Nitzavim-Vayelch

September 16, 2006

Robert Braun

Someone once said that there is nothing like one’s impending doom to focus the mind. As the date for this derash approached, and as my paper remained stubbornly blank, I thought a lot about that saying.

But there are other reasons why that thought is appropriate. In addition to my personal dilemma, this parasha should remind us of our impending destiny, and the need to focus, for a couple of reasons. First, this parasha is generally read, as it is this year, the Shabbat before Rosh Hashannah, and it begins the culmination of this particular time of the year. For the last several weeks we have been reminded of the yamim noraim with the special tehillim and blowing of the Shofar that come with Elul, and all of us, I think, are consciously or unconsciously beginning to incorporate the themes of Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur into our thought patterns.

Moreover, this parasha is also tied up with Moshe’s death. Tradition has it that this is one of the series of parshiot that take place against the background of Moshe’s death. In the beginning of Vayelch, indeed, Moshe is supremely aware that he is facing his last moments on earth. This lends an urgency to the narrative that is sometimes not present in the Torah; there is a sense in the words we read today of Moshe reaching, if you will, to grab us by our tzitzit and struggling, desperately to remind us that the stakes are, indeed, very high.

There is a rhetorical device, a chiasmus, an inversion of phrases, in the beginning of this parasha that emphasizes this focus. In the beginning of Nitzavim, Moshe says "you are standing today, all of you, before God, your God, your leaders, your tribes, your elders and your officers, every man of Israel. Your little ones, your wives, and the strangers in your midst, from the hewer of wood to the drawer of water." Not just you, not just all of you, but a categorization worthy of Faulkner and Pynchon, so that no one might think that they are not part of this story. And why are we standing together? So that, as the parasha continues, you will pass united into the covenant of God and into his oath which God makes with you this day." We are together, of every background and occupation, of each tribe and family, necessary in order to create the unity which underlies our covenant with God.

The chiasm is completed when, in the following verses, the text continues that "not just you alone do I make this covenant and this oath, but with he that is here with us standing before God our God this day, and with him that is not with us here this day." Those who are absent, whether separated by time or space, are part of this story as well.

The impact of this device is to focus us on two things; first the centrality of the covenant to all of the people, and second, the participation of all of the people in the covenant. It tells us of the centrality of our relationship with God in our lives, and the importance that each of us has in fulfilling this covenant.

The parasha, then, is focused on the covenant, and the following verses, as we well know, continue by focusing on the benefits of following, and consequences of not following, the covenant. How good our lives will be if we follow the covenant, and how supremely painful they will be if we do not. However, we should note that this parasha is not written to us generally, but seems to be written to us individually. The verses go on to address each of us, individually, reminding us that if only one of us fails to follow the covenant, all of us are lost.

Take a look at verses 17 and following: "Should there be among you a man or a woman or a clan or a tribe whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God to go worship the gods of those nations, should there be among you a root bearing fruit of hemlock and wormwood, it shall be, when he hears the words of this oath and deems himself blessed in his heart, saying, it will be well with me, though I go in my heart’s obduracy in order to sweep away the moist with the parched, the Lord shall not want to forgive him, for then shall the Lord’s wrath and His jealousy smolder against that man, and all the oath that is written in this book shall come down upon him, and the Lord shall wipe out his name from under the heavens. . . . (21) And a later generation will say – your children who will rise up after you and the stranger who will come from a distant land and will see the blows against this land and its ills which the Lord afflicts it, brimstone and salt, all the land a burning, it cannot be sown and it cannot flourish and no grass will grow in it, like the overturning of Sodom and Gomorrah" – the individual will be punished, and the entire land along with it.

Samson Rafael Hirsch described it beautifully:

"Verses 15-20 avert the misunderstanding that the proclamation of the blessings and curses had only the national defalcation in mind, so that an individual could assume freedom for his own evasion of the Torah as long as the nation as such kept publicly faithful to God and His Torah. "he thinks to himself that the pronouncement of blessing and curse have only in mind that which is judged to be the behavior of the majority, and if the nation had deserved and obtained the promised blessing, then he imagines, individuals, even if they do not deserve it, cannot be debarred from participating in the general prosperity."

Even more than that, the parasha reminds us that it is not simply outward appearances that matter; it is the private life that completes the covenant:

"Then there was also the danger of the other erroneous conception of the other side of solidarity to be combated, that the individual could have done enough to ensure his own well-being if he had done his share of the work of keeping the communal duties of the Torah publicly kept in a seemly manner, but his own private life could be far away from being directed by the Torah."

The upshot of these concepts is that the covenant becomes not just a national covenant, but an individual covenant, one that depends on each of us, acting both as part of a people and as individuals, to fulfill. This is the urgent message that Moshe is trying to convey.

Turning again to facing our destiny, over the past months, we have suffered many losses in our community. On my street alone, my closest neighbors have suffered the loss of parents; I will tell you that it is an odd and troubling thing to walk next door or across the street to a shiva Minyan, and even more surreal to do it so often.

Going to these minyanim reminded me of my sister-in-law, who died about a year and a half ago after suffering for many years from multiple sclerosis. One evening, we were called to see her, because she was having a great deal of trouble breathing, and my brother and the other doctors in the family were afraid she would not make it through the night. On the way, we began to deal with the fact that we had no idea what we should say or what we should do, and Sandra had the presence of mind to call Rabbi Carla Howard, who gave us some of the wisest counsel we could have received. She reminded us that it was not our story. We were part of the story, but we were not the story.

Sometimes it's not our story. I remind myself of that a lot, because it's very good advice. We are all, after all, primarily concerned with ourselves - it's not a problem, it just happens to be the case - and we sometimes forget that as much as we would like to believe otherwise, it's not always about us. We see it all the time. How many b'nei mitzvah or weddings have we attended where it ended up not being about the son or daughter, but about the parents or another interloper? I often tell my younger associates: you aren't the client. As I once heard an opera singer say, the audience should cry from the song, not from the singer. It’s not always about us.

But sometimes, we are the story. Sometimes, it is all about us. This parasha is one of those times; here, we are the story. Not this group of ancestors from thousands of years ago; we, here, today are the story. And next week, and for the ten days to follow, we will continue to be the story. It is up to us to repair our covenant with our family and friends, our community and people, and with God. As we learn from this parasha, it is our story; it is our personal responsibility to do so.

Rabbi Eddie Feinstein likes to tell the story of an Hassidic master who asked his students, when was the most important time to live? Some spoke of creation, or matan torateinu, of the building or destruction of the Temple. But the Rabbi answered that they were wrong – the most important time is now. Now is our opportunity, as it never was in the past and will not be in the future. Let us use the time we have today to live our story, to fulfill our responsibility.

Shana Tovah Tikatevu