Standing on the brink of death, Moshe rebukes the generation before him, but promises that the future generation, those who do not yet know good from bad, will possess the land. The children who comprise the future generation are caught between the baggage of their parents’ desert experience and their own hopes for a future in the land of Israel. How will the children inhabit the land? How will they continue with the traditions from their past?

Let’s take Moses’ statement one step further: not only will the future generation possess the land, but they will also possess Torah and all that it embodies. Let Deuteronomy 1:39 be a reminder of the possibilities of future generations, of the power and the value in creative expressions of Judaism; “they shall possess it.”