Nitzavim parsha thoughts
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And You Thought Exile Was Hard…
‘And Hashem will return your exile…’ Where does Hashem come into this – is He in exile too?
Rashi explains that bringing all the Jews back will be so difficult that it will seem as though we need Hashem himself to enter the exile and take them back home one by one.
Why? Because Jews have built a parnassah and a community. They will not want to leave when moshiach comes!
Hashem will need to pry them loose, like nails out of a board, to effect the ingathering and rebuilding of Israel
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Anyone Hear Hashem Recently?
‘When you will listen to the voice of Hashem, to hear His Mitzvos etc.’ The Baal HaTurim comments that this phrase is of the same numerical value as ‘listen to the talmidei chachamim’
The meaning here is clear: talk of listening to the voice of Hashem is essentially meaningless – can anyone hear Hashem’s voice?? The real and practical meaning of listening to His voice is that we listen to the sages. They are the real representation of Hashem’s voice.
Is that PC today?
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Doing Our Thing
The Torah tells us that if we keep the Torah, Hashem will be happy with us, as He was happy with our forefathers. I think this is extraordinary: our forefathers were giants of spirit who followed Hashem into the desert! They heard Hashem face to face, and walked through the Yam Suf. We compare to them? Yet here it is: Hashem says ‘No matter. You keep your part of the deal and I will be as happy over you I was happy over your parents’.
The idea here is that we each have our own job to do. We have only the powers that we were born with. We have not the powers of those who followed Hashem into the desert, nor do we have their parents, upbringing and inspiration. We are not expected to produce as they did; we are expected only to do our job.
Filling our quota, no matter if it is big or small, is what makes Hashem be happy with us. He was pleased with our forefathers, and He will be happy with us. We don’t look at the stature of our forefathers or their achievements, rather we look at their filling their quota. In this we can emulate and even measure up to them.
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Agreements With The Unborn
The Torah cuts a deal with ‘those who were not with us today’, those not yet born. How? Can’t those people say ‘I never would have agreed to anything like that!’? How they be held accountable?
One suggestions was that all souls were present and all really did accept the bris.
Alternatively, the Sforno suggests that they really didn’t have to accept anything; Hashem was telling them the terms to live in Eretz Yisroel; accept them, fine. If not, leave!
We explored the idea that children are a development/permuttion of their parents. If your cat becomes fatter, those extra pounds belong to you because they are your cat. So too when someone has a family, that family is him, enlarged. Any bris or obligation he enters into passes on to his children, for they are him!
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Keep Caring
When someone rebels against Hashem, his mistakes count as intentional sins. (Targum) Why? I suppose it’s because he has no excuse. The usual drill is ‘Gosh, had I known, I would not have done it!’ But this fellow is in revolt of Hashem so he would have done it anyhow.
What’s the lesson to us? If we let things ride and become lax in a certain mitzvah, we risk that all our mistakes in that area be considered intentional sins!
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Moshe gathered the Jews to make a bris with them: ‘To make us His nation, and that He will be our G-d’. Wasn’t that already done by Har Sinai? What’s the new agreement about?
For an agreement to last it needs consequences: what happens if things are not kept? These consequences are not bad, they actually are what makes the agreement happen. So yes, Hashem had announced that He will be ours and we will be his. But what will make that happen? Why won’t we laze off?
The curses in last weeks parshah are the cement that makes the agreement work. And Hashem negotiated an agreement whereby we, Klal Yisroel, accepted these penalties WILLINGLY so that our relationship will have a guarantee.
Penalties drive treaties. Appreciate them!
©2013
kollel parshah | Tiferet Ramot 83-21, Jerusalem, Israel, 97290
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