Friday, September 11, 2015

Choose Life!

Nitzavim
Deuteronomy 29:9 -30:20

PrĂ©cis: Moses continues to address the People: You stand (nitzavim) this day before Adonai. In his final words to the People, Moses recounts the wonders Adonai had done for them, and calls upon them to remain loyal to God by observing the Covenant. The extent of the relationship is explained: it will survive exile and captivity with a return to the Land. The Torah is an “open book” that is accessible to all. A blessing and a curse have been set before the People, and Moses urges them to choose the blessing, to choose life.

Deut. 30:15,19 “See, I set before you this day life and good, death and evil . . . I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—so that you and your children after you will live.”
            This year, we read this parasha on the Shabbat immediately prior to Rosh Hashanah, when the idea of repentance and change is squarely before us. As Chancellor Arnold Eisen noted in a d’var torah (JTS Torah 9/19/14), Maimonides, in his Laws of T’shuvah (Repentance), focuses on these verses to eliminate any doubt that we human beings have a choice: good or evil. Moses is ending his final presentation to the Israelites, stressing that the Torah provides a road map for all generations, and that by following the correct route, blessings are possible.
            But Moses is a realist. He knows that what lies across the river he personally will not cross is not an Eden, but a land of milk and honey which must be won. It is a metaphor for the battle which each of us face every year, every month, every day.
            Moses knows that life is not going to be easy, that there will be challenges to face, failures as well as success. We cannot alter the past; we can only commit to change in the future, to make it and mold it as best we can. Much of what will happen seems random and out of our control, but nevertheless, we must keep trying.

            As we approach the New Year, my personal hope is to live a life worth living by trying to do the right thing, knowing full well that I will make mistakes along the way (as I have during the year now ending), but relying upon the possibility of repentance to make my life, and the lives around me, more meaningful. That, in a sense, is what Moses means when he says “choose life.”