Why does the Torah end before fulfilling the promise of entering the Promised land?

Question

Most mundane facts are the most fascinating to question.

The Torah ends with Moses dying in the wilderness and the Israelites still camping on the other bank of the Jordan River. This plot sounds plausible except for one major intricacy - God does not fulfill his promise to bring his people to the coveted land, the pinnacle of the whole grand plan of Exodus was about. A naive reader is left puzzled - will God keep his promise or some unforeseeable conditions will jeopardize it (again).

But why, actually: the last lines cover the beginning of the post-Mosaic era anyway, Moses already knew the future, entering the Land was not a secret, and a nice closure would definitely contribute to the credibility of the book?

Answer 1

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z"l addresses this question here.

He writes as follows (my emphasis) in his typically inimitable style:

Judaism is the only civilisation to have set its golden age not in the past but in the future. We hear this at the beginning of the Moses story, although not until the end do we realise its significance. Moses asks God: What is Your name? God replies: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, literally, “I will be what I will be” (Ex. 3:14). We assume this means something like “I am what I am – unlimited, indescribable, beyond the reach of a name.” That may be part of the meaning. But the fundamental point is: My name is the future. “I am what will be.” God is in the call from the future to the present, from the destination to us who are still on the journey. What distinguishes Judaism from Christianity is that in answer to the question “Has the Messiah come?” the Jewish answer is always: Not yet. Moses’ death, his unfinished life, his glimpse of the land of the future, is the supreme symbol of the not-yet.

“It is not for you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it” (Mishnah Avot 2:16). The challenges we face as human beings are never resolved simply, quickly, completely. The task takes many lifetimes. It is beyond the reach of a single individual, even the greatest; it is beyond the scope of a single generation, even the most epic. Deuteronomy ends by telling us: “Never again has there arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses” (Deut. 34:10). But even his life was, necessarily, incomplete.

As we see him, on Mount Nebo, looking across the Jordan to Israel in the distance, we sense the vast, challenging truth that confronts us all. Each person has a promised land he or she will not reach, a horizon beyond the limits of his or her vision. What makes this bearable is our intense existential bond between the generations – between parent and child, teacher and disciple, leader and follower. The task is bigger than us, but it will live on after us, as something of us will live on in those we have influenced.

The greatest mistake we can make is to do nothing because we cannot do everything. Even Moses discovered that it was not for him to complete the task. That would only be achieved by Joshua, and even then the story of the Israelites was only just beginning. Moses’ death tells us something fundamental about mortality. Life is not robbed of meaning because one day it will end. For in truth – even in this world, before we turn our thoughts to eternal life in the World to Come – we become part of eternity when we write our chapter in the book of the story of our people and hand it on to those who will come after us. The task – building a society of justice and compassion, an oasis in a desert of violence and corruption – is greater than any one lifetime. The Jewish people have returned to the land, but the vision is not yet complete. This is still a violent, aggressive world. Peace still eludes us, as does much else. We have not yet reached the destination, though we see it in the distance, as did Moses. The Torah ends without an ending to tell us that we too are part of the story; we too are still on the journey....

So to answer your question in brief, the Torah ends in the way it does to demonstrate to us an important lesson - we all have goals in life, some of which we will not accomplish. However, we all aspire to have a greater future, and if we are not zoche to meet these aspirations, the next generation will be there to carry on where we left off, and through this we live on.

Answer 2

See https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Batra.75a?lang=bi

כיוצא בדבר אתה אומר (במדבר כז, כ) ונתתה מהודך עליו ולא כל הודך זקנים שבאותו הדור אמרו פני משה כפני חמה פני יהושע כפני לבנה אוי לה לאותה בושה אוי לה לאותה כלימה

In a similar manner, you can say that God said to Moses about Joshua: “And you shall put of your honor upon him” (Numbers 27:20), which indicates that you should put some of your honor, but not all of your honor. The elders of that generation said: The face of Moses was as bright as the face of the sun; the face of Joshua was like the face of the moon. Woe for this embarrassment, woe for this disgrace, that we did not merit another leader of the stature of Moses.

Also see

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/217145.8?lang=he&with=all&lang2=he

ר' יהונתן אייבשיץ, יערות דבש, חלק ראשון, דרוש ט"ז ויש להבין מה לאותה בושה...אבל באמת יהושע לא היה מקבל מפאת עצמו כלל, רק ממה שהאציל משה עליו, והיה הבדל כהבדל עילה לעלולים וכאור לקוי אור היוצאים ממנו שהם פחות למאור בטבע וזה ידוע כי הלבנה לית ליה מגרמיה כלום, רק ממה שקבלה מהחמה

Where Rb Yonasan Eybeschütz says that Yehoshua did not receive any hashpaah directly from Hashem, he only received via the light of Moshe, as the moon receives from the sun.

So to the extent that we understand that the Torah represents pure reality, it would seem that this matter is similar to Plato's Allegory of the Cave (e.g. https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm), in which we identify two levels of living, one level of pure reality, the other level of responding to the "shadows" cast by pure reality. Therefore the world of Moshe is the world of pure reality, the world of Yehoshua is the world of the shadows cast by the world of Moshe.

So that it transpires that the Torah discusses the real world (i.e. not "our" world, but rather the world where the real action is taking place), and anything after the Torah discusses the "shadows" (i.e. the projections) that are cast from the "real" world.

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From a practical perspective, this means as follows:

One of the amazing things about Jewish chinuch is that Avraham is as alive to the children as the man next door.

The children will bring home a tent with doors to all four directions and show how Avraham welcomes visitors from all directions.

The story of Yosef and his brothers is alive...

The story of Moshe and Pharaoh is alive... be'chol dor ve'dor chayav adam liros es atzmo ke'ilu hu yatza mi'mitrayim - in every generation a person is obliged to see it as if they personally escaped from Egypt.

And so on...

I think you will find that this immediacy relates specifically to that which is related in the Torah. For example, we have no problem with the idea that the story of Yehoshua happened "a long time ago".

This is because the Torah, specifically, is the life source of the Jewish people, as above.