Parashat Nitzavim - 23 Elul 5786 - September 4, 2026
This week’s portion, Nitzavim -Vayeilech, includes the reading that the Reform Movement reads from Torah on Yom Kippur. It is the one of the most eloquent portions of the Torah, the big finale to Moses’ speech to the people before he dies and the people cross the Jordan. It is the portion that includes the famous lines:
“Uvacharta b’Chayim”
Therefore choose life that you and your children may long endure if you and your offspring would live— by loving the ETERNAL your God, by heeding God’s commands, and by holding fast to [God]. For that is how you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that GOD swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them.
The section we will read on Yom Kippur begins with this line:
Surely, this Instruction that I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach.
לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑וא
It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?”
However, where the English translation says “Instruction,” the Hebrew says “Mitzvah,” and so the rabbis ask, “which mitzvah is it referring to? All of them or one in particular?”
To answer this question, we look to what immediately precedes the part we read:
When all these things befall you—the blessing and the curse that I have set before you—and you take them to heart amidst the various nations to which the ETERNAL your God has banished you, and you return to the ETERNAL your God, and you and your children heed God’s command with all your heart and soul, just as I enjoin upon you this day, then the ETERNAL your God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. You will be brought together again from all the peoples where the ETERNAL your God has scattered you. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the ETERNAL your God will gather you—from there you will be fetched. And the ETERNAL your God will bring you to the land that your ancestors possessed, and you shall possess it; and you will be made more prosperous and more numerous than your ancestors. Then the ETERNAL your God will open up your heart and the hearts of your offspring—to love the ETERNAL your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live.
One Hebrew word that is scattered through this section is “shuv” to return, and it is of course the same root as ‘t’shuvah”. The mitzvah that is not in the heavens or so difficult that we can’t do it is t’shuvah.
Teshuvah is the act of reflecting on your actions and who you’ve become, lifting up those parts that shine and committing to actions to change those that are bad and do not serve us or the world.
And it requires opening our hearts and souls to love, to loving God and one another. That is the mitzvah that is entirely within our grasp; in fact, it can only be in our grasp, in our mouths and in our hearts because we are the only ones who can do this work.
Teshuvah is something to be done all year round, but Judaism gives us a season to focus on this. We have an assignment this time of year and it is to make a cheshbon nefesh, an accounting of who you are so that we can work on making changes to be better people.
Tomorrow night is Selichot. Selichot are prayers of forgiveness, and it begins this season of t’shuvah. Our services begin at 7:30. Please come. Meet the Cantor’s mom, but also come to begin the work of cheshbon nefesh, of reflecting on where we have gotten off the path we want to follow and need to make a turn in our lives to get back on track.
One of the key means of doing this is to open to love. Loving God. Loving other people even when they are infuriating. It is so easy to get sour, get angry, get disgusted. It’s much harder to love and so we have to remind ourselves not to shut down, not to have a foreskin around our heart as the Torah says, but to find ways to stay open to the beauty of the world and in one another. As Robert Frost said, “Earth’s the place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
So as we enter this season of t’shuvah, let’s start with choosing to dial down the anger and to dial open to more compassion, more forgiveness, and more love.
Then the ETERNAL your God will open up your heart and the hearts of your offspring—to love the ETERNAL your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live.
Shabbat Shalom.
