We just got up off the floor.

Tisha B’Av ends, the chairs go back to normal height, and then almost immediately it is Shabbat Nachamu. Comfort. From the lowest day on the calendar to the Shabbat named for consolation, with barely anything in between.

That turn is so fast it can feel fake. Like being told to cheer up before you were done.

And then you look at what we actually read this Shabbat, and it turns out the Torah is not being glib about it at all. Because Va’etchanan is the parsha of a man who asked for something with everything he had, and got told no.

The word ואתחנן does not mean he requested. It means he pleaded. It is the language of somebody asking for a favor he knows he has not earned.

The chachamim counted the gematria of that word, five hundred and fifteen, and said that is how many times Moshe davened to be let into the land. Five hundred and fifteen times. However literally you take that, the point is unmistakable. He did not ask once and accept it gracefully. He hammered on that door.

He also, and this is the part people skip, tells us exactly what he wanted. Let me cross over and see the good land. That is it. He is not asking to rule it or settle it. He wants to see it. Forty years of desert, and he is asking for a look.

And the answer he gets is רב לך. Enough for you. Do not speak to me about this matter again.

I do not know how to make that gentle. That is not a soft no. That is a stop asking.

If you have ever prayed hard for something and watched it not happen, you already know this feeling and you do not need me to describe it. The diagnosis that did not change. The person who did........

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