Video Study for Parsha Nitzavim-Vayelech: Jewish Unity & Free Will

[muman613]

Shalom JTF readers,

I hope that everyone reading this thread is doing some sincere teshuvah and doing their Cheshbon HaNefesh in preparation of the Holy Days of Awe which are quickly approaching.

Our final Parsha of this year is a double portion of Nitzavim & Vayelech which contain some very deep and beautiful concepts of the Torah.

The idea that the Jewish people are a nation inter-dependent on each other is stressed in the first portion. Every Jew from the smallest to the largest, from the young and the old, stand before the promised land with the promise of Hashems divine protection and his love.

The future redemption is prophesied in this portion, that Hashem will gather in all the exiles from the four corners of the world back to Israel when they return to the precepts of the Holy Torah. The Torah, with it's myriad of commandments often seems insurmountable, but the Torah of Moses is a book of life which is attainable. It is not beyond us, it is not in the heavens, or across the sea, it is the Torah which we can see and learn, and teach.

The Parshah of Nitzavim includes some of the most fundamental principles of the Jewish faith:

The unity of Israel: “You stand today, all of you, before the L‑rd your G‑d: your heads, your tribes, your elders, your officers, and every Israelite man; your young ones, your wives, the stranger in your gate; from your wood-hewer to your water-drawer.”

The future redemption: Moses warns of the exile and desolation of the Land that will result if Israel abandons G‑d’s laws, but then he prophesies that in the end, “You will return to the L‑rd your G‑d . . . If your outcasts shall be at the ends of the heavens, from there will the L‑rd your G‑d gather you . . . and bring you into the Land which your fathers have possessed.”

The practicality of Torah: “For the mitzvah which I command you this day, it is not beyond you, nor is it remote from you. It is not in heaven . . . It is not across the sea . . . Rather, it is very close to you, in your mouth, in your heart, that you may do it.”

Freedom of choice: “I have set before you life and goodness, and death and evil: in that I command you this day to love G‑d, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments . . . Life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. And you shall choose life.”

Unfortunately Rabbi Richman has not posted this weeks portion yet for this year, but he has spoken on this double portion in the past. Here is his talk from last year:

[muman613]

Rabbi Richman posted his latest video this morning...

[muman613]

Rabbi Spalter of Chabad of Weston, FL talks about the Chassidic insights to this portion:

[muman613]

Rabbi Berel Weins latest dvar Torah from torah.org...

http://www.torah.org/learning/rabbiwein/5774/netzavim.html

Parshas Netzavim and Vayielech
Renew the Covenant

The Torah reading for this week is a fitting conclusion to the year that is about to depart from us. At the end of his long life and after decades of service to the Jewish people, Moshe renews the covenant between God and the people of Israel. He makes clear to the new generation of Jews standing before him, a generation that was not part of the experience of Egypt, nor present at the moment of revelation at Sinai, that the original covenant between God and the Jewish people remains in force. And he states that it will continue to be so throughout the Jewish future.

The covenant cannot be repealed, altered or ignored. It is the basis for all Jewish life and it is the leitmotif of all of Jewish history. Moshe admits that there will be events and occurrences in the story of the Jewish people that will be cruel, inexplicable and irrational. As he phrases it, there will be many “hidden, mysterious” events that the Jewish people will have to experience.

He offers no easy explanation to those events except to say that somehow they are related to the attempts of sections of the Jewish people to annul the covenant and its resultant consequences. The “hidden” part of the covenant belongs to God. The revealed part of the covenant – the obligations of Torah commandments and Jewish life – belong to the Jewish people and are relevant in all of their generations and locales. The Jewish people and the Jewish State will always be judged through its relationship to this eternal covenant.

The existence of the covenant has caused us much pain and angst throughout the centuries. The other nations of the world harbor resentment against us because of the uniqueness of our relationship to the Creator of all, as exemplified by this covenant. Many Jewish thinkers have attributed anti-Semitism, in all of its virulent and even more benign forms, to a jealousy over the existence of God’s covenant with the Jewish people.

The covenant has, nevertheless, remained the rock of Jewish identity over all of the ages. Just the knowledge of its existence has created a stubborn Jewish people – with a resolve to maintain its faith and lifestyle though a very small minority in a world of many billions. The Torah itself is the very essence of this covenant. It details its terms and conditions, and its study helps formulate the life that Jews are expected to live.

That is why the Torah demands that we study and are aware of this covenant morning and night, traveling, at home, in all times and places. There were, and unfortunately still are, those amongst us who wish to discard the covenant and its obligations and merely to blend in with the surrounding general society.

The Lord, so to speak, has warned us many times that He would not allow this to occur. All of Jewish history teaches us regarding the strength and eternity of this great covenant. In the year that is now dawning upon us, we should all resolutely renew the covenant in our hearts, minds and actions, in order to be blessed with a year of health, success and serenity.

Shabbat shalom
Ktiva v’chatima tova

Rabbi Berel Wein

[muman613]

Let us listen to this weeks Temple Talk radio show with Rabbi Richman and co-host Yitzak Reuven.

[muman613]

"Choose Life"

Rabbi Chaim Richman

(Deuteronomy 30:19)
Elul 24, 5774/September 19, 2014

"For this commandment which I command you this day, is not concealed from you, nor is it far away." (Deuteronomy 30:9) Moshe teaches us that every commandment that G-d has blessed us with is, by definition, achievable. How could it be otherwise? For, as Moshe continues, "it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it." (ibid 30:14) The G-d-given ability to perform G-d's commandments is to be found in the very mouth that G-d breathed life into, and in the very heart that G-d causes to beat. Man, G-d's final created thing on the sixth day of creation, the crown and purpose of G-d's creation, and the ultimate reason for G-d's constant celebration of His creation, was created to perform commandments, hard wired to do G-d's will.

No sooner does Moshe set before Israel this basic tenet of the relationship between G-d and man and reality of creation, then he introduces another incontrovertible fact of reality: choice: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live." (ibid 30:19) Life and death, good and evil, blessing and curse, these are also facts of the lives we lead in the world G-d made for us. And ever since Adam defied G-d's will and ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, free will - the ability to choose - has been an integral element of man's nature. We celebrate our ability to choose and equate it with freedom. Our free will is a gift from G-d. It is, as the serpent warned Adam and Chava (Eve), what makes us G-d-like.

But Moshe is saying something much more profound here. "You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live." Is this a bit of inspired insider's advice? Or is this a directive from G-d - a commandment to "choose life" - and therefore a negation of our free will? Or is it indeed a true definition of freedom: not the popular "I can decide for myself what's best for me, I can live by my own truth," but rather, that freedom and G-dliness can only be attained by choosing the right course - by choosing life, by choosing good. We have the G-d given ability to opt for good and life and in return receive freedom and blessing. Or we can choose evil and death, and in return receive the curse of slavery. If we choose life, if we choose "To love Hashem your G-d, to listen to His voice, and to cleave to Him" (ibid 30:20) we become the tzelem elokim - the image of G-d in which we were created. If we choose death we relinquish our tzelem elokim, we loose our privilege to be counted among G-d's children.

The Holy Temple - Beit HaMikdash in Hebrew - is frequently referred to by our sages as Beit HaBechira - the Chosen House. This is the house that G-d chose through which His Presence will emanate and permeate our world. Jerusalem, Mount Moriah, Har HaBayit, is the place that G-d chose for His house. It is an odd concept that G-d has choice, but His choice of a Holy Temple on Mount Moriah can be understood as a choice because it is not integral to G-d's being. G-d will abide even without a Holy Temple. The Holy Temple is His gift to man, in this way akin to free will.

There is another way to understand Beit HaBechira - not as the Chosen House, but as the House of Choice, the house of "choosing life." Building for G-d a house on this earth indeed requires consensus and choice. It is humanity's ultimate expression of free will, and if humanity is to retain its tzelem elokim - its G-dly image - then it is the only choice to be taken, the only option that will truly lead to life, to goodness and to blessing.

Man today is presented with a choice no less stark that the choice that Moshe enunciated before the children of Israel, a choice between good and evil, life and death. There is no middle road, there is no golden mean. It is not necessary here to detail the evil and death that boastfully and brazenly threatens the world today. It threatens us with swords and shariah via our computer and TV screens, from our iphones and mobile devices, from our newspapers and journals, from afar and from near. It threatens to enslave and to murder us, to stamp out our tzelem elokim and to brutalize us. It is a choice of evil and death. Is there really another way to fight this evil or is building for the world a portal of Divine blessing, a stronghold of light and life, the one choice, the only choice that can lead our generation from the brink of desolation back to the knowledge of G-d's voice and His blessed embrace? Let us choose now to return our world to its Creator, to build for G-d a Sanctuary that He may dwell among us. Let us choose the only choice, the choice of "life, so that you and your offspring will live," the choice of the Chosen House - the Holy Temple.

[muman613]

[Ephraim Ben Noach]

This didn't work for me, so if anyone else has this problem. .. http://www.aish.com/h/hh/video/49591472.html?mobile=yes