Shabbat Shalom: Parshiot Nitzavim Vayelech- Rosh Hashanah Deuteronomy 29:9-31:30

By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - Rosh Hashanah ushers in a special period of Ten Days of Repentance, culminating in Yom Kippur, the Day of Forgiveness. But if we truly believe that our Lord is the G-d of compassion and love, a G-d who “extends graciousness freely and forgives excessively” (as we recite in the daily Amidah three times a day), then why limit Divine forgiveness to these ten days? Why not call every day a day of forgiveness and emphasize all 365 days a year as days of repentance? You can actually touch the tension in the air towards the end of Yom Kippur as we cry out to the Almighty during the last minutes of the waning sun as if it is our last chance. Forgiveness should last beyond Yom Kippur!

Moreover, why begin the New Year with the Ten Days of Repentance? If anything, the Ten Days of Repentance should come out on the last days of the month of Elul, the last ten days of the old year so that we can begin the new year afresh, cleansed and purified? Why start the New Year with our old sins?

I believe that the ten day period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is a metaphor for all of life. The New Year at the very least causes us to open a new calendar and cast away the old calendar, to change the dates of our letters and our checks from 5764 to 5765. It reminds us that time is passing, that life is fleeting and that we may not live to see another year because all of us are mortal and finite. We generally live our lives as if we will live forever, as if everything will always remain the same. A new year reminds us that this is not the case and that we must take cognizance of how short life really is.

I remember well the last time I visited my maternal grandmother, a very special woman with whom I studied Bible and Talmud and who is certainly my greatest religious influence. She was then 90 years old and suffering from cancer of the stomach. When I entered her room, she looked up at me and said, “my beloved child, that is precisely how life is: an opening of the door and a closing of the door. It passes by as the blink of the eye, even if you live to be 90. Just make certain that before the door closes you have significantly touched enough people and you have made the world a little bit better than it was before you came into it”.

I do not believe that the finitude of human existence is necessarily a bad thing. Much the opposite: if we are aware of our limited span of life, then we may very well be inspired to make the most of every day and every hour. Rav Shmuel Salant, the famed Rav of Jerusalem a little more than a century ago, had a sun dial clock placed on a high point in Jerusalem with the twelve numbers being Hebrew letters spelling out the verse “Our days pass like a shadow.” He wanted people to pass the clock, note the setting sun, and resolve to utilize every available minute before sunset - and then it would be too late. The words in the verse are not really pessimistic after all, there is a verse in Psalms, “I shall be protected in the shadow of your Divine wing” (Psalms 52:2) I have a clock in my office with the same words as Rav Shmuel Salant’s sun dial clock with the additional verse from Psalms. The words even become optimistic if they help us learn to utilize every minute to its fullest.

On my elementary school graduation day, we graduates (I was only 12 years old) heard from Rav Alexander Linchner a mesmerizing analogy in the name of the Hafetz Haim. Life is like a postal card. You begin to write, and you leave a great deal of space between the letters, words and lines. After all, it seems to you that the postal card is very large and that you don’t have all that much to say. But then, as you come to the end of the card, you realize that it was smaller than you thought and that you must really write at least one more thing. And so you squeeze the words together, squish the lines, in a mad last minute dash to get everything in. Most of the time, you don’t succeed in saying it all. Sometimes you leave out the most important thing. Often there isn’t even room left to sign your name…

Rabbi Jacob Joseph was brought to New York from Vilna during the first part of the 20th century to serve as Chief Rabbi of New York. It turned out to be a tragic appointment, he was given a bitterly difficult time by the butchers and at a comparatively young age suffered a stroke. His sermons, especially on Shabbat Shuva (the Sabbath of Repentance before Yom Kippur) were legendary for their erudition and passion. He would speak for more than 2 hours without a note. He was released from the hospital a few days before Shabbat Shuva, and the Norfolk Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side was filled to the rafters with hundreds of Jews anxious to hear his sermons. He rose to the pulpit a bit shakily with a sheaf of papers - obviously the sermon he had uncharacteristically prepared in writing in advance. He began to speak: “My masters, ladies and gentlemen,…My masters, ladies and gentlemen….” And then he began to weep. When he composed himself he spoke again: “I prepared this sermon so carefully first in the hospital and after I got out, but now I have no recollection of what I prepared. I can’t even read my own writing. My masters, this is what a human being is. This can happen to any of you. Repent before it is too late.” It is said that this was the most powerful Shabbat Shuva sermon that he had given.

The New Year begins the Ten Days of Repentance as a message for us that we must take to heart human frailty and utilize every day and every hour. This is the lesson that our calendar wishes to teach: life is not for ever, so get the most in to whatever time you have. Rav Levy Yitzchak of Berditchev would often say that he learned the important lesson of his life from the shoemaker who lived in the apartment above his. He noticed that the expensive gas light was still on in the shoemaker’s workroom way past midnight. When he inquired if everything was all right the shoemaker responded, “thank G-d, yes but as long as the light is still burning, it is possible to keep repairing.” Rav Levy Yitzchak would sigh and say, “would that we all understood that as long as the light of our life is still burning there is yet time for us to repair ourselves and repair the world.”

Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tova.