For this commandment which I am commanding you today is not too wondrous for you, nor too distant. It is not in the heavens, such that you should say, “who will go up to the heavens and take it for us and inform us of it that we may do it; Nor is it over the sea, that you should say, “who will cross for us to the other side of the sea and inform us of it that we may do it. For this thing is so very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it.
Devarim 30: 11-14.
So, it’s that easy, says Moshe, over three thousand years before Nike: Just do it!! The only problem is: what is “it”?
Not such an easy question. Many of us are most likely walking around, carrying out our daily tasks with a mixture of freshness and drudgery, but in background that question keeps asking itself, punctuated a bit differently: what is it?
But although Rosh Hashanah is almost upon us, let’s not get too wistfully philosophical – at least not yet. Let’s address the textual problem. Moshe is using the full range of his rhetorical talents, and coaxing and urging the people to take Hashem’s Torah and its guidance-through-observance into their hearts in the most genuine of ways. So here, he tells them and us: It isn’t inaccessible, it isn’t high and mighty, it isn’t inscrutably distant, it’s right here, inside you. So, again, what is this commandment, this thing which he is commanding us right now?
Rashi says it’s the whole Torah, given to us in writing and orally. Others explain that the verse stresses how mind, speech and action come must come together in translating the Divine Will into reality: In your mouth and in your heart (=mind) to do it.
The Ramban, however, says that if the intention had been the entire Torah or all the mitzvot, it would have said, “All the mitzvah which I am commanding you today”, as it does earlier in Parashat Ekev. Rather, claims the Ramban, there is a specific mitzvah which is introduced here by the Torah – the mitzvah of teshuvah. He goes on to demonstrate how central teshuvah is to all of \parashat Nitzavim. And, though he doesn’t enumerate the instances of the verb root Shin-Vav-Vet (return) in our parashah, I’ll do it for him: Between verses 1 and 10 of chapter 30 there is the largest concentration of teshuvah references in the entire Tanach. The verb is used precisely seven times. (Don’t get confused by the word shvutcha in verse 3: That word means “your exiled population”, and is derived from another verb root: shin-vet-hey). The verses are beautiful, so evocative, that anything I could say by way of interpretation will only take away. We should just savor them, as they tell us of how we can return all the way to Hashem and He will also “do teshuvah” and come back to us.
But we can explore a bit more this intriguing notion: We are commanded to do teshuvah. But what is teshuvah? Rav Kook wrote reams teshuvah, yet felt he had barely touched this inexhaustible mother-lode of restorative being – I certainly won’t attempt a definition here. Rather, a question: isn’t teshuvah ultimately an inner feeling? And, as such, isn’t it fraught with the same problematic as other “emotions” once they enter the normative realm. How can Hashem command us to “love” or “fear”, etc? We usually address those questions by transforming the demand into two components: A normative, halachic component consisting of doable actions, and a more ethereal emotional component, transposed to immeasurable realm of aggadah. Here, the question is compounded, however: what use is it to command a bunch of sinners who have distanced themselves so effectively from the immediacy of the Divine Presence that they can violate all His commandments despite the threatened horrors of the Tochechah in last week’s parashah? Who would heed such commandment?
The answer is: everyone and anyone. Here’s the “proof”. It is forbidden to violate Shabbat and the penalties for doing so are most severe. Yet one can and must violate Shabbat to save a life. How do we know this? A whole series of Chachamim in the Gemara (Yoma 85a) line up to demonstrate that the Torah teaches precisely this law. One of the proof: Rabbi Shim’on ben Menasiah says: “The people of Israel shall keep Shabbat, in order to make Shabbat” (Shemot 31): Violate one Shabbat for him, so that he can keep many Shabbatot”. Another: Shmuel says: The Torah says, “these are the mitzvot which a man shall do them and live by them” and not die by them. In other words, when keeping a mitzvah will prevent a person from living, and put an end to keeping the mitzvot, then it is not then and there a mitzvah!
The question is asked: If we find a person under the rubble of a landslide on Shabbat and he is dying, how can we continue to dig him out on Shabbat, thereby violating Shabbat, when it is clear that he will NOT thereby be in a position to keep subsequent Shabbat, or perhaps any mitzvah. And yet we do save him – why?
One answer given by some of the Rishonim: He can still do teshuvah in his heart!
Note: As critically important as Shabbat is, the mere passing though of teshuvah can suspend it in extremis. More: it is particularly when a person feels himself to be at wit’s (and life’s) end that his thought of teshuvah reaches deep to the core of the conundrum of life and perfection. Such a thought of teshuvah, says Rav Kook, is the very heart of teshuvah, the rest “just details” (which, of course, must be done one must yearn to achieve). And since such a teshuvah touches the essence of being, it is so very compelling – to us and to Hashem – and can make us whole.
So the Ramban is right. Teshuvah is a command – it is the command emerging from the core of our very lives, the upwelling insistence to strive ever again to reconnect to the genuineness of our stance before Hashem.
In the end, we come back. In the end, the unending tale told by our lives to our lives of our lives brings us to link back to the Source. In the end, we begin again. We find ourselves once again, standing (Nitzavim), all of ourselves, before Hashem, so impossibly, so inadequately, yet so inescapably and so very much desired by Hashem. As we try so very hard to deceive and preoccupy ourselves, as we reach to the heavens and across the seas in our distraction, fretting that we can’t-but-must go there, He says: I’m here, and you’re here, and “it’s here – so very close. Just put heart to lips and… teki’ah!!
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