אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
You stand this day, all of you, before Life Unfolding Expressing as All of You
טַפְּכֶם נְשֵׁיכֶם וְגֵרְךָ אֲשֶׁר בְּקֶרֶב מַחֲנֶיךָ מֵחֹטֵב עֵצֶיךָ עַד שֹׁאֵב מֵימֶיךָ׃
A mixed multitude, men and women, children, strangers, leaders, woodchoppers and water drawers, all standing together before Life Unfolding. All carriers of the covenant to choose life.
Deuteronomy 29:9-10
When are we inhabiting a Promised Land? In this week's Torah portion, Nitzavim (standing firmly), the Boundary Crossers are the ones standing in the present moment in relationship with everyone else. The Torah passage says, you will cross over into the Promised Land when you stand with those whom you hold as leaders, those whom you hold as strangers, those whom you hold as family and workers. The Promised Land is available when we stand in the present with awareness of how interrelated we all are.
When we are standing and we aren't present, our thoughts are scattered. We are in a state of separation, lost in a barren desert. When we stand firmly together we hold each other up. We stand in the present moment for a beautiful future.
Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present.” This is how the mystical Hasidic tradition interprets "you stand this day." This day, hayom, is repeated twelve times in these passages. You stand here, nitzavim, this day, all of you, men, women, children, re-gendered, stranger, from wood chopper to water drawer. No one is left out.
These opening passages parallel the Zen practice of living in the present moment: chop wood and carry water. Day by day, if we are present as we consume wood and water, if we appreciate how dependent we are on Earth's abundance, we will know how to stand together in our responsibility to each other and all life forms on the Earth. A Promised Land is available in the here and the now.
In life, every action we make ripples out to affect how the past is carried into the present and what gets carried into the future. Our choices matter because we contain, in this moment, all of the past, present and future.
As poet Walt Whitman wrote:
The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
(American poet Walt Whitman was the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1846 to 1848. He lost his position after siding with the Barnburners—the anti-slavery faction of the Democratic Party—against his supervisor, Issac van Anden who chose the more conservative Hunker wing.)
וְלֹא אִתְּכֶם לְבַדְּכֶם אָנֹכִי כֹּרֵת אֶת־הַבְּרִית הַזֹּאת וְאֶת־הָאָלָה הַזֹּאת׃ כִּי אֶת־אֲשֶׁר יֶשְׁנוֹ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ עֹמֵד הַיּוֹם לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ וְאֵת אֲשֶׁר אֵינֶנּוּ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ הַיּוֹם׃
I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before Life Unfolding Expressing as Us and with those who are not with us here this day.
Deuteronomy 29:13-14
The Promised Land manifests when everyone is included. Past, present, and future are always present between the mountains and seas of our lives, in a continual moment-to-moment covenant with Life Unfolding. Torah speaks these truths, switching between "us" and "you," singular and plural. Everyone, in multitude relationships, stands together.
And what of the," I", of which poet Whitman speaks? The Bal Shem Tov, founder of the mystical Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe, say we humans are Adam Olam Kattan. This too is a poetic expression meaning that Earthling (Adam) is a microcosm (kattan) of the world (olam): everything is contained within us. (I learned this from studying Toldos Yaacov Yosef, published in 1780, with Rabbi Daniel Silverstein, Founder & Director of appliedjewishspirituality.org)
Every generation, the ones that came before us and the ones that, we pray, will come after, are boundary crossers, Ivri [Hebrews], connectors between the generations. Each of us is a bridge. And each of us prays and acts as much as we know how, to be a bridge, not a beginning or an ending.
And at the same time, we are the beginning and the ending. We are in a dance between the past we have inherited, the future we dream of and the present moment, the only moment.
The people standing at the beginning of Nitzavim are standing on the shoulders of their ancestors. What is promised to them was promised to their ancestors lives in them and is promised to their progeny. And the key to it all is to be standing, each of them, each of us, in the present, in awareness of what we need to agree to do to create a future of living present moments.
Teshuvah: Our Power to Reconnect
Variations of the Hebrew root verb for teshuvah, meaning return, (for me, re-connecting), are repeated seven times in the next Torah passages. These are read in synagogues throughout the world during the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. In Torah, repetition of something seven times tells us this is a continual process, beyond time, without beginning and without end. Indeed, some ancient texts say that teshuvah, return, was created before the creation that begins the Torah. (See my post on Nitzavim published in the Times of Israel in 2016: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/nitzavim-all-standing-together/.)
