Imposing limits is a Divine power. One of the names of God, Shadai, is understood to refer to God’s role in creation as the One who said “dai” – “enough” to hem in the waters above and below so that heaven and earth and sky and sea would all have their own domain. Without limits there is chaos.
In an easily overlooked verse in Parashat Pinhas, Moshe inverts a limit and seems to transgress the norms of decorum that we have come to expect. But he does so in service of his mission and, ultimately his audacious act is the product of his profound humility.
The phrase “Vayidaber Hashem el Moshe Leimor” appears countless times in the Torah. (And by countless, I do not mean “uncountable” I just mean that I have not counted nor asked a computer to count…but I think we can all agree that it appears very frequently). Although the phrase is repeated so often that we barely pay attention to it, the importance of that repeated verse is significant. God spoke to Moshe and instructed Moshe to convey a message to us. That repeated verse establishes Moshe as our teacher, and it is as our teacher, as “Moshe Rabbenu” that he is primarily known to us even today.
The repetitions of Vayidaber Hashem el Moshe Leimor highlight the incongruous and almost unseemly reversal that appears once and only once in Parashat Pinhas:
וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶל־ ה לֵאמֹֽר׃
And Moshe spoke to God and said…
Here, in our parasha, Moshe dares to address God with the same direct, terse, framing that the Torah uses time after time in the other direction.
.וידבר משה אל ה׳ לאמר
Moshe’s role-reversal with God occurs when Moshe, as it were, instructs God on the need for a successor.
Moshe is nearing the end of his life. His thoughts turn to the next generation and his awareness that there must be a leader for the next generation.
Rashi tells us:
לְהודיעַ שִבְחָן שֶל צַדִיקים, כְשֶנִפְטָרים מִן הָעולָם מַנִיחִים צָרכָן, וְעוסְקין בְצָרכֵי צִבור
“This episode is a praise of Moshe who acts in the manner of other righteous individuals. As they prepare to take their leave of this world, they set aside their own needs and involve themselves in the concerns of the community.”
Charles de Gaulle is often credited with the observation that “graveyards are filled with indispensable men.” Indeed, the more indispensable a man or woman thinks themselves to be – or may indeed be – the more important it can be to recall that not one of us, and not Moshe either, is truly indispensable.
Unlike so many other “indispensible” men and women, Moshe had the humility to understand his limits. He had the self-awareness that he could not be the leader for the next generation, and he had the concomitant humility and lack of jealousy to want to see another individual empowered and supported in taking on the burden of leadership. This humility is so rare and this sort of humility is so crucial. Setting limits is a Divine power that keeps creation ordered and balanced. Setting limits on ourselves is perhaps the hardest limit of all.
Moshe’s limits were temporal. But this morning I would like to reflect on a limit that had been imposed on me and which I intend to maintain.
Two weeks ago the IRS updated its guidance on the “Johnson Amendment,” a ban on tax-exempt religious organizations endorsing candidates for office that was put in place in 1954. Repealing the Johnson Amendment was proposed in 2017 but failed to win congressional approval. This month, the IRS said that political endorsements that were made in the form of communication by a religious institution, or its clergy, to its membership would be considered akin to a private family conversation about politics and current events and would not be considered a breach of the law.
Although the Johnson Amendment was not considered controversial in 1954 and it was not considered controversial when it was included in the 1986 tax reform bill, it has come to be seen as a limit on the voice of religion in American politics. Religious citizens have political opinions that are informed by our religious values and traditions, and which many of us wish to express as a religious community. The Johnson Amendment codified into law a conception of religion that is separate from politics and public life and many religions chafe at that limited conception.
Jews especially should understand that the Protestant invention of “religion” as a domain which is distinct from nationality and language and culture and science and politics is a poor framework for making sense of Judaism. Leora Batnitzky published a short and valuable book called “How Judaism Became a Religion.” You don’t have to read the book to contemplate the title of the book and to then appreciate how in the 19th century, German Orthodox and Reform Jews turned Judaism into a religion – they limited its sphere of operations into something akin to Protestant Christianity.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in a Yiddish speech delivered in June 1948, published in English by the journal Tradition for the first time in 2021, referred to the transformation of Judaism into a religion, with Orach Chaim and Yoreh De’ah – ritual laws – remaining intact, but without Hoshen Mishpat, commercial and economic law, as the “exile of the Shekhina. ” As we no longer apply Judasim to each sphere of human life, the Divine presence withdraws and constricts. The Torah seems to abandon concern for the functioning of society. All that remains behind is mere “organized religion” which, in Rav Soloveitchik’s words, “has no right to exist in a society of social-justice.”
