Rabbi Israel Meir Lau: A lesson in seeing life as a free gift

 Moshe Rabbeinu pleads to enter the land of Israel in this week's parsha. His word choice in doing so is striking. In English there is many a word for request, each with its own register, and level of intensity - each, likewise, showing a different level of dependency on the party able to fulfill the request. From beseech, to implore, entreat to ask for, each has a meaning unique unto itself. 

The word Moshe Rabbeinu chooses is "Va'etchanan," literally, "If I may ask of you a free gift." The word chinam in Hebrew means free, and the word chen, part of the root of va'etchanan, means favor, or in other words, "If I find favor in your eyes," perhaps reminiscent of Queen Esther's request of Achashveirosh. 

Moshe Rabbeinu made no demands, knew that he had been denied entry into the land because of his grave deeds - upon striking the boulder that gave forth water instead of speaking to is as instructed - and as such, approached Hashem out of a place of pure humility, and humbleness. For all of the good he hd done for the Jewish people - we'll recall that he never wanted to be the leader, and begged God to choose another - he didn't hinge his request on anything he had done, but rather God's mercy alone. 

Rashi teaches us that that is the way of the righteous, to realize that everything is a free gift, and that we too are to emulate the ways of Moshe Rabbeinu.

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau shares a story that reverberates that message in his autobiography. In Buchenwald, from where he had been liberated, he had been given a small, shoddy suitcase from the surplus supplies of the liberating American army, a tiny suitcase of little significance. Rabbi Lau insisted that he preserve the suitcase for evermore - ultimately, the humidity of his Tel Aviv attic got the better of it and it disintegrated - because he wanted to teach his children, and progeny, that if they ever complain, they can remember his suitcase. "That was my home," he would tell them. "It was all I took with me, my parents, and brother murdered. Through years and years before I was settled in Israel, that's all I had. So, the same way I didn't complain, you too can't complain."