The Day

The Torah portion chanted on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah opens with, “Atem Nitzavim Hayom Kulchem Lifnei Hashem Elokeichem,” you stand [firmly] all together today, before G-d your lord. (1)

It is an axiom of our faith that the Torah’s words are timeless; they speak to us today as clearly as they did thousands of years ago. When the Torah tells us that we stand firmly before G-d on this day it is not only a repetition of Moses’ words to our ancestors; it is G-d proclaiming anew that we, the Jewish people, stand firmly, all together, before Him on this day.

Which is the day that G-d refers to when He speaks to us on this Shabbat? (2) Jewish mystics taught that this refers to the day of Rosh Hashanah. (3) These words, with which we open our Torah portion on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, impart a message of crucial importance to our preparation for this day. Let us explore this verse and see if we can tease out its hidden message.

Standing Firmly

The word you is exclusionary; you stand firmly on the day that precious few can.

Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of creation. Every year on this day G-d reconsiders His creation. Should I continue my endeavor or should I let it slide? Is my project working out or is it no longer worth the effort. On this day the entire world stands before G-d in judgment; everything and everyone, angel to insect, is subject to review. As we say in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, “Today the word trembles, today He will bring to [the court of] judgment all the formations of the worlds.”

The Jew trembles alongside all others. Our behavior during the past year is also reviewed on this day. According to the supernal judicial protocol our lives and even existence will not be renewed unless warranted by our past behavior. Has the G-d of Jacob been given his due this year? Was he honored, revered or even obeyed? If not, the supernal tribunal will not hesitate to seal our fate.

Yet we stand firmly before G-d. The world is trembling; its future uncertain. But the Jew is on a firm footing because our connection with G-d transcends the authority of the heavenly tribunal. They might convict us on this awesome day, but G-d will Intervene and exonerate. Why?

Before G-d

The conventional understanding of standing before G-d is that we stand in front of G-d. This, however, is somewhat fallacious because in truth everything stands before G-d. It is not possible to stand anywhere else. He is everywhere; we cannot hide from Him.

The mystics understood the words before G-d in a chronological / conceptual sense. G-d’s four letter name is the formula through which He radiates Divine energy into creation. On a higher level, G-d’s name is the medium through which He interacts with us; He descended on Mt Sinai to deliver the Ten Commandments through this name, He spoke to Moses through this name and gave us the Torah though this name. (4)

But the name is merely a formula through which he reveals Himself. Beyond His name is His essence. On Rosh Hashanah G-d rethinks creation; He reconsiders the energy He radiates outward through the medium of His name. If He continues to radiate creative energy, the world is reinstated. If not . . .

But the Jew is different. The Jewish soul is not a creature of the world; it is a part of G-d. Even if the world crumbles, the Jew will preserver. So long as G-d exists, the Jewish soul exists. The Jew is on firm footing because he stands before Hashem i.e. he precedes [is higher than] the name of G-d. The Jew is of G-d’s essence. (5)

All Together

The Divine radiance that vivifies and vitalizes the world withdraws on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and returns to its origin. On Rosh Hashanah, the liturgy proclaims, “You remember the works of the world and recall all primordial formations.” The world returns to its primordial state; as it was at the time of creation.

In its primordial state, creation was aware of its creator. On Rosh Hashanah we return to our primordial state; on this day we are all aware of our creator. At the moment of creation the world instinctively sensed that it is a created being. On Rosh Hashanah we stand before G-d and recall that we are created beings; our existence depends on G-d and today He decides whether we will persevere or cease to exist.

Standing before G-d, artificial differences drain away and we become aware of our equality. The leaders of the community and the simple workers, the scholars and the ignorant, the pious and the lay, stand together as one. Compared to G-d we are infinitesimal specs. From his standpoint our differences are not even trivial; they are irrelevant. It is ludicrous, even hilarious, to speak of differences.

On a deeper level, these differences are more than irrelevant; they are false. When we stand before G-d, when we revert to our primordial point, we become aware that we are all slivers of the same G-d. The distinct nuances between us do not detract from our central essence as sparks of a common flame. This results in a feeling of togetherness. When we are stripped of our accoutrements and revert to the bare truth; we become one.

We Will Prevail

When we revert to our primordial point and coalesce with each other and with G-d, our footing becomes firm. We are subject to the same trial as all of creation; perhaps even harsher. Our misdeeds are placed under the piercing glare of Divine scrutiny and we cannot deny our guilt. Under His glare we are stripped of false pretenses; we tremble, we wilt; we fill with shame and remorse.

