There is something about this week’s Torah portion which is particularly appealing. It relates to brevity. Parashat Nitzavim is a mere forty verses long, the second shortest portion in the annual Torah cycle, amounting to not quite two chapters of the book of Deuteronomy – most of chapter 29 and all of 30.
Less is more, in the classical Liberal conception of Judaism, whether it be less ritual, less repetition in our liturgy or less verses read. Here, there aren’t many verses to read! Nitzavim makes its point briefly and directly. Neither is it specific at all:
‘The thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.’
(Deut. 30:14)
The thing – ha Davar. What is meant by that? The Torah, yes. Love God, walk in God’s ways, of course. Choose life. Why not? Yet, how remarkable that as the Torah draws to a close – there are only two more parashiyot left after this week, the final one read on Simchat Torah – all detail is set aside and we are left with the essential. U’vacharta ba’chayim / choose life.
Moreover, it is up to the individual to work out for themselves what that means, or reconnect with what one knows innately. I would like to think that this is more than just a liberal reading – I realise I am skirting over all the ‘commandments, laws and rules’ of verse sixteen! Rather, that ‘the thing’ is at the heart of our Torah; the teaching within us, not without.
I found myself addressing a couple I was marrying last Sunday, saying that all they needed was inside themselves and in the love they had for each other. (The Torah within.) The ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract, and the answers they had given in a wedding questionnaire, were only reminders, albeit very useful ones. We are human. We forget. We err. This week’s portion asks us to remember. And we read the very same verses again on Yom Kippur, little more than a fortnight hence.
The Day of Atonement, when, even for Progressive Jews, less is certainly not more. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic, sums up the ethical aspect of the day in two sentences in his Meditations (12:17). ‘If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.’ His teacher, Epictetus, reflects verses in Nitzavim, when he says ‘For every challenge, remember the resources you have within you to cope with it’ (Enchiridion, 10), i.e. it is neither in heaven, nor beyond the sea, but in one’s mouth and heart la’asot / to do it.
May this Shabbat act as a forerunner of those High Holy Day themes for us. We know what is important and what isn’t, what is in our power and what is not, what is within that sustains us. Or maybe we do not, or have forgotten.
These last days of the month of Ellul, along with the Ten Days of Repentance culminating in Yom Kippur, provide an opportunity to remember, reassess and reinforce; to reconnect with others (the couple above, too, may sometimes need to look beyond themselves to family and friends), with God and, crucially, with ourselves.
At the close of the day, whether we have spent all day or none of it in shul, whether we have fasted or not, all turns on what we take forward into the new year of 5787, and the choices we make.