The above notwithstanding, the repeal of the Johnson Amendment puts congregations and communities at risk.
Imagine a congregation living in a jurisdiction with a corrupt and transactional political leadership. If such a congregation needed a zoning variance or special police protection, or some other government service it could be made to feel that their receipt of government services was dependent on endorsing a specific candidate.
Furthermore, politically diverse congregations like our own could be torn apart as different factions within the congregation fight over which politician would receive the official endorsement of the congregation prior to a close or fraught election. Modern Orthodoxy is perhaps the most religiously diverse denomination of any American religion. If you tell me, in 2025, that you attend an American congregation with people who voted differently than you, you are probably attending a Modern Orthodox shul. That is obviously a challenging communal dynamic to maintain as the moral valence of contemporary politics seems to increase weekly, but once that diversity is lost, it may be impossible to recover.
Finally, the Johnson Amendment protected American religious leadership by preventing us from making fools of ourselves by exposing our superficial understanding of politics and policy to a broad audience. One hundred years ago, in the shuls that some of our ancestors attended, the rabbi was the member of the congregation with the most secular education of anyone there. Immigrants, in particular, had a need for the rabbi to explain the news to them and help them understand what was or was not “good for the Jews.” None of you need me to do that for you and, in fact, I learn about contemporary politics and policy from many of you.
And so I am going to share with you this morning my commitment, regardless of what the IRS or congress will say, to continue to abide by the Johnson Amendment and refrain from endorsing political candidates. I cannot imagine there are many of you who look to rabbis for voting guidance, but, while I am happy to discuss politics and current events, informally, as one Jewish citizen to another, I see little upside and many possible downsides to offering candidate endorsements from the bimah.
I have also adopted a policy against signing public “rabbis’ letters.” When I first became a rabbi I signed many of them; I was so thrilled to be asked. But, in time, I came to realize that there are a lot of rabbis out there and getting a few hundred of us to sign something was not that challenging an endeavor and had minimal impact. I also devote a lot of care and attention to every word that I share with you in forums like this one and I felt less and less comfortable signing my name to someone else’s words. And, in the spirit of the Johnson Amendment, I realized that if I refrained from signing letters that I agreed with, I would have cover to refuse to sign letters that I disagreed with even when pressured to sign.
Every limit opens up possibilities. If the shul abstains from political endorsements, it opens up the possibility of even greater engagement and activism on the part of all of us as citizens. By choosing to avoid certain topics in spaces like this one, I hope it opens up the possibility of deeper conversations about the Torah and what it calls on us to be and to do in this moment. True humility comes with a recognition that God has granted us the capacity to shape the world in small ways and in large ways but humble people do so in a manner that makes space for others to share their contributions as well.
One of the greatest risks of being a successful or powerful person is the sort of arrogance that shuts down debate and conversation. Moshe, the Torah tells us, was the most humble of people. And his humility expressed itself in the audacious and bold way that he set limits on himself and in the accurate appraisal of his own real significance, contribution, and influence. Moshe’s humility was coupled to a realistic understanding that his death would leave a void that must be filled. And he wanted new voices in the next generation to have their opportunity to shape Jewish history.
Imagine our parasha without that dramatic reversal. Imagine if Moshe had not demanded, with unfathomable boldness, that God appoint a successor. What would have happened? It seems obvious to me that God would have appointed a successor and I think Yehoshua would have been picked no matter what Moshe said.
Nonetheless, I do believe that Moshe’s intervention changed the course of history. Moshe’s intervention, his deliberate and conscious embrace of his own limits as a leader, empowered Yehoshua and his generation to take up the mantle of leadership and to add their voices to the ongoing transmission of the Torah secure in the knowledge that they had the support of their teacher Moshe.
As Moshe’s life draws to a close we glimpse a shocking reversal of the pattern we have seen repeated again and again in the Torah. Instead of God speaking to Moshe, this time, Moshe speaks to God. And so do we.
The conversations that you and I convene with God are called prayer. Moshe, in our parsha is praying – asking for help in continuing to self limit and asking that his beloved community find guidance in a new generation of leadership. That prayerful voice of Moshe moved God and shaped our history. The voice of Torah is prayerful. The voice of the Torah is meditative. The voice of the Torah is a voice of compassion and reconciliation. I hope that our community’s prayers, along with our activism and citizenship, will reverberate beyond the walls of this building and bring the Divine presence a bit closer in a world that is so desperate for consolation and for comfort.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 