Nitzavim
At the end of Moses’ peroration (ie the whole book of Deuteronomy), it presents the children of Israel with the choice before them of following or not following God’s commandment and, in the image at the end of Nitzavim (30:19), “to choose life”.
Nitzavim – Ariel Kahn
Ariel Kahn is a writer and University lecturer. He is a member of Assif, the egalitarian minyan at the New North London Synagogue (Masorti).
Nitzavim opens with an inclusive vision of the community that God addresses; not just "the stranger in your midst, from the hewer of wood to the drawer of water" (28:10), but also those who "are not present today"; present only as readers of "this book". What might it mean for us to be truly present when we read this parsha? Nitzavim focuses on the dangers of idolatry, which it describes as "a root that bears gall and wormwood". (29:17) Why the profound hostility? What does idolatry mean to us today?
Rav Kook, the mystic, poet, and first Chief Rabbi of pre-mandate Palestine, suggests that Judaism itself can become idolatry. This was Adam's sin, he writes, and the sin of the golden calf: "he listened to the snake, and lost himself, and therefore could not give answer to God's question 'where are you' ... which was also the sin of Israel, who lusted after alien gods." (Orot Hakodesh 3, p.140-141)
This notion of idolatry echoes Shakespeare's. In his play Troilus and Cressida, Hector declares that "it is mad idolatry to make the service greater than the god." (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.60). In other words, if we focus on the service, and make it greater than the God – forget whom we are serving – it becomes "mad idolatry".
Idol-worship, for Shakespeare and Rav Kook, means worshipping an idea that is not your own; any fixed idea can become an idol. The imperative is to develop our own relationship with God, "worship God with all your heart and soul". (30.10) This suggests prayer, "standing before God" (29:9). The Kotsker Rebbe questioned the order of the opening of the Amidah, the standing prayer; why do we first say "our God", and only then "the God of our ancestors"? Surely, historically the god of our Ancestors should come first? The Kotsker argues that we need to establish our own connection with God first. Only then can we have a real connection to the tradition of our Ancestors.
Rav Kook suggests another way in which we can be truly present, and answer God’s question "Where are you". In Orot Hakodesh he suggests that "Every time that the heart knocks with a true spiritual knocking, and every time that a new and exalted idea is born, we listen, because this is like the voice of an angel which is knocking on the doors of our souls, asking us to open up to it so that it can be revealed in the full clarity of its beauty". For Rav Kook here, the key to serving God is listening to our own inner voice. Sparks of the Divine lie within us, waiting to be discovered; if we nurture our creativity and our prayer, if we step towards God, he will "circumcise our hearts" (30:6), remove the calluses that have grown up around our souls, that prevent us from knowing our true selves, from being truly "present today".
