By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.
SAN DIEGO — Happy birthday world. Here’s to the beginning of a New Year, but first we read this week’s parasha, Nitzavim, always read on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. The Torah reading this Shabbat asks us where we stand as we set the tone for the rest of our lives. “I have set before you, life and death, the blessing, and the curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live.” The themes of t’shuvah, renewal, choosing life, and a recommitment to the covenant by everyone in our community resonate throughout Nitzavim.
There are many interpretations of what it means to choose life. For example, the Yerushalmi interprets it as an obligation to earn a livelihood. Kohelet Rabba interprets it as an obligation to teach a son to swim, to ensure his physical survival. Remember, it says, “…so that you and your offspring will live…” Choosing to live a Jewish life with pride and joy, not with “oy,” benefits our offspring.
Choosing life means fully engaging with family and friends – physically, spiritually, socially, cognitively, professionally, and civically. It means continually learning, growing, volunteering, mentoring, traveling, maintaining an active spiritual/religious life. It also means pursuing a healthy lifestyle including good nutrition, exercise, mindfulness, and stress-prevention. This means using the inner strength, mentally and physically, to live a life of health.
Indeed, Judaism regards life as the highest good and we are obligated to live in a way that protects our health. Choshen Mishpat 427, Yoreh De’ah 116, and Chulin 9a make it clear that we are to be more particular about matters concerning danger to health than about ritual matters.
Choosing life means seeing beyond the material and connecting to the deeper essence of an experience. When we eat, we can focus on the taste of something or feel more deeply grateful for the ultimate source of the food we have, Hashem. We can look beyond the outside to see that which lies within, the connections in life, to see the links that bring us together, to recognize that everything happens FOR us in life, rather than TO us.
These days upon us, Rosh Hashana, the Fast of Gedalia, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hoshana Rabah, Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, we contemplate our needs and our deeds, our hopes, and aspirations for the coming year. and in so doing, we choose life. This is a central message of the High Holidays…to choose life, to live a live filled with mitzvot, not just to pray to win a lottery or for the health of one’s body, but ideally, for the needs of our soul as well. It is during these days that we are also most mindful of the choices we have made during the past year. We collectively and individually take a deep moral inventory, look at how we have behaved, we examine the faithfulness we have demonstrated in all our relationships with, and we make plans and promises for the new year to improve. The High Holy Days demonstrate the control we have – over ourselves. T’shuva, according to Maimonides, revolves around an elaborate, verbal articulation, a clarification process to address the most fundamental questions of our lives:
Who do we really want to be in the world? What are the values that we most cherish and wish to nurture in ourselves? What would we have to do to best nurture these values? What are the things that keep us from embracing certain visions of our best selves? What are the most authentic parts of our identities? What type of community do we wish to be part of or do we aspire to create?
Rabbi Hanina taught: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven — except for the fear/awe of Heaven.” We can choose what we think, how we respond and how we act…everything else is in His hands. Nitzavim reminds us that we have the mental and emotional tools with which to make good choices, choices that help us improve our lives, and perhaps the lives of others.
One tool, the essential tool, is our genuine prayer, described in contemporary terms as “mindfulness” and “meditation.” Indeed, the positive impact on our physical wellbeing (brain through gut) that meditation, prayerful practice, that has been around for thousands of years, has been demonstrated in a recent study published by Harvard University. This time of the year, with the prodding we have inside of Nitzavim, reminds us of the opportunity we have to set ourselves aside, to renew our mindfulness, our deeply concentrated meditative prayer, and reconnect ourselves with Hashem. Done well, we can eliminate our anxieties, our fears, and fill ourselves with faith.
Nitzavim opens with the words, Atem nitzavim hayom — that may be understood as, “You stand firm this day.” In the midrash Tanchuma it asks, “When (do the Jewish people stand firm)? “When you will be unified.” The parasha tells us that we are all standing before Hashem. In Lidutey Halachot, Reb Noson teaches that this points to the importance of achdus, of unity, for all Jews. All Jews…those who attend services, those who do not, those who keep that “law” and those who keep another “law,” those who dress that way or the other way. We are being urged to join together so that our prayers ascend to Heaven. From Reb Noson and Reb Nachman both, we are taught to always judge for the good, to look for the good points in each other. This year, aim to revere the divinity in every soul – every soul. Shhh, this year, recognize that nobody is actually better than another. That is how we nurture true peace and love everywhere.
Also at the beginning of the parasha, we see the discussion of arvus, that we are all responsible for each other. “The hidden aveiros are for Hashem, but the revealed ones are for us and our children forever.” We understand this to mean that if a fellow Jew does an aveirah publicly, and others can prevent it but do not, they are also held responsible. “Kol Yisrael avreivim zeh bazeh– all Jews are responsible for each other (Shavuos 39a).”
This is the mindset, actively and kindly participating as part of the tzibbur, that enhances one’s Rosh Hashana and elevates one’s prayers. Praying in the plural, with the tzibbur, reminds us to daven not just for ourselves, but for others as well. The message is to create a congregation that authentically lives in solidarity, acting with purity of heart to all members.
It’s not easy. No, we all know how we find ourselves in a mind fog as the words in the prayer book drone onward, babbling, garbling, mumbling forward. We all know how we’d like to think we are somehow magically elevated just sitting in services while we negatively judge others around us, only extend ourselves to certain people and ignore others, and see folks who’ve just heard the rabbi’s sermon immediately do exactly what he/she urged not to do. We do not live in a “Good Yontif” or “Shabbat Shalom,” kindness economy. You won’t lose anything by using this High Holiday season to truly grow beyond where you are, to splurge and offer a genuine smile, a warm welcome, a heartfelt well wish to all. This year, may no human being be treated as “other.”
We have in front of us an impressive opportunity to choose a deep, authentic, potent connection with Hashem in the coming weeks. As it says in Psalm 19, “The teaching of Hashem is perfect, renewing life…The precepts of Hashem are just, rejoicing the heart; the instruction of Hashem is lucid, making the eyes light up.”
It’s not a time to be “show-mer” Shabbat. Faithfully looking inside and sincerely growing closer to Hashem, Nitzavim points out, will help us create a new year, a new life, with many more blessings than this past year. If we are sincere in our davening, if this year the tzibbur genuinely moves closer to truly include all, we will find that our common humanity will be woven together into a harmonious tallit of mutuality.
Wishing all – all – a “Ketivah v’chatima tovah,” “A good inscription and sealing in the Book of Life, “Leshana tovah tikatev v’tichatem” “May you be written and sealed for a good year,” and “A gut gebentsht yohr,” “A good and blessed year.”
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Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D., prepares a weekly D’var Torah for Young Israel of San Diego, where he and his family are members. They are also active members of Congregation Adat Yeshurun. He may be contacted via michael.mantell@sdjewishworld.com