Community Torah Corner - September 27, 2024

Transitions are complicated. Whether it’s the start of another school year, beginning a new job, or the Jewish nation on the brink of an unprecedented change in leadership and communal structure–transitions bring moments of uncertainty and destabilization in addition to excitement and hope over new possibilities. 

As we near the end of Sefer Devarim’s extensive recounting of everything B’nei Yisrael have been through and the mitzvot they are to keep, parashat Nitzavim-Vayelekh takes a moment to note the intended audience for the book’s address.

Moshe tells the people, “You stand this day ‘כֻּלְּכֶם’–all of you, before the Lord your God—your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, every householder in Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from the woodchopper to the water drawer—to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God.” Moshe begins by stating something that is not necessarily obvious–we might have thought that the covenant being made between God and the Jewish people was a responsibility primarily meant for some smaller, particularly pious or important subsection of the people. By way of introduction, he asserts that it is in fact equally for “all of you.”

But he expands it further, adding: “I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day.” One might have also reasonably thought that this contract was only between the original parties who agreed to it. However, Moshe in this verse tells us that it is far more expansive. 

What exactly does this mean, “and those who are not here with us this day?” There is a rabbinic interpretation from the Midrash Tanhuma which explains that this phrase comes to include all future generations of Jews, stretching indefinitely into the future. The midrash even claims that not only were we, the future generations, included in this covenant–it imagines that some part of our souls were actually present in that moment. That the covenant with God was made not just with the original group of B’nei Yisrael who were physically standing before Moshe, or even their immediate descendants, but with all future members of the Jewish people, whether by birth or by choice. 

Many commentators on our parasha are still troubled by how this aspect of the covenant works. How can Jewish children, in perpetuity, be obligated by their ancestors in a set of responsibilities they never themselves agreed to–is it enough to claim that our souls were somehow present that day to agree to the responsibility first-hand? One commentator, the Malbim, brings the idea from Jewish law that although one is generally not allowed to sign others up for responsibilities without their knowledge, one is allowed to consent to something on behalf of another when it is clearly to that person’s benefit. He argues that this is how we should view the covenant and Jewish tradition when it comes to our children and our students–as something so beautiful, so valuable, and so fundamentally worthwhile that we would without hesitation include others in it. 

This is the charge our parasha gives both to the generation of B’nei Yisrael standing before Moshe at the end of their desert journey and also to all of us standing here today in the Jewish community. We should view the Torah and our tradition as both a serious set of responsibilities and as a precious gift, and know that even if we succeed in building vibrant Jewish lives and communities for ourselves, it is our obligation to figure out how these will continue after us. We and Moshe know that this does not happen on its own–whether we are parents or teachers (or both!), this task demands time, care, and investment to educate the next generation into this love of Jewish community and tradition that we ourselves have learned. 

I am so excited to be diving into this holy work with the GOA community this year. Good Shabbos!