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Vayeilech ך ֶלֵּיַו crying, meditating, or any other method that helps a person open up
to experiencing God as an immediate and caring presence.
The essence of hitbodedut is the aspect of being alone, for only
then do we shed all the masks and facades that we adopt in order to
deal with others. Free from the demands of society and peer pressure,
we can approach God from a shared perspective of aloneness and
£And Moses WentAnd Moses WentAnd Moses WentAnd Moses WentAnd Moses WentAnd Moses Went uniqueness. When we make this connection with God, we awaken our
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deepest potential, enabling ourselves to fulfill our ultimate mission of
being created “in the image of God.”
Vayeilech begins with the following words: “And Moses went and
spoke these words to all of Israel” (Deuteronomy 31:1). Although the
Torah describes Moses as having “went,” it is not at all clear exactly
where Moses went to and why the Torah even mentions that he went
when it could have simply stated that Moses spoke to all the people.
The Ramban comments that Moses went from tribe to tribe bidding
them farewell, for he delivered this portion, like the previous one
and the next two as well, on the last day of his life. As the PaRDeS
system of interpretation demonstrates, every word, verse, story, and
commandment in the Torah possesses multiple levels of meaning;
here too, “he went” can be understood in many different ways.
The Hebrew word for Jewish law is Halachah. This word literally
means walking, going, or progressing. It shares the same root as the 20
word “went” in the first verse. Moses, in addition to acting as God’s
agent in redeeming the Jewish people from Egypt, served for the
last forty years of his life as the quintessential teacher of Jewish law.
He walked with the law and taught the people how to observe the
law so that it would become a vehicle for their spiritual growth and
advancement.

Now, as Moses was preparing to leave his people as they entered
the Holy Land, the Torah states that “he went.” To shed further light
on where “he went,” we turn to a statement in the Talmud (Megillah
28b): “All who study Jewish law everyday are assured a place in
the World to Come, as it says [in Habakkuk 3:6] ‘The ways of the
world [this world and the World to Come] are His’ – do not read it
(the word in the verse) as ‘ways’ rather read it as ‘laws.’” According
to the Sages, this verse teaches us that the constant study of Jewish

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