The Command to Die

 In the Parshah of Ha'azinu, there is a divine command like no other: "Die." 

Why is it that Hashem had to command Moshe Rabbeinu to die?

"Die on the mountain that you will ascend, and be gathered to your nation as your brother, Aharon, died on Hor Ha'Har, and was gathered to his nation."

The Midrash teaches that there are three voices so earth-shatteringly jarring that were one to hear them in their full intensity, the world could not persist: "the sound of a baby being born, the sound when a man and wife get married, and the sound of one's death."

Those sounds represent the most dramatic changes in life, a new soul, a new union that can create new souls and the parting of a soul and its return to its creator. 

For Moshe Rabbeinu to leave with a whimper would seem inconceivable. Moshe Rabbeinu, the giver of the Torah and perpetuator and transmitter of God's will in this world, needed to not be coerced into death, but needed to be taken through his own accord. 

The contrast is stark: whereas we were commanded to receive the Torah, and if not, face imminent death being crushed by the oppressive force of Har Sinai were we to not receive it, Moshe's passing was ostensibly a matter of choice. He could choose to die, or not; it had to be willful. 

The Midrash, very poignant in its own right, speaks about Moshe Rabbeinu needing God's promise that his children would be taken care of, that there be a duality in Moshe Rabbeinu's continued ability to praise God and the heavens attesting to the Jewish people being His chosen people; only with that promise was Moshe willing to depart. 

It would seem that this contradistinction connotes that whereas the receipt of the Torah was not a matter of choice - the same way life without sun is impossible so too, ethically and morally, a life without the Torah's teachings is unviable - that notwithstanding, how we as individuals choose to live our lives independently and write our own Torah, shaping the world with kindness, giving and ethical behavior is a choice only we can make for ourselves. 

A life of Torah is by its very nature an examined life, one lived to the fullest, and cannot be taken lightly, and all the more so, that of Moshe Rabbeinu whose Torah is God's Torah, and as such, a command ending life needed to be one that perpetuated it as well by ensuring that Hashem's Torah would be eternal, preserved by the witnesses of heaven and earth, but more importantly, Hashem's firstborn son, and treasure, the Jewish people.