Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem
– this well-known textual nugget, according to Rabbi
Bradley Shavit-Artson, can be read, perhaps must be read, as an admonition
against venerating the past: כלכם היום נצבים אתם, You – all of you - stand here
TODAY! This day you enter into God’s covenant. Not yesterday. Not back at Sinai, but now – this very day. The beauty of the grammar is that every time
we read this text, it reads in the present.
Each year, as we will in just 12
days, we recite these words from the bema to perhaps the largest kahal, the largest congregational gathering,
of the year. This day you stand here, the text describes – it demands of us that
we remain present, open, and willing to hear and do God’s covenant.
The past is a
vital component to our relationship with this covenant, and as such, it is ever
present in the words of our Torah, the texts of our liturgy, and in the rituals
in which we engage; but, each time we come to this parasha, we are reminded, that the present and the future are
equally – if not more – important to Jewish continuity. Moreover, the present
and future are fully dependent not only on continuity flowing out of the past, but on our very willingness to stand up and be present and open to accepting the
mandate of being Jewish and Jewishly engaged in our own day. Nitzavim
assumes our rapt attention to the here and now.
Our tendency is to look towards the past. There is certainly a lot of it, and much of
it is rich and worthy of our attention. If
we solely venerate the past, however, then we have lost complete sight of the
Jewish concept of ongoing revelation.
The author of Parashat Nitzavim makes
it clear that God’s covenant was never intended to be a relic, it was intended
to be renewed in each and every generation.
Atem nitzavim
hayom kulchem – I challenge all
of us to be fully present as we enter the yamim
noraim together. The call of the
shofar is ancient, our response to it must be fully present.
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