Rosh Hashanah, Day Two, 5769, 10.1.08
One of my very favorite scenes in a movie is in Fiddler on the Roof. It’s the scene where the Jewish men are celebrating in the tavern when Tveye’s eldest daughter and Lazar Wolf become engaged. They are so excited about having something to celebrate that they break into singing, ‘To life, to life, l’chaim.’ It’s impossible to watch that scene and not see ourselves singing the same blessing over the same type of event.
This blessing, ‘to life,’ encapsulates our ability as a people to continue to celebrate no matter what else is happening around us.
It is that kind of unbridled joy that God was referring to when He said to the Israelites just before they crossed the Jordan River into the Land of Israel. ‘I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that both you and your children may live.’
This statement comes at the end of two Torah portions, one from two Shabbats ago and one from just this past Shabbat. In the first portion, Ki Tavo in the book of Dvarim, Deuteronomy, we learn about the promise of rewards if the Israelites follow God’s commandments and the dire warnings of curses if they do not.
The list of blessings is very general.
God promises to give the Israelites abundance in their fields and flocks, in the number of their children. They will be protected against their enemies. They will be successful in everything they attempt to do. And God will establish them as His holy people.
Even though all of this was written specifically to the Israelites, we learn that all of the promises to the Israelites were also being made to those of us who came after them. God promised us these blessings also.
But the very next part of the portion tells us how we will be cursed if we do not follow the commandments, which we as a people have never done. The curses are specific and cruel.
There will be lack of rain for our produce and our flocks. We will have multiple diseases, including the very ones that God cursed the Egyptians with. We will be struck with madness, blindness and depression. God will force us to leave our homes in Israel and we will live in foreign lands and serve other gods. We will become an example for other nations of what happens when a people does not obey its God.
It seems like many of those curses have come true, especially living in foreign lands and worshiping foreign gods.
As overwhelming as it seems to follow all the commandments, it’s important to remember that at no time did the Jewish nation, including the Israelites, ever follow all the Jewish laws. And as think about that, I wonder if maybe God never really expected us to.
How many of the 613 mitzvot can we even name right now? Probably a very small percentage of them. God gave us free will; gave us the choice to follow the mitzvot or not. There have always been some Jews who followed the mitzvot. Living in the Land of Israel, ancient and modern, it was easier to follow them. Living in the diaspora, we have had a much more difficult time.
But we as Jews are still here, still vibrant, still holding on to our heritage even living in the Christian city of Macon GA. We all do the very best we can to maintain our Jewishness especially given that we have to navigate around the many Christian and secular celebrations that conflict with our Shabbats and holidays, our religious school and adult classes. Given all the pulls away from Judaism, it’s no wonder that we have chosen to observe so few of the commandments. I understand the dilemma.
But the problem is that choice has caused us to lose a lot of our identity as Jews as we have tried so hard to fit into the prevailing culture.
How can we counter this reality; how can we make things different for ourselves, for our children and our children’s children?
To answer those questions, we have Nitzvavim, the portion right after Ki Tavo which tells us that we can change all those curses to blessings. God tells us that He placed before us the blessing and the curse, the ones that were clearly spelled out in Ki Tavo.
But in Nitzavim we are told, this commandment to choose the blessing and not the curse should not be baffling to us. This commandment is not very far away. It is not in heavens that we have to send someone up to get it and bring it back to us. Neither is it beyond the sea. But the commandment is very close to us, it is right in our heart and in our mouth.
It’s all already inside of us. We don’t have to go anywhere to find it. We have everything we need to be close to God. The awareness and understanding we need to keep our Jewishness alive is already inside of us.
It’s very important to notice that the Torah says, ‘this commandment,’ in the singular, not these commandments, in the plural. Maybe we were never supposed to follow all of them at once. Maybe we were supposed to take them on slowly so that we would feel the meaning that each one has in our lives, so that we would insure that our Jewish identity would never be in jeopardy.
There is still more in Nitzavim to help us with this dilemma. God promises us: ‘I call heaven and earth to record this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life that both you and your children may live.’
Is it possible that God really meant, ‘this commandment’ in the singular? Is it really possible that we can stop feeling like we are inauthentic Jews because there are other Jews who are doing more than we are?
I would say ‘yes’ to those questions. It’s certainly true that the more we do as Jews, the more each of us benefits and the more our entire people benefits. The Jewish people would not survive without each individual Jew taking our religion seriously.
God wants us to choose life. That’s what He says—Life is the blessing and the blessing comes with observing the commandments. So let us say l’chaim when we celebrate the beginnings of life, adulthood and marriage. Let us say l’chaim when we feel the intensity of something new happening. But let us also say l’chaim when we bring into our lives one more mitzvot, one more commandment.
I encourage each of us to increase our Jewish practice without feeling overwhelmed.
Some of us will experience a birth or Bnai Mitzvah in our family this year. Some will celebrate an important birthday; or retire from our job after many years of good service. These are the life cycle events that we can greet with a huge l’chaim. Let that statement of being fully and truly alive help us find just the right new Jewish practice to integrate into our lives.
It could be lighting candles on Friday night, not eating pork and shellfish anymore, giving just a little bit more money to tzedakah, to charity. Each of those very small steps will help us to feel the presence of Judaism in our lives more and more often. And each time we add another mitzvah, we and our children will feel the difference, will feel more a part of our Jewish religion.
As we begin this ten day period, as we stand here to pray for our sins to be removed, let us also pray that we embrace our Jewish obligations to ourselves, to our families and to our people. Let us truly start the new year in a new way, by choosing Jewish life, by choosing just one new commandment to take on. That’s all we need, just one so that we and God can come together more often to make our lives more meaningful and to bring us to life in a fuller and more complete way.
L’Shana tova tikateivu, May all of us be inscribed in the Book of Life; may each of us inscribe ourselves among those who actively follow the words of God.