Teshuvah is studied and practiced throughout the Hebrew month of Elul, which ends with the blowing of the shofar, a ram's horn, announcing the new lunar year. We have prepared for this momentous passage during Elul by standing everyday to hear the wake up call of the shofar. The month-long practice of teshuvah is a time of spiritual introspection and preparation that heightens the availability of transformation.
The 19th century Hasidic teacher, Svat Emet, explains that this as a moment when you stand with your heart open, not hiding from yourself or any great power to which you bow down. You go out into the field where Life Unfolding waits for you, always present and especially available right now. You find the power to call out and reconnect from the depths of your pain. (see “Nitzavim,” Language of Truth, Torah Commentary by the Svat Emet)
לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה־לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה׃ וְלֹא־מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲבׇר־לָנוּ אֶל־עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה׃ כִּי־קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ׃
[You can do this] because this action of coming closer is not beyond you, nor is it remote from you. It is not in heaven . . . It is not across the sea . . . Rather, it is very close to you, in your mouth, in your heart, that you may do it.
Deuteronomy 30:12-14
Truth is within your own experience. When you can speak words that connect your truth with yourself and others, you return to power. The Torah says, “It is within you. Don't look to heaven. It is within you.” The capacity for choice is within you.
How do we draw forth our capacity to choose Life, to choose to live responsibly with all of Life Unfolding? Is it in our nature to return to connection? In Hasidic teachings we are standing, nitzavim, because we have done teshuvah and have access to its fruits. Meaning, as Rabbi David Ingber explained this week in his class, you are standing because you got up again.
Teshuvah, reconnecting, is an "inner" and "outer" practice. The Hasidic teachers emphasize that we draw strength and reconnection from the process itself. This week's Torah portion says that no matter how far from your integrity and aspirations you have strayed, it is available. In fact, say the spiritual traditions, the further you stray, the deeper is your return. You stand, facing the wall, and from the depths you pull out your will and courage to renew yourself.
Teshuvah, like Nonviolent Communication, and all the mindfulness practices, is a practice, not a procedure. It is the process itself that brings out our strength. It is a time to reconnect with ourselves, what we value, and how we want to show up.
The core story of Exodus, the flight from Egypt, tells us not to lose hope or trust in ourselves because the path is circuitous. The mystics teach that the path of teshuvah, like the forty years of wanderings in the desert, is always a roundabout way. We are learning as we go. We need perseverance, showing up over and over.
It takes strength to re-connect. In the process of re-connection, standing again after a fall, we tap into new levels of inner clarity, connection and empowerment. The process itself opens us to what was always there.
In Zen practice, we sit facing a wall. The physical wall is a metaphor and a reminder that by facing the wall head-on, we go beyond our stuck places, our habitual grudges and judgments.
אִם־יִהְיֶה נִדַּחֲךָ בִּקְצֵה הַשָּׁמָיִם מִשָּׁם יְקַבֶּצְךָ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ וּמִשָּׁם יִקָּחֶךָ׃
And no matter how far you wander, how far away you run, I will take you back
Deuteronomy 30: 4
This beautiful verse tells us that Life Unfolding also returns to us. We are in a mutual dialectical relationship with all that is. When we reconnect, the source of life also reconnects.
Commanded to Love
אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ...
I command you this day to love the Eternal Divine Presence Expressing as You
Deuteronomy 30:16
Here, Torah presents another radical idea: that we are commanded to love. Awakening means realizing that loving is our make-up. Love is our foundational DNA. We are wired to love and to be loved.
Nonviolent Communication offers a simple and deep practice to understand this:
- Think of something you or someone else did or said that seems important to you or them. Then say to yourself, I did that because I need love. If it was something challenging someone else did, say to yourself, s/he did that because that's the way they knew in that moment to cry out for love.
- Consult this list of needs when you want to engage in a process of understanding your needs or someone else's. As you look through the list, https://www.cnvc.org/sites/default/files/2018-10/CNVC-needs-inventory.pdf, circle the needs that you are guessing are behind the actions.
- And then add the words "Love in the form of," so that you are saying to yourself or another person, "I want to meet needs for love in the form of cooperation, connection, understanding." Or, "I am longing for love in the form of cooperation, connection, understanding..."
When you connect what your being's encoded longing for love, you are bringing more love into the world. You are filling yourself with love. And you are helping everyone return to love.
“We are commanded to love” means every cell in our body exists to live and to love. As the medieval Torah commentator Rashi wrote, “All things in nature are drawn to god.” (Quoted by the Svat Emet in The Book of Truth.) In Torah this means the natural order, the code encrypted in life forms, is love of what is.
In Nonviolent Communication, it means that under the most challenging actions and words we hear, there is a yearning for love. “Please love me.” “Please see me.”
Thich Nhat Hanh said often, “The ones who need our love the most are the hardest to love.”
Marshall Rosenberg spoke of Nonviolent Communication as answering two questions, both asked with curiosity. What is alive in you, what is the life energy flowing through you in this moment? And how can I make life more wonderful? Choosing life means bringing alive the humanity of the other person or our self by listening and understanding the life energy called needs that is coming alive in this moment.
Moment to Moment Choosing Life
הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶךָ׃
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live—
Deuteronomy 30:19
Torah commentators from medieval Rashi to nineteenth century Svat Emet interpret these verses in the Torah portion to mean that humans and all life forms are drawn to love. The only difference between us and the rest of organic life is that we have choice to choose life or death. In Buddhist terminology, ill being or well being. We can choose.
We see this every day, the signs of how our choices are threatening the possibility of life continuing as we know it.
Buddhism offers these five mindfulness trainings as teshuvah, a path of individual and collective return to living in harmony with the natural order: https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-5-mindfulness-trainings/)
Nonviolent Communication advocates choosing actions that meeting as many needs as are present in a situation. And mourning, openly, vulnerably, when you make choices that don't meet needs. For example, as parents, we make choices that may meet our needs for life, such as limiting computer time, setting curfews, restricting access to gatherings.
And these choices sometimes prevent young people from meeting their life needs, such as autonomy and choice, play, companionship and fun.
Choosing life means acknowledging that their needs for autonomy, play, fun, friendship, discovery and experimentation also are part of life. So we endeavor to share power, rather than create relationships where we dominate with our power. When our imagination fails us and we can only think of strategies to meet our needs at the expense of others', we express our regret and ask for help.
In his post this week on Nitzavim, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg highlights the teachings of Maimonides who wrote, “Every action is a mixture of good and bad.” This is a vulnerable expression of realization that there is a shadow side to everything we do.
Living in covenant with Life Unfolding means realizing that all these things are close to us, with us. The enemy is not "out there." The shadow is with us. We can take this as our teacher in how we eat and speak, when we find ourselves pointing fingers of blame and shame and judgment. Every breath is an opportunity to return, to reconnect, with life.
Nitzavim: We Stand Together, We Speak Each Other Into Existence
I
With the grace of beginners mind
I look upwards noticing
how the towering oak and pine
encircle this land and my aging house
with limbs linked, branches and leaves
woven together in a canopy of embrace
and I see how my house
held in holy community
by a hidden and vast root system,
has expanded, windows framed
and feathered by wild roses
and the last resilient blue hydrangea
of a chaotic season,
noticing, as if for the first time
how so many of my beloveds,
lilac and forsythia, apple
and Rose of Sharon,
are here because I paid attention
to my longings for beauty
and dug in, my flower bed
a refuge for my old friend the elderly
raccoon who chose to lay down and die
in the warm invitation of our shared green -
all the ways we garden and are gardened,
catch and release ourselves,
sometimes missing.
Three crows cantillate
a Torah that reaches me across species:
Karov karov, come near we call come near
listen and take wing.
We speak each other
into existence.
II
Wearied already
by the complexities
of a precarious Elul morning,
I sit among the aging roses
and a hummingbird,
surely the one I see most days
hovers inches from my face.
A whirl of wings
she is motion and stasis,
a master of leaning towards
and moving away. I see
how precisely her beak
is formed to open
the secrets of the flower.
Sensing that she might
mistake me for a
blossom, I fear and long
for her to pierce open
my barricaded heart
so that I might
be an offering of nectar
my teshuvah
amidst the turning leaves
and untamed stems.
— Elana Klugman, draft 9/1/21
Thank you Roberta. As I think about our loss of civil rights this week In Texas, I hope I have the love and strength to make the choices necessary in the coming year.
Thank you Carol. Nitzavim- we stand to hold each other up. Nitzavim, I learned this week from Rabbi David Ingber, is a quality of standing firmly. We stand this way because, as David Grossman wrote, the temptation to fall is very strong.
“Yet in order to do almost anything, you have to act against the gravity of grief. It is heavy, it pulls you down, and you have to make a deliberate effort to overcome it. You have to decide that you won’t fall. In the [last novel] I wrote, Falling Out of Time, this idea of falling, all the time – the temptation to fall is very strong.”
David Grossman, In an interview with The Guardian–
So satisfying to read, so helpful to my meditating on this parasha. Many thanks. L’shana tova
Exquisite poem by Elana Klugman. The crow reciting a Torah, invites us to hear the chant that invites us into relationship everywhere.
Thank you
Beautiful post and so resonant. Thank you Roberta. I think the teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh (“The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present”) is very much the call of the Shofar we need to hear.