 25:7); Isaac lives to 180 (Genesis 35:28); and Jacob lives to 147 (Genesis 47:28). It is only Moses who matches the prescribed human lifespan.

Despite Moses living a beautifully long time – indeed, the perfect age for a human being! – both the Torah and rabbinic tradition view his death as a tragedy. Deuteronomy presents his death differently from the way earlier books talk about the deaths of our patriarchs. Abraham is described as “dying at a good ripe age, old and contented; and he was gathered to his kin” (Genesis 25:8). The Torah relates that “Isaac … was gathered to his kin in ripe old age; and he was buried by his sons Esau and Jacob” (Genesis 35:29). Similarly, Jacob, “breathing his last, … was gathered to his kin” (Genesis 50:33), and is wept over by his beloved son Joseph.

​Moses, by contrast, is described in our verse as not reaching “a ripe old age,” but rather “no longer be[ing] active.” At his actual death, though, we learn that “his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated” (Deuteronomy 34:7). In light of this later revelation – that Moses is still quite dynamic at his death – many commentators wonder what “no longer … active” actually means. One clue is in the Hebrew text: “[N]o longer .. active” is literally “can no longer come and go.” The medieval French commentator Rashi notes of this description,

One might think that this was because his physical strength failed him! Scripture, however, states that “his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated” (Deuteronomy 34:7). What then is the meaning of “I can no longer”? It means: “I am not permitted” because the power is being taken from me and given to Joshua.[iii]

Rashi interprets Moses in this moment as experiencing both God’s prescribed punishment (of not being able to go into the holy land) and the resulting leadership transition. Moses’s death, then, is the result of his wrongdoing at Meribah, where earlier that year he struck the rock to produce water (Numbers 20:11). Indeed, at the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses recounts God’s dispossession of an entire people, himself included: “Not one of those involved, this evil generation, shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers … Because of you Adonai was incensed with me too, saying: ‘You shall not enter it either’” (Deuteronomy 1:35, 37).

While his loss is intertwined with very specific sadness, Moses is still recalled with admiration as a great leader of our people. Even his age remains venerated; it is traditional for Jews to toast someone celebrating their birthday, Ad me-ah v’esrim, “To 120!” This Shabbat, as we read about Moses’s birth- and death-day, may we all strive to live lives—however long their span—worthy of remembrance and admiration.

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Salem Pearce
Director of Spirituality

[i] Babylonian Talmud Megillah 13b.
[ii] Nahum M. Sarna, commentary, The JPS Commentary: Genesis (The Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia, 1989), p. 46.
[iii] Rashi on Deuteronomy 31:2.​

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