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Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Nitzavim/Vayelech
Deuteronomy 29:9-31:30
Efrat, Israel –What made our generation the very
special generation – after almost 2000 years of exile – to have
merited the return to our national homeland, the re-establishment of
Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel? Why are we the privileged ones
who are able to give thanks to the Almighty each Sabbath for His having
granted us “the beginning of the sprouting of our redemption”?
Linked to this question is another one: the attempt at understanding what
appears to be a strange Ashkenazi custom of the bride making seven
circuits around the groom at the very opening of the traditional marriage
ceremony. There are those who explain that in so doing she is expressing
the new reality that from henceforth on he-the groom- is to be the center
of her existence. But isn’t she also the center of his existence?
Indeed, I once had a bride who insisted that the groom follow her circuits
around him with circuits around her! But that is not the custom.
Once we examine the Biblical chapter which is the true source for the
nuptial canopy circuits, the entire symbolism will come clear, and so will
the special merit of our generation. The prophet Jeremiah, the sooth-sayer
of doom who foresees the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, is
also the seer of Jewish re-birth, return and redemption. Chapter 31 of the
book of Jeremiah opens, “Thus says G-d, the nation which has survived
the sword has found grace in the desert… you will yet build and be
rebuilt, virgin Israel, plant vineyards in the mountains of Shomron…Rachel
has wept for her children. So says the Lord: stop your voice from weeping,
your eyes from tears; the children shall return to their borders (of
Israel).” And it is within this very chapter of ringing redemption that
the prophet declares, “How long will you escape My embrace, oh wayward
daughter, because the Lord has created something new in the land: a female
shall do circuits around a male” (Jeremiah 31:21). In truth, I would
translate the phrase, “a female shall ‘run rings’ around a male.”
In order to understand the true force of this phrase, we must remember
that as a result of the primordial sin of eating the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, Eve was punished with the words, “He (Adam,
male) shall rule over you (female)” (Gen. 3:16). This inequality of male
dominating female, however, is far from an ideal situation; it is the
result of transgression, it is punishment for sin. However, at the time of
repair, redemption, and re-creation, harmony will be effectuated by first
going to the other extreme: the female will run rings around the male!
I would like to take this analogy one level deeper. According to the
Sacred Zohar (the mystical interpretation of the Bible) as well as
Maimonides, rational legalist and philosopher, the greatest and most
exalted love in the cosmos is the love of G-d for Israel; the Song of
Songs, on one level the passion of the shepherd lever for his shepherdess
beloved, is more profoundly the love of G-d for Israel (Maimonides, Laws
of Repentance, 10). The prophet Hoseah sees Israel as the betrothed of
G-d, and the words we recite as we entwine the phylactery straps around
our finger each morning – our wedding ring presented by G-d – bear
testimony to this truth (Hoshea 2:21). Similarly, the groom under the
nuptial canopy is analogous to G-d, the bride to nation Israel, and the
nuptial union to the rapprochement, the great unity, which portends
messianic redemption. Hence the magnificent conclusion to the marriage
ceremony, in its final blessing, “soon shall there be heard in the
cities of Judea and the broad places of Jerusalem, the sound of joy and
the sound of happiness, the sound of groom and the sound of bride.”
When Israel was in its infancy, and G-d presented us with the initial
paradigm for redemption, G-d was dominant and Israel played a much more
passive role: G-d brought about the plague and G-d split the Reed Sea. But
when the ultimate redemption will eventually come about with a world at
peace and unity, a more mature Israel will have to assume the more
central, and at least initially dominant, role. “(First) return unto Me,
and then I shall return to you.” Hence in our marriage ceremonies, it is
the bride who runs circuits around the groom, Israel who must make the
initial moves!
In lasts week’s Biblical portion of Ki Tavo (Deut. 28), we read of the
curses, the exile, the trials and tribulations of Israel after the
destruction of the Second Temple. (The exile to Babylon after the loss of
the First Temple is foreshadowed in the Book of Leviticus 26, according to
the Ramban, in which the return to Israel is prophesied immediately and
within the very same chapter of the destruction). This second tragic exile
merely concludes “These are the words of the covenant…” (Deut 28:69)
without any reprieve, devoid of any glimmer of hope. It is only two
chapters later, in our Biblical reading of Nitzavim, that the Bible
promises, guarantees that, “after all these things, the blessings and
the curses, have come upon you, that you shall return to your heart from
amongst all the gentiles where G-d has scattered you, and you shall return
to the Lord your G-d and listen to His voice…” (Deut 30: 1-10). Here,
too, we are promised redemption, but only after we return – to Israel
and to G-d and His Torah. And this double returning will have to be
initiated by us, by the Jewish nation, by G-d’s bride. We will have to
make the first moves (as the Bible says it you shall return from amongst
the nations, you shall return to G-d – t’shuvah).
Why is our generation blessed? In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
we, Israel, took our destiny into our own hands and established the
movement of our return to Zion and all the initiatives that such a return
demanded. And the twentieth century likewise saw an unprecedented type of
“return” or Teshuvah, where individuals made a whole turn – about in
character and performance, where children of Sabbath desecrators became
rabbis and Torah educators. Our generation, despite the intermarriage and
assimilation, has also miraculously seen the beginning of the fulfillment
of the promises of Nitzavim. But if we wish to achieve the goal of our
journey and at last realize our destiny, we must keep the momentum on both
counts moving!
By Shlomo Riskin
Shabbat Shalom
Shlomo Riskin
Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone
Chief Rabbi - Efrat Israel
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