Now I need to share a story I read in a commentary by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory. It’s a story I also heard personally back in the sixties. It was a time of protests, drugs, and seeking gurus. An American Jewish woman in her sixties travelled to Northern India to seek out a noted guru. She arrives and there are throngs of worshippers swaying and chanting. She insists she must see the guru and she pushes her way through the throngs until she is face to face with the master. What she said became legend. “Marvin, listen to your mother. Enough already. Come home!”
It brings home a reality that people are always looking for another way, some “other” out there. Judaism has mysticism, meditation anything one could ask, but the temptation is to look somewhere else.
So back to the parsha. Hidden or in public, HaShem sees the betrayal. HaShem through Moshe lays out however both the blessing and the curse. It is in Chapter 30 where the emphasis shifts. Having learned the err of our ways, we begin to see the word “Shuv” i.e., to turn back. That is the theme of the rest of Chapter 30. Shuv, the heart of the word teshuvah. It means a return to the land, a return to the covenant, a return of the blessings of HaShem. Indeed, as we continue to read, with the return comes the odd phrase of the circumcision of the heart. Alter suggests that it means our hearts are opened even more with the help of HaShem.
Here we are in the month of Elul rapidly approaching Rosh Hashanah. What a perfect parsha for this season as we each strive to become our better selves, each of us doing our journeys to heal ourselves and the world around us. As we come to the end of our parsha, we find this final passage to which I wish to focus. “Life and death I set before you, the blessing, and the curse, and you shall choose life that you and your seed may live.
Unlike virtually every other religion out there, we focus on life in the here and now, not what happens after we die. Rabbi Sacks in one d’var reminds us how the Egyptians built huge pyramids with pharaohs focusing on their death. Other beliefs focus on the idea that if one has faith, then all will be well after death. Of course, we believe in Olam HaBa, the world to come. However, Torah is all about what we do now in this one precious life. Not what we believe, but what we do. Rabbi Sacks offers, no one told Job that it would be better after he died and goes to heaven. No, we concern ourselves with this life. Perhaps, because our religion focuses on so on life, we are, again according to Rabbi Sacks, the most child centered of all the great religions.
So, in this life we celebrate birthdays and special life passages. Recently at shul, I celebrated my 75th birthday. We have aufruf’s and baby namings Our grieving and our Yahrzeits focus on the memory of their life. At Shivas we sit quietly allowing the grieving party to open conversations and speak of the life of their loved ones. Every service towards the end we say kaddish and share memories of those who past so that their memory remains alive. We send cards to those who are ill, to make their life a bit better. Plus, in working communally, our deeds are amplified, our circumcised hearts bring hope exponentially. In our actions, we make the choice between life and death, between good and evil. Doing nothing in the face of evil is of course, itself an evil. We don’t have to save the world, just do our part in making it a better place for all of us. We are imperfect and make wrong choices along the way. But we have this season of Elul to repair our own wrong decisions, and to choose life.
Choose life. L’chaim! Shanah Tovah!
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