In his classic The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde tells the story of a portrait painted by Basil Hallward, a friend of Dorian Gray’s who is infatuated with Dorian’s beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton and is soon enthralled by the aristocrat’s hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life. Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and visually records every one of Dorian’s sins.

There he wrote “Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.” This speaks to an epistemological truth that we thrive on the uncertainty. Truly looking in the mirror and not a magical portrait could be painful and difficult. Knowing the truth might kill us.

I was thinking about it this week when reading Nitzavim VaYelech, this week’s double Torah portion. The start of VaYelech recounts the events of Moshe’s last day of earthly life. He says:

I am one hundred and twenty years old this day, I can no longer come and go. Moreover, יהוה has said to me, “You shall not go across yonder Jordan.”

Deuteronomy 31:2

How did Moshe know that “this day” was going to be the day of his death? How crushing would it be living with the that knowledge?

On this the Gemara relates:

The verse relates what Moshe said to the Jewish people at the end of his life: “And he said to them: I am a hundred and twenty years old this day; I can no longer go out and come in; and the Lord has said to me: You shall not go over this Jordan” (Deuteronomy 31:2). The wording is problematic, as there is no need for the verse to state the term “this day.” Moshe said it in order to indicate: On this day, my days and years have been completed to be precisely one hundred and twenty, in order to teach you that the Holy One, Blessed be God, completes the years of the righteous from day to day and from month to month, as it is written: “The number of your days I will fill” (Exodus 23:26), indicating that the righteous will live out their years fully.

Sotah 13b

It seems that as a righteous person he knew the precise length of his days. How does this help us with our question?

In Kabbalat Shabbat in preparation for Shabbat we sing, “A righteous person will flourish like a date palm, like a cedar in the Lebanon…” (Psalms 92:13) So what? A righteous person is like two tall and upright trees. This is meaningful in that early in Kabbalat Shabbat we read Psalm 29. There we read:

The voice of the LORD is power;
the voice of the LORD is majesty;

the voice of the LORD breaks cedars;
the LORD shatters the cedars of Lebanon.

Psalms 29:4-5

The voice of God is the truth and powerful mirror. The righteous are upright like cedars of Lebanon. And they will be shattered by the majestic voice of God. Despite or maybe because of this knowledge righteous people are able to operate in the world in an upright way. As we see with the negative example of Dorian Grey and the positive example of Moshe, our mortality might be the foundation for our morality.

*On a personal note: Over the past 20 years my mother had many health issues. The last few years were marked by a further decline and a sense of her imminent death. She was terrified of her death. I loved my mother deeply, but I have no assumptions that she was one of the righteous people mentioned above. And in the end she was clearly shattered. I take comfort now, after her passing, that she is no longer in pain and not living in fear of when would be her day she would “no longer come and go”.