Some years ago, Rosellen Brown wrote a novel titled Before and After. In it, we read about Ben and Carolyn Reiser, a baby boomer couple. They live an ordinary, placid middle-class existence in New Hampshire. Carolyn is a physician and Ben is a sculptor. They have two children, Judith and Jacob.

One night, Carolyn was working in the emergency room. There, a brutally beaten corpse of a teenage girl lies before her. She recognizes her as the girlfriend of her son, Jacob. What she doesn't yet realize is that it was Jacob who bludgeoned the girl to death with a car jack nor that this tragedy would upset their lives.

Both Ben and Carolyn respond in diametrically opposite ways. Ben unconditionally supports his son. He goes so far as to destroy evidence and to lie to the police, the courts and even his own lawyer. On the other hand, Carolyn learns that Jacob not only committed the crime. She also discovers that he is a borderline psychopath who once molested his own sister.

Carolyn is unable to deal with her own guilt. She isn't willing to let her son get away with murder and she sides with the prosecution. Ben and Carolyn's conflicting responses threaten the fabric of their marriage and wreak havoc with their emotional well-being.. As we ponder this scenario, we wonder how each of us would respond if, God forbid, something as devastatingly shameful would strike us. How would we survive the “before and after” experience? Let us consider first the reaction of Moses, when he had to cope with the most disappointing moment in his life.

Our Torah contains scores of descriptions of “before and after” experiences. In this week's Torah portion, we focus our attention on the most profoundly unsettling one in the life of Moses. His most life-long treasured and cherished dream and aspiration was to lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land. Yet, it was not meant to be.

As Moses approached the end of his life, God reminded Moses of the time that the children of Israel were clamoring for water in the desert. God ordered Moses to speak to a rock so that it would emit water. Instead of obeying God's command, Moses struck the rock. He did so not once but twice, and the water gushed forth.

Moses' act of defiance sealed his fate. God told him that because he had publicly rejected God's mandate, he failed to sanctify God's name among the people. Therefore, he was denied the privilege of leading his people to their destination.

We have no Biblical record of Moses' reaction to this unsettling and humiliating news. Was he shocked? Did he plead for a second chance? Did he complain that for such a seemingly minor indiscretion, his most deeply held goal was instantly shattered?

It seemed so unfair. After all, Moses had led the enslaved children of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt. At Sinai, he recorded and conveyed the words of the Holy Torah to them. He endured their complaining and bickering and backsliding.

Yet none of these magnificent achievements seemed to count for anything. God was stubbornly determined that Moses would never personally enter the Promised Land. The Rabbis imagine a whole host of protests and pleadings on Moses' part. However, the Bible itself gives us absolutely no clue as to how Moses dealt with this blow as far as any statement which he made.

But we do know that Moses did not allow this seemingly cruel punishment to interfere with his leadership performance. He just kept going. He just kept doing his job. I wonder how many of us would have dealt with such a pronouncement.

There are at least three ways I have seen people respond to such “before and after” episodes of humiliation and crushing disappointment in their lives. Some fight back with destructive unfocused anger. They are mad at God. They are mad at their friends. They are mad at their spouses. They are mad at their children, even though none of these are responsible for their fate. They become so enraged at their fate that they even direct that anger toward an innocent target.

King Saul of our Bible was such a tragic example. Saul disappointed God by not following God's orders to kill King Agag and the sheep and oxen of the Amalekites. Saul begged God for forgiveness, which God refused to grant.

Afterwards, Saul, the once highly esteemed king, now became a bitter, hostile figure. He became obsessed with the fear that David, rather than his own son, would succeed him. He then devoted all his energies to destroy David.

There is also a second type of response. Some turn that anger against themselves and become self-loathing. Often depression comes from directing that anger inward. If the despair becomes profound enough, suicide can be the result. A variant of this behavior is withdrawal because of shame. I know parents who do not want to appear in public because their son was serving time in a penitentiary.

We observed a similar response with Irving Berlin. This renowned American Jewish musician, the composer of “God Bless America” and scores of other favorite national melodies, essentially vanished from the world in 1962.

In 1988, there appeared in the Bulletin of Temple Emanu-El of New York a congratulatory note to Irving Berlin, a member of the congregation, on his 100th birthday. I am sure that, to many, this Bulletin announcement came as a double surprise. First of all, few knew that Berlin was a practicing Jew, who even belonged to a synagogue.

Secondly, it was not generally known that Irving Berlin was still alive. For over 25 years, Berlin had withdrawn from the public eye. In 1962, his last Broadway musical, “Mr. President,” flopped after a six-month run. Since then, he became a recluse. He guarded his privacy zealously.

When the weather was warm, he took a short walk around Beekman Place. He was usually assisted by a young woman or a doorman from the nearby building. Otherwise, he was never seen. He continued to communicate by telephone to a small circle of friends. He granted no interviews to the media. He did not even appear at his gala centennial birthday tribute at Carnegie Hall.

Berlin was so filled with shame over the failure of his Broadway production that though he lived more than 100 years, his life actually stopped at age 74. Though physically alive, his embarrassment in 1962 robbed him of his vitality.

Not all people react with misdirected anger or with reclusive behavior. Some put on a smile, hold their head high, and don't let this setback become a catastrophe. Moses modeled this third kind of exemplary behavior for us. In spite of his very advanced age, he continued to provide sterling leadership for his people.

Magnanimously, he even asked God to appoint a successor when he was informed that he would not accompany the Children of Israel into the Promised Land. He refused to be defeated. He finished his work to the best of his ability.

I am certain that Moses must have felt deeply hurt and crushed when God delivered that horrendous verdict to him. Even though he was closer to God than any human being in our Torah, he was still human with emotions and feelings. He probably went through the normal stages of grieving. But then he learned to embrace his fate. If such disappointments occur in our own lives-the loss of our job, the betrayal of our husband or wife, the failure of our child, the collapse of our commercial venture, a major professional blunder--- we should not initially deny what has happened. We need to acknowledge the pain and the agony. We need to taste the suffering. But staying stuck there is spiritually debilitating. But it is important for us to work through these feelings and then eventually arrive at a sense of equanimity and acceptance.

Often, in the process, we may find that what we originally thought was a calamity actually was a blessing. There is profound wisdom in the observation that when God closes one door, God opens another. For example, sometimes a career mishap can lead us to pursue another vocation which is far more satisfying and rewarding.

Hal Urban, founder of the Character Education movement, put it this way: “Failing is a fact of life, a necessary process that no one escapes. It isn't whether we fail that matters. It's how we fail. The difference between the people who succeed in life and the one's who don't isn't found in the number of times they fail. It's found in what they do after the fall.” Amen.

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