Ziv Parashat Nitsavim

you shall repeat them to your children

This parasha is read on the sabbath that precedes Rosh Hashana, which is celebrated this year on Sunday night and Monday and Tuesday, September 14 and 15. It is the beginning of the new year in the Jewish calendar. We arrive at the end of Deuteronomy. Moses gives his last instructions to the children of Israel. The covenant is renewed with the entire people, “all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water” (Deuteronomy 29:10-11), they are all to keep away from idols and to “choose life”.

This reading evokes the end of a cycle which points back to the beginning of the history of the people, with the covenant made with “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (29:12) and the moment of the exodus from Egypt. Moses reviews and reinterprets all the instructions already given to the people, in light of their desert experience. We find the same movement of review in the reading of the prophet Isaiah which accompanies the parasha. It is the last part of the “book of consolation” (Isaiah 40 ff.). The parallels are clear: “prepare the path of the Lord”, and the idea of reward and recompense Isa 40:3, 10 / Isa 62:10-11.

This interminable re-reading of the events of the past, which renews the signification of the instructions already received by giving meaning to the present, forms the very core of the celebration of Rosh Hashanah. Rosh, which means “head” is found in “Bereshit”, the beginning, the first word of the Torah. Shana, “year” means “repetition”, as in “mishna” (or in the second name of Deuteronomy, “mishne Torah”, repetition of the Torah). But “Shana” means also “change”, like the verb “leshanot”. The meaning, therefore, is not at all one of simple repetition of history, quite the contrary, it is a renewal, an original story which begins every year, as is also true of the day of Kippur: a new chance is given to man, purified of the sins of the previous year, to begin something radically new.

Here we find one of the core teachings of the Jewish tradition: history is always the same, it is that of the covenant that is always offered, and renewed after treacherousness and infidelity. But this story is always new and original, and if it hold in itself the teachings of generations past, which are always alive and actual, is it so that they offer a gateway to renewed radicality, it is the meaning of tradition, of transmission: these words that I give you today, you shall repeat them to your sons… Shabbat Shalom.