Two Minute Torah Podcast

Nitzavim 5771 by Rabbi Elyse Winick

Shalom and welcome to KOACH's Two Minute Torah, a project of the College Outreach Department of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. This is Rabbi Elyse Winick, Associate Director for KOACH.

It's almost time. Can you feel it in the air? Rosh HaShanah is nearly upon us. A new year, filled with promise and potential. I don't know if you feel ready yet. I know I don't.

All of the anticipation surrounding Rosh HaShanah often clouds the fact that it's Rosh Hodesh too, that the new month of Tishrei will begin simultaneously with the new year. Though the month itself is brimming with holidays, it's the one Rosh Hodesh of the year which really gets short shrift. I miss Hallel, it's true, but our davvening is filled with other joyful and plaintive melodies that we don't hear the rest of the year, which makes up for Hallel's absence.

What really strikes me, though, is that we don't chant Birkat HaHodesh, the blessing which announces the new month, on this last Shabbat before Rosh HaShanah. It's as if one of the ways we begin the new year with a clean slate is that we don't carry any remnants of the previous month forward with us. In any other month, the recitation of Birkat HaHodesh on the last Shabbat of the preceding month is a bridge of sorts, linking our Shevat selves to our Adar selves or our Iyar selves to our Sivan selves. There is not a bridge from Elul to Tishrei. It's more like a leap of faith.

The juxtaposition of parshiyyot Nitzavim and Vayelekh on this last Shabbat before Rosh HaShanah seem to underscore this feeling. Nitzavim means "you are standing" and Vayelekh means "Go!" They are two conflicting instructions and we are caught between them. It is there in that tension, that dynamic liminal space, that our leap of faith must occur. We've gotten all we could out of the year about to end and, in turn, we've given it our best shot. Now we must muster all our capacity to jump from one mountain top to the next, leaving the past behind where we can see and reflect on it, but entering the new year fresh and unencumbered. It's scary, I know. But you can do it. Just don't look down. Shabbat Shalom.