Torah About Torah - Commentary on Parashat Nitzavim-Vayelech
Weekly Torah reflections from Matthew Schultz, a rabbinical student at Hebrew College.
The double portion of Nitzvavim-Vayelech is Torah about Torah.
On the most basic level, it shows us how Moses wrote down the words of the Torah and gave it to the Levites to seal in the Ark of the Covenant. Thus the portion offers an object lesson in how the word of God was first committed to parchment.
Of course, questions abound. How could the Torah have been written before it ended? We still have another two portions, Ha’Azinu and Zot Ha’Beracha.
There are two main solutions to this problem:
Number one, Moses wrote it all, even the part about his own death.
Number two, it was actually Joshua who wrote the concluding chapters.
There are theological implications to this question. Divine speech delivered through a perfect prophet such as Moses can be interpreted in countless ways because divine speech is limitless. Human speech, however, can be read only in a handful of ways. For this reason, Rabbi Akiva would insist that it all came through Moses. That way, his brilliant mind was free to see endless possibilities in every single “jot and tittle” of the text.
This portion also explains to us how Torah works. It contains the famous line, “It is not in heaven.”
Here it is in context:
Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach.
It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?”
The rabbis understood this to mean humans are free to interpret the Torah as they best understand it. Even if God were to disagree with the sages about a particular understanding of a verse, this would not change things. It’s not in heaven. The people decide what Torah means. Not God.
Pretty radical. It’s also the subject of a wonderful book on “the nature and function of Jewish law” by Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz, which is titled “Not in Heaven.” I recommend it.
The portion starts with the following words: “I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before our God Adonai and with those who are not with us here this day.”
Though we would not be born for thousands of years when this was written, the text nonetheless addresses us directly and includes us in the covenant.
Yesterday, we were “those who are not with us here this day.”
Today, we are “those who are standing with us this day.”
Tomorrow, we will be the ancestors who are so often invoked in this portion, those who held briefly the blessing and the promise of Torah before passing it on.
Like many portions in Deuteronomy, Nitzavim-Vayelech includes frightening curses with which God threatens to punish the people if they stray from the covenant. Sadly, they are an accurate reflection of much of Jewish history. There are also visions of redemption. These too have come to pass.
Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there your God Adonai will gather you, from there He will fetch you. And your God Adonai will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your ancestors.
It is uncanny. All of our past and all of our future is here in this book.
Just as it was written, we have been exiled and gathered up. I am thankful to live in a generation that gets to witness such a thing.
But there is another prophecy in Nitzavim-Vayelech that every generation of Jews has lived to see fulfilled.
It is this:
“[The Torah] will never be lost from [their] mouths…”