We recant, resolve and repent. We entreat, we plead and beg. But we are also confident in our humble assurance that we will prevail in judgment. (6) G-d would no more turn against us than Himself. We take our judgment seriously and return to G-d with a broken heart, but we don’t panic.
On the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, before the trial even begins, G-d informs us that, in the end, we will prevail. (7)

Footnotes

1. Deuteronomy 29: 9.
2. When Moses said today, he meant today; the day in which he spoke these words. This was Adar seven, the day of his passing, which was when Moses gave his last sermon.
3. Likiutei Torah, Devarim 44a. The Torah speaks of “the day” without specifying which, implying that there is a generic day that all recognize when it is referenced. This day is Rosh Hashanah as we say in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy (based on Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 27a.) “This is the day; the beginning of your handiwork.”
4. Exodus 19: 20. Leviticus 1:1. Deuteronomy 4: 12.
5. Job 31:2. See Tanya Ch. 2.
6. As an attestation to our confidence we dress in white, the color of holiness and purity during these days. See Tur Orach Chayim ch. 581.
7. This essay is based on Sefer Hamamarim 5712 p. 277.
   

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Four Reviews

Our sages taught before appearing at Sinai, G-d reviewed the Ten Commandments four times. (1) What is the significance of these four reviews and what can we learn from them?

Four Stages in Idea Development

1. In the process of preparing for a lecture we tend to review our ideas on four basic levels. The first is purely cerebral; it is our knowledge of the core idea and its attendant questions, contradictions, resolutions, analyses and applications. When we reflect on the ideas at this core level we hardly formulate them into words. Instead, we scan the raw intellectual information and though we must formulate our ideas in some fashion even on this level, the cerebral words that we use are totally transparent to the ideas that they convey. We are barely cognizant of them; our focus is entirely on the ideas.
2. We then move to the point of self articulation. At this point we move beyond scanning the inner core of the ideas to articulating each aspect of the thesis. We articulate the ideas in our own minds exploring each element and layer, spelling out each question and answer and reviewing each application and consequence. At this level we distill the ideas into words. We are actually teaching ourselves; translating the concepts into structured sentences and laying them out in orderly fashion. At this point, our minds become orators, speaking to a most captive audience, ourselves. Letters and words become very much apparent at this point, but still the focus is primarily on the ideas that they convey. One manifestation of the word’s subservience at this point is that the idea can still be formulated in any number of words and sentences. This is because we are focused on the idea; the words serve merely as conveyors.
3. From here we move to the third level - that of transmuting our mental notes into prepared lectures. At this point we are more concerned with the organization of ideas, structure of argument and selection of phraseology than we are with analyses and comprehension. We have moved from exploration of the thesis to its presentation and accordingly seek words that best express its subtlety and distill its complexities. To be sure, we are still concerned with the conveyance of ideas, but our primary focus shifts from the ideas to the words that convey them. This is a paradigm shift; from self to others, from clarity of understanding to clarity of communication. To accomplish this we must move from principles and ideas to sentence and syntax.
4. We now arrive at the fourth and final stage; the actual oration. Standing at the lectern and facing the audience, our minds take a quantum leap outwards. No longer are we thinking of core ideas, comprehension, articulation, organization or even syntax; we are now focused on delivering our lecture with clarity. We strive to communicate and to be understood and to that end we focus almost exclusively on words; the vehicles that carry our thoughts to the audience. At this point, master orators reserve no mind space for ideas. They are consumed almost entirely with their prepared remarks. They focus on proper pronunciation and inflection, all the while feeling out their audience for the most convincing style and persuasive approach.

The Role of The Letter

When we consider these four stages and the evolution of letters from wholly transparent to wholly dominant, we realize that letters, despite being the most important vehicle of communication, are completely subservient and even redundant to the ideas that they convey. In fact, even the audience, who receives the ideas entirely through the vehicle of words, will not require those words one they grasp the essence of the ideas. They will begin by replacing the phrases selected by the orator with ones more palatable to their own style of thought. They will then mature along the intellectual curve till they internalize the teaching on the cerebral level and dispense with the letters completely.

What happens to the letters at that point? Where are they stored? The answer is that they are not stored at all. The properties of shape and sound that ideas take on when they are communicated to others, fade away (metamorphose or coalesce into their ideas) when we think for ourselves. We do not consciously discard them; we simply mature in our thinking till we find ourselves addressing the concepts themselves rather than its letters. At first the letters become transparent to the ideas and then, as their transparency increases, their independent presence decreases, till they merge completely with the concepts that they convey.

The Jew at Sinai

We can now appreciate the lesson derived from the four reviews that G-d undertook at Sinai. By conveying the four stages of preparation G-d illustrated the relation of the letter to the idea, which serves as a metaphor for the relation of creation to its Creator. Just as the letter seems to stand for itself, nearly eclipsing the idea it is meant to convey, so do we, created human beings, appear to be separate entities, completely independent from our creator.

But just as the letter becomes subservient and absorbed within the idea as we mature along the intellectual curve, so do we. As we absorb the Torah and internalize its patterns of Divine thought, we recognize the truth of our existence as mere extensions of the Creator. The rate at which our sense of independence decreases is commensurate with the rate at which our consciousness of G-d increases. We mature along this spiritual curve until we can hardly distinguish between Creator and creation; at this point we coalesce into the Divine beings that, at essence, we truly are.

The dawning of this realization