Hello everybody,
It is almost Rosh haShanah and I wish you were here. 🙂
The parsha (weekly Torah portion) we we are reading this week is called Nitzavim, which is Hebrew for, “To stand,” and the parsha begins with Moshe (Moses) telling us how everyone, from the highest elder, to the wood-cutter and water-carrier is standing today before haShem (god) in order to pass into the covenant and become a nation for god, and have haShem be our god/power. Moshe warns us not to worship foreign gods and not to rationalize that we can be whole doing whatever we wish, for not only does what we do affect us, it will affect the land itself, and it will be obvious to the other nations that we are not worshiping our god.
We then read that when we are dispersed amongst the other nations, and dealing with the blessings and the curses, if we start to consider following haShem’s ways, then haShem will return our captivity and have mercy on us, and gather us in from wherever we have been dispersed to, and we will again settle the promised land, and god will put the curses on those who hate us and persecute us.
If we return and start to listen to haShem, we will have abundance of everything, from our work to our children, to our food and livestock.
Moshe then tells us that this mitzvah (commandment/connection) to return to haShem is not a distant thing, or in heaven, or across the ocean, that some hero has to retrieve for us. Rather, it is very close, in our mouths and our hearts.
The parsha winds down with Moshe telling us that today, god has given before us life and good, or death and evil, and that we are being commanded to love haShem and follow in his ways and live and increase and god will bless the land we are entering to settle. But, if we turn our hearts away, and don’t listen, and serve other gods, we will be lost and haShem will not prolong our days on the land. We are told that heaven and earth are witnesses and that we should choose life so we and our offspring will live. The parsha ends with us being told to love haShem and obey her and stick to him for she is our life and the length of our days to reside on the land that haShem promised to our Abraham, Yitzhak (Isaac), and Yaakov (Jacob).
A short and sweet parsha, though this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot hidden within it ready to jump out at us. However, we are just before Rosh haShannah, and I thought I would take it easy on you, just this once. I think I will sing you a song…ok, not the full song, but just a verse. The song is from Pink Floyd, and is called Wish You Were Here:
Did they get you to trade
your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for chains?
Did you exchange
a walk on part in the war
for the lead roll in a cage?
“Now what does this song from the early 1970s have to do with our parsha?” I hear many of you asking. Well, let me tell you. It came to me as I while I was sitting in a class taught by Avraham Sutton. He brought up the verse in Devarim (Deuteronomy) (30:3) that refers to haShem returning our captivity. It was in the course of the discussion that I realized the last two lines I quoted of the song describe what haShem is telling us.
To explain, we need to go to the beginning of chapter 30. We are dispersed in the nations and dealing with life, good and bad. I had an auto-shop teacher who described it as, “Driving down the road fat, dumb, and happy.” Anyway, we are driving down the road when something suddenly happens: we get a flat tire or the traffic suddenly backs up, for two examples. And what happens then? We get angry. Why? Because we think, “How could this happen to me!” Ok, maybe we don’t think this on the surface. Perhaps on the surface we are saying, “oh no, I am going to be late for work/a meeting/a date.” Underneath, however, is the, “How dare this happen to me,” thought.
What is under this thought? Under this thought is the belief that WE are the main thing in creation. How dare something interfere with ME! And this IS us taking the lead roll in a cage!
Now, hopefully, this happens enough and we start to wonder about this most basic assumption. Eventually we might start to think that there is something else that is really in control, and maybe we aren’t the most important thing in the world. This is the verse about us considering haShem’s ways, and it is this process that leads us into the next verse, the one where god returns us to our captivity. In other words, god reveals to us that we are in a cage when we think that WE are the most important thing, and that we can now step out of the cage and into our true roll as a bit player in the “war.”
The only problem is: who wants to be a bit player? We all want to be a main character, to make an impact. I think a poem I recall from my childhood can help us with this concern. The poem goes something like this:
For the loss of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For the loss of the shoe, the horse was lost.
For the loss of the horse, the war was lost.
For the loss of the war, the kingdom was lost.
We, the bit players, are that nail. Now we can see how important we are. And now that we can see how important we, in our walk-on rolls, are, we can see that god is showing us how to get out of captivity by showing us that we are in captivity, and showing us that we already have the key, which is following in her ways. And not only that, we are told that when we take on our small roll, god will make us prosper. Now what does it mean to prosper? Does it mean to have great wealth? No, it means that if we do our little bit of haShem’s work with joy, soon, others will see and join in, and when enough of us do, we form the shoe. When even more join in, we become the horse, and this leads to us winning the war. All because the nail (you) did not get lost.
I know that this all sounds great as an idea. And I hear some of you saying that you doubt it really works in practice – that people won’t join in just because we do our little bit. Well, let me tell you a story. When I lived in San Francisco, I was bothered by the trash on the ground. So, I decided to pick up one piece of garbage for each block that I walked. I wasn’t thinking of forming a movement, or whether I was being noticed or doing something that would change the world. I just felt that this is what haShem wanted me to do. Well, much to my surprise, after several months, one of my friends that I often walked with, started picking up garbage too. And a few months later, another friend started. This is the increase of the work of our hands that god is talking about: what you do, others will emulate. For this reason, I ask everyone to think about what you are doing and please, only do for the good of the world and for all of us!
Shanah tovah and shavuah tov/have a good year and a good week!
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.