Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Shabbat Nitzavim
September 19, 2003
The Most Important Day of Our Lives
We say that a discerning reader knows how to "read between the lines," which is as good a definition of Midrash as any I have heard. Midrash is a unique form of biblical exegesis in which one "reads between the lines" of the Bible to find its meaning for one’s own generation. This evening, I would like to share with you a contemporary Midrash by Rabbi Mark B. Greenspan.
As I read this week’s Torah portion, I could not help but wonder what was going on in the Bible. What did Moses really have in mind as he delivered his farewell address to his people? I imagined a scenario which went something like this:
Standing on the shore of the Jordan River, the people of Israel knew that the end was near. But so was the beginning. Listening to their teacher, Moses, they could sense the urgency in his voice. Soon the nation would depart for the Promised Land, while Moses would remain behind only to peer at the land from a distant mountain top.
Moses spoke to the people:
"Atem nitzaveem ha-yom kulchem lifnay Adonai Elohaychem
You are standing before Adonai, your God, all of you, TODAY.
R’ay natati l’fanecha ha-yom et ha-chayim v’et ha-tov v’et ha-mavet v’et ha-ra . . . u’vacharta ba-chayim
Behold, I have set before you TODAY either life and prosperity or death and adversity – choose life!"
The people knew that there was something special about this day, but they were not quite sure what it was. What did Moses mean when he said that they were now standing "in the presence of God"? Had they not been in God’s presence years before when they stood at Mount Sinai? Had they not fashioned a covenant with God at that time? [ Had God not accompanied them in their wanderings through the desert? After all, God had led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. ] And yet now, as Moses announced his retirement, once again he told the people "you are all here to enter into the covenant which Adonai, your God, is making with you TODAY." Was this a new covenant or simply a renewal of the old one?
And what did Moses have in mind when he repeatedly said: ha-yom – today? In this one Torah portion, Moses uses the word ha-yom no less than ten times. He says TODAY you are standing with God. TODAY God is making a covenant. Not only are you here TODAY, but future generations of Israel are here TODAY as well. TODAY you must choose between a blessing and a curse. The covenant is not too difficult for you TODAY.
Ha-yom, ha-yom – the people wondered what is the significance of "this day". Finally a small child, not ashamed to ask questions, came forward and said to Moses: Rabbenu – our teacher – what is so special about TODAY? Why do you keep saying ha-yom? For 40 years you have instructed us and taught us Torah. Why do you say that we are standing in the presence of God TODAY and accepting the Torah TODAY?
Stooping down, Moses embraced the child and quietly said: "Because, my child, every day is ha-yom – every day is TODAY. This is the most important lesson that I can teach you . . . Today is the most important day of your life. Today you stand in the presence of God. But tomorrow and the morrow after that will also be a new TODAY. Your challenge is to know that wherever you are and whatever you are doing, what really matters is ha-yom – TODAY.
My friends, I think Rabbi Greenspan’s point is well made, and it is no accident that Nitzavim is always read on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. In a sense, it sets the stage for the Days of Awe by emphasizing ha-yom – TODAY. At this time of the year, it is easy to become fixated on yesteryear and yesterday as we review our deeds and are filled with regret and sorrow for past errors. Each of us, as we do our chesbon ha-nefesh – our soul inventory – says ‘if only I had not.’ But while we must remember the past, we cannot live there.
It is also easy to become infatuated with the future during this season of resolutions and promises. In Pirke Avot we are told: "Do not say I will study Torah when I have leisure time – maybe you will never have leisure time." Too many lives have been wasted by people waiting for tomorrow, for the next vacation, or for retirement. We must plan for the future, but we must live in the present. Neither nostalgia nor wishful thinking are means of building a life for oneself.
Therefore Moses told his people – remember that you are standing in the presence of God ha-yom – TODAY. You cannot change the past and there are no promises about the future. The blessings and curses of life are present in the here and now. Life is what we make of it at this moment. Therefore, life is too precious to be squandered, too short to be petty, too fragile to be handled thoughtlessly. Life is so uncertain that we should cherish every day we have.
Our Rosh Hashanah liturgy says – ha-yom harat olam – today is the birth day of the world. Not the birthday, but the day of birth. Rosh Hashanah is the first day of creation. It is an opportunity to start over, to begin afresh. We are born anew each day, says our tradition, with an opportunity to change the course of our lives, to make new choices, to renew what has become old. Today is ha-yom, the first day that we stand in the presence of God. What will we do with this miraculous, unique moment? How will we make the most of it? That is the challenge of this season. This evening I would like to make three suggestions on how we can better live this day, today, as a birth day of the rest of our life.
Many people look to religion to transmit a sense of the majesty of the past. The opening song of
Fiddler on the Roof says it in one word. Why do we do certain things? Tradition! Traditions come to us from a purer time, perhaps from especially sensitive souls, insightful scholars. One of the purposes of religion is to pass along, to preserve and perpetuate those traditions.
In Judaism, we talk about the "chain of tradition," but we err if we transform our People’s historic search for God into a type of fossil, a brittle relic which can only be passed from generation-to-generation, hand-to-hand, without any direct contribution by us. Such an idolization of the past removes God from the theater of our own life and threatens to trivialize the worth of our own continuing journey, as well as ignoring the harvest of our own insights and responses.
This week’s Torah portion, with its emphasis on ha-yom rejects this excessive veneration of the past. In clear terms, Moses tells the Jewish People: "You stand THIS DAY before Adonai, your God . . . to enter into the covenant which God is concluding with you THIS DAY, that God may establish you THIS DAY as God’s People."
As Moses emphasizes the contemporaneity of God’s outreach to the Jewish People, he is teaching us that God’s relationship to humanity is a permanent expression of God’s love, an ongoing fact no less than gravity or sunrise. To center one’s faith in the past is to imprison God within a scroll, a book or a set of books. Such a faith makes idolatrous even the most sacred of inheritances. Judaism calls us to center our faith in the living source of life, the God of ongoing creation and inspiration.
Let us understand, as did our ancestors, that the Sovereign of the universe beckons to each one of us: Come, My beloved, come away. TODAY, THIS DAY, God calls to you and to you and to me.
Today is not a parenthesis between yesterday and tomorrow. Good things can happen, do happen and should happen today, if we make sure they happen, if we learn how to respond to God’s presence in our lives.
A psychologist asked 3,000 people this brief question – what do you have to live for? He was shocked, as we should be, to find that 94% of his respondents were simply enduring the present while they waited for the future. They were waiting for "something" to happen – waiting for children to grow up and become independent; waiting to pay off the mortgage; waiting for the day when they could take a long-deferred trip; waiting for the leisure that retirement would bring. And while they were waiting, life was passing them by – unenjoyed and unappreciated. Too often too many of us overlook the poet’s simple truth:
I have no Yesterdays,
Time took them away;
Tomorrow may not be,
But I have Today.
Therefore, friends, the second suggestion of living today, we might
learn from Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem’s former dynamic mayor, who recommended an eleventh commandment – Thou shalt not be patient.
I believe that there is an all too-human tendency to procrastinate. In too many vital areas of life we wait too long. We often wait too long to do what must be done today, in a world that only gives us one day at a time, without any assurance of tomorrow. While lamenting that our days are few, we act as if we had an endless supply of time.
We wait too long to discipline ourselves and to take charge of our lives. We feed ourselves the vain delusion that tomorrow it will be easier to uproot the debasing habits we permit to tyrannize us today and that grow more deeply entrenched each day they remain in power.
We wait too long to show kindness. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to a friend in a time of sadness: "Pray, do write to me. A few lines soon are better than a three-decker novel a month hence."
We wait too long to speak the words of forgiveness that should be spoken, to set aside the hatreds that should be banished, to express thanks, to give encouragement, to offer comfort.
We wait too long to be charitable. Too much of our giving is delayed until much of the need has passed and the joy of giving has largely been diminished.
We wait too long to be parents to our children, forgetting how brief is the time during which they are children, how swiftly life urges them on and away. We wait too long to express our concern for parents, siblings and dear ones. Who knows how soon it will be too late?
We wait too long to read the books, to listen to the music, to see the art waiting to enlarge our minds, to enrich our spirits and to expand our souls.
We wait too long to utter the prayers that are waiting to cross our lips, to perform the duties waiting to be discharged, to show the love that may no longer be needed tomorrow. We wait too long in the wings when life has a part for us to play on the stage.
God, too, is waiting. Waiting for us to stop waiting and to begin to do now all the things for which this day and this life have been given to us.
Modern poet Michael Quoist summarizes this point:
"I went out, Lord
Everything was rushing . . .
Men were rushing not to waste time
They were rushing after time . . .
Good-bye, Sir, excuse me, I haven’t time . . .
I’ll come back, I can’t wait,
I haven’t time . . .
I’d love to help you, but I haven’t time . . .
I’d like to pray , but I haven’t time.
You understand, Lord, they simply haven’t time
And so all men run after time, Lord.
Lord, You must have made a mistake,
The hours are too short,
The days are too short,
Our lives are too short.
You who are beyond time, Lord,
You smile to see us fighting it,
And You know what You are doing.
You make no mistakes in Your distribution of time and men.
You give each one time to do
What You want him to do.
"Lord, I have time
All the time that You give me.
The years of my life,
The days of my years,
The hours of my days.
They are all mine.
Mine to fill, quietly, calmly,
But to fill completely, up to the brim . . .
I am not asking You tonight, Lord,
for time to do this and then that.
But Your grace to do conscientiously, in the time
That You give me, what You want me to do."
Friends, take no day for granted. Do not put off the good deed, the kind word, the phone call or reconciliation. There is no guarantee that what we do not do today can be made up.
A writer observed "we are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house and so on; but, we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment – the only moment there is for us to be alive." (Thich Nhat Hahn)
Three. Some of you are thinking well, that is OK if life is, on the
whole, good – or at least tolerable. But what happens, Rabbi, when life throws us a curve, and we may not even feel like going on? Again, let me share with you someone else’s experience.
"We took a coffee break on the turnpike and decided that things could go faster at the counter. The name tag on her uniform read "Tex," and her smile was warm and friendly. The patrons were few and she had lots of time to pour out her heart, together with the two cups of coffee.
"She had not always been a waitress. She was a housewife, raising two young boys, when her husband was killed in an accident. Suddenly her whole world caved in. In addition to her own sense of loss and desolation, there was the awesome responsibility of being father and mother to her sons.
"She was gripped by panic and a paralyzing sense of helplessness. How would she manage all those stark, frightening years that stretched bleakly ahead of her? How would she care for herself and the two boys?
"For the longest time she sat at home, brooding and worrying. Then one night, she said, as I tossed sleeplessly, it all came to me. I realized that I did not have to solve all my problems all at once. All I had to do was to get through them one day at a time and, for one day, I could be strong enough, smart enough and tough enough. That thought helped me to see it through.
"What happened to the boys? Today one is a physician, the other is in medical school; and Momma serves the counter trade."
In times of trouble and tragedy we deepen our anxiety and our pain if we try to look too far ahead. The climb seems too steep, the road is strewn with so many hurdles, we simply do not see how we are going to make it. But if we can look just one day ahead and try to muster sufficient courage and faith for that one day, we usually find that our inner resources are equal to the demand.
I remind you of what I have taught before about my favorite Psalm: "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." We cannot fly over the valley, detour around it, nor run through it. We have to walk, one heavy step at a time, one lonely night at a time, one empty day at a time. Then somehow, in God’s goodness, the days become weeks, the weeks add up to months and the months turn into years; but, we cannot live years at a time. As Te said: "One day at a time." We persevere, resolutely breaking time into manageable little pieces.
God gives us a wonderful present every morning – the gift of a day. We go to bed at night tired and worn, and we arise in the morning invigorated and refreshed. When our eyes open, what boundless joys even the poorest of us can experience – the air, the sky, the fragrance of flowers and the song of birds. All these things and so much more can be ours, if we have the heart to appreciate them. It is we who decide what shall become of this day – we can kill it or fill it. The best time of our lives, says Judaism, is ha-yom, here and now. The greatest opportunity for goodness, service and faith is TODAY.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "Every day is the best day of the year." And the poet added:
Build a little fence of trust
Just around today.
Fill the space with loving work
And therein stay.
Look not through the sheltering bars
Upon tomorrow –
God will help you,
come what may of joy and sorrow.
God is waiting for us to stop waiting and begin to do now all the things for which THIS DAY was made.
So let me conclude by sharing with you a piece of liturgy which we sing it at the very end of the Yom Kippur morning service. It expresses, on the holiest day of the year, what I think this Torah portion – always read on the last Sabbath of the year – is trying to teach us. Tonight, with the Cantor’s help, I would like us to learn our response.
The Cantor then taught and led "Hayom T’amtsenu."
In preparing this message, I’ve benefitted from the writings of Rabbis Bradley Artson, Sidney Greenberg, Mark B. Greenspan and Joseph Radinsky.
