A Film · For Simchat Torah

And He Saw

וַיַּרְא

On Simchat Torah we read the last page of the Torah and, the same morning, the first. Moses stands on Nebo and is shown the whole land. Then, without a breath between, God looks at everything He has made. I built the view Moses saw from the real ground of Israel, every ridge and shore as it stands, so that for twenty-two seconds you can stand where he stood.

Real ground. The land in this film is not painted. It is built from elevation data and satellite imagery of Israel: terrain tiles by Mapzen via AWS Open Data, imagery from Sentinel-2 cloudless by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2018, CC BY 4.0). The heights are lifted a little, as the eye lifts them at dawn.

“Get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold it with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.”
Deuteronomy 3:27 · וּרְאֵה בְעֵינֶיךָ
“And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the LORD shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan.”
Deuteronomy 34:1 · וַיַּרְאֵהוּ
“And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.”
Deuteronomy 34:4 · הֶרְאִיתִיךָ
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
Genesis 1:31 · וַיַּרְא

Four verses, one word: רָאָה

The root is ra'ah, to see. On Pisgah God tells Moses to see with his eyes. On Nebo God causes him to see, the same verb with God as the one doing it. Moses is not climbing to look. He is being shown.

Then Simchat Torah does what only this feast does. The scroll is rolled all the way back, and the last thing Moses did becomes the first thing God does after making the world: and God saw. The same word. The land Moses is shown at the end of the Torah is the good that God saw at its beginning.

From the summit of Nebo today, on a clear morning, the eye takes in the Dead Sea below, the ridge of Jerusalem opposite, and Hermon far to the north. The great sea lies beyond the ridge, out of sight. The old teachers read that plainly: God let Moses see further than eyes can. I think that is still what He does with anyone who prays for this land from far away.

Stand on Nebo yourself

The same ground, alive. Drag to turn the morning around you. It loads a few megabytes, so it waits for your tap.

Tap to open the living view

Real elevation and satellite imagery, rendered in your browser. Works best on a recent phone or computer.

If this stirred something in you, pass it on to one person who is praying for Israel this Simchat Torah.

Join the Wall of Watchmen

Moses saw it from the far side. You can walk it. If you want to stand on the Golan one day and see this land with your own eyes, the Journey is open.