Page 57 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - October 19

this fabulous land of milk and honey. And Moses…this shining Zionist orator…this
you’ve been told it’s not far. You haven’t got
road signs or Waze, but a pillar of fire leads the
way. Miraculously food is delivered to you
every day. Nothing to worry about and yet it
takes you forty years to get there.
Now I admit many things in life take time, like
getting planning permission to change the design
of your garage, or trying to get money back from
the Income Tax. And it takes fourteen years to
train a geisha girl, and the only thing she can do
in the end is play a one string fiddle and make
tea. But, forty years to go a few lousy miles?
Somebody’s having us on.
Let’s look at it another way.
You want to drive from New York to Vermont.
You kiss the wife, hug the children, and load the
provisions into the car. Then you lean out of the
window, tears in your eyes and say “Darling,
I’m going to Vermont. It’ll take some time. See
you in five years.” Would your wife buy it? No!
She’d think you were having an affair and would
call in her lawyer.
The rationale behind the Exodus scenario is
simple, but no one wants to admit it. Moses
simply didn’t want to get to the Promised Land
and crossing the river Jordan was the last thing
on his mind. I grant you that once he may have
considered it. Maybe, when he was young, one
of his pals might have said “Mo – what shall we
do this year? South of France? Greece?
Mykonos? Palestine?” And he probably replied
“Palestine? Sounds interesting. What are the
girls like?”
But these are the aberrations of youth. Israel
wasn’t on his mind till he got caught up in the
advertising campaign against his will, victim of
his own propaganda, seduced by his own
copywriting. I’ve seen it happen to hundreds.
No! We’ve got to face it. Getting to the
Promised Land was the last thing on his mind.
You’re not convinced? Well let’s examine the
facts and try and make a few deductions. Did
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original Jewish Agency spokesmen…did Moses
ever set foot in Israel? No! Why not? Because he
hated the place.
Now I admit it doesn’t actually go like that in
Deuteronomy. There, the last we hear of Moses
is him nipping to the top of Mount Nebo and
taking a quick one-two-three-who’s–your uncle
at Jericho. Then God taps him on the shoulder
and solemnly says “This is the land which I have
sworn to Abraham and his seed. But you,
boychick, you’re not going in.”
Then it all gets vague and we’re supposed to use
our imagination. Moses pleads to be let in. The
Divine Presence giving the thumbs down sign.
The mountains sighing in close harmony to the
accompaniment of heavenly choirs. So Moses
dies and everybody starts tearing their clothes,
chucking ashes around, and begin weeping and
mourning. After that it’s all Joshua and his
foreign legionnaires, up and at ‘em, blow a few
trumpets and give ‘em hell type stuff.
Well I, for one, don’t buy it. It reeks of the PR
touch if ever I saw it. Let’s preserve the sacred
image of the dead leader and to hell with the
truth. OK, you’re still with me? Well what I
reckoned happened was this.
In reality Moses had got cold feet years before,
ever since the spies came back and said “Boss,
this going to the Promised Land lark is not all
it’s cut out to be.” After that Moses had dark
suspicions but wasn’t sure. Then he got to the
top of Mount Nebo and had an excellent look. In
fact the bible says he took a gander from Dan to
Naftali to the sea, a kind of sputnik satellite pre-
pollution over gaze benefit of the Lord God of
Israel, master of miracles.
And there we have it. You can imagine the
scene. Moses gazing away. Forty years he’s
waited for this privileged look. In spite of his
rheumatism he’s struggled up the mountain,
showing a determination that years later would
surely have taken him to the top of Everest. It’s