Parashat Nitzavim

summary

Parashat Nitzvaim (Deuteronomy 29:9 – 30:20) concludes Moses’ final oration to the Israelites before he turns to matters of his death and the succession of leadership. Following the Moses’ serious words of rebuke contained in the curses that precedes this week’s parasha, Moses now lays down the foundation for Israel’s religion in that the Torah is declared to be valid for all generations, freely accessible to every member of the people and not, as among other nations, the possession of a privileged few. The words are so relevant to a Liberal Judaism that they are used for the Torah portion on Yom Kippur afternoon.

commentary

“I make this covenant…with those who are standing here…and with those who are not here with us this day (Deut 29: 13, 14).”

A fait accompli? On that day at Sinai, our ancestors concluded the covenant with God (or vice versa) and included us in it even though we had no voice. A Midrash asserts that the souls of all the generations were present when the covenant was concluded but by implication, we were not able to give voice. Have we ever cried out against our ancestors for their decision? The present affects the future and it seems that once accepted, God binds us into the covenant for evermore whether we like it or not. The commentator Isaac Abravanel, (circa 1500) suggested that the individual may drop out but the people as a whole can not.

Our ancestors made the decisions that brought us to this point in our lives. What will be the legacy of covenant that we leave for our generations to come? Will we choose to opt out or is ours the generation that lets apathy take over and we never even get around to making a choice? Or will we be positive and make choices that we will be proud to leave to the generations that follow us. It may take a bit of effort on our part but that is we have days set aside in the next few weeks to think and determine to do.

Adin Steinsaltz suggested in his book, The Thirteen Petalled Rose: “Repentance does not bring a sense of serenity or of completion but stimulates a reaching out in further effort. Indeed, the power and the potential of repentance lie in increased incentive and enhanced capacity to follow the path even farther. The response is often no more than an assurance that one is in fact capable of repenting, and its efficacy lies in growing awareness, with time, that one is indeed progressing on the right path. In this manner the conditions are created in which repentance is no longer an isolated act but has become a permanent possibility, a constant process of going toward. It is a going that is both the rejection of what was once axiomatic and an acceptance of new goals.”

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