Moses' long and tempestuous career is about to end.

With words of blessing and encouragement, he hands on the mantle of leadership to his success

and Joshua, saying I'm a hundred and twenty years old today, I may no longer go out and

come in, since the Lord has said to me, you will not cross this Jordan.

As Rushie notes, he says, I may not, not I cannot, he is still in full

bodily vigour, his eye undimmed and his natural energy unabated. But he has reached the end

of his personal road. The time had come for another age and new generation and a different kind

of leader. But before he takes leave of life, God has

one last command for him and through him for the future. Vataqidvulahem at Ashiara

Zodin now write for yourselves this song and teach it to the children of Israel, put it in

their mouths that this song may be a witness for me among the children of

Israel. The plain sense of the verses that God was commanding Moses and Joshua to write out

the song that follows, that of Haazinu, so Rashi and Ahmadinehas understand it. But the oral

tradition read it differently. According to the sages, now write for yourselves applies to the Torah as a whole.

Thus the last of the 613 commands is to write or at least take part in writing even if only

a single letter, a Torah scroll.

Here is how Maimonides states the law.

Every Israelite is commanded to write a Torah scroll for himself as it says. Now therefore, write this song, meaning write for yourselves a complete copy of the Torah that contains this song, since we don't write isolated passages of the Torah, but only a complete scroll. Even if you have inherited a Torah scroll from your parents,

nonetheless it's a mitzvah to write one for oneself and one who does so is as if he had received

the Torah from Mount Sinai. One who does not know how to write a scroll may engage a scribe

to do it for him and whoever corrects even one letter is as if he had

written a whole scroll. Now why this command? Why at the end of Moses' life? Why make it the last

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