Keeping In Touch: Nitzavim

This week’s Torah reading begins: “You are all standing together this day before G-d: the leaders of your tribes, your elders, your officers, all the men of Israel, your children, and your wives to pass into G-d’s covenant.”

What is the intent of a covenant? When two people feel a powerful attraction to each other, but realize that with the passage of time, that attraction could wane, they establish a covenant. The covenant maintains their connection even at times when, on a conscious level, there might be reasons for distance and separation.

This portion of the Torah is read every year on the Shabbos before Rosh HaShanah, because on Rosh HaShanah, the covenant between G-d and the Jewish people is renewed. For on Rosh HaShanah, we “are all standing before G-d.” The essential G-dly core which every person possesses rises to the forefront of his consciousness, and the fundamental bond between G-d and mankind surfaces. On this basis a covenant is renewed for the entire year to come, including the inevitable occasions when these feelings of oneness will not be experienced as powerfully.

The Torah states that this covenant is being established when “You are all standing together,” and proceeds to mention 10 different groupings within the Jewish people. Implied is that the establishment of a bond of oneness with G-d is also mirrored by bonds of oneness within our people. For the same spiritual potential that motivates our connection to G-d evokes an internal unity which binds our entire people together.

The essence of every one of us is a soul which is a G-dly spark. Part of Him is within us; that’s why we are bound to Him.

We all share this infinite and unbounded spiritual potential equally. That’s why we are bound to each other.

And that’s why the covenant is established as we stand together. For as we center on the inner motivation for our relationship with G-d, we realize that this spiritual reality is all-encompassing and joins us with each other.

In our prayers, we say: “Bless us, our Father, all as one.” Standing together as one generates a climate fit for blessing. Standing before G-d “as one” on Rosh HaShanah will lead to a year of blessing for all mankind, in material and spiritual matters.