Nitzavim - Decisions
"I
call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set
before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore,
choose life." Deuteronomy 30:19
The
Gemorra in Taanis tells us about a time when it hadn't rained for a
long time and all the crops were withering. The people knew that
without rain and crops, there would be widespread hunger and
suffering. For such terrible times, the Rabbis instituted a
series of 13 fasts, where the Jewish people would bring the Sefer
Torahs into the public square, and the religious leaders would exhort
the populace to do Tschuva. This time, all 13 fasts went by, and
there was still no rain. The people assembled in Jerusalem to hear what
they should do next. The leader of the Jewish People got up in
front of them, and said: 'We have fasted and prayed, but it has not
been enough. Go home. Apparently our prayers have not been
answered.' The Gemmora says that the vision of a famine so scared the
population that they let out a great cry of anguish. Immediately,
it rained.
With their backs against the wall, backed into the
corner, they were able to summon the kind of Tschuva that Hashem had
required of them.
On Yom Kippur, we are also called upon to do
tschuva, to examine ourselves and make the kind of internal changes
that make us into a better person. To turn away from evil, and to
turn towards good. We fast and pray all day to put ourselves into
the frame of mind to make difficult spiritual and psychological
changes. But we often find within us a resistance to change, just
as the Jewish People in the story above had gone through 13 fasts
without changing.
What makes such change so difficult?
Certainly, we grow accustomed to ourselves being a certain way, and we
coast in that way, and find it difficult to change our course and
direction. But why?
An analogy can be made to being in a
room with several doors. Perhaps we are told that it's time to
move to another room. But we are struck by the thought: "How do I know
how life will be in that new room? I know the room I am in.
I am familiar with all its pluses and minuses. But this new,
unfamiliar room? I know next to nothing about it, only what I can
see with a cursory glance."
The most difficult aspect of this
decision is knowing that if we enter the new room, WE will change and
become a different person. And most likely, when we cross the
doorway, the door behind us will close and we will be in the new room
for better or for worse.
This is something people may feel
when considering marriage. Life after marriage is quite a bit
different compared to life before marriage. Life has many such moments
of truth, when we must decide what rooms to enter, and IF we should
change our lives and enter those rooms.
We have a conception of
ourselves that is familiar to us. As is true for all human
beings, we are flawed and require change. But changing means
opening a door and moving to a new room, one we don't know - and we
cannot know with certainty the effects the change will have on
us. Even with the greatest investigation, there is a great deal
of guesswork in predicting what life in the new room will be like.
Tschuva
means opening the door,and bravely moving on, leaving behind our old
self, even though we don't know exactly where our journey will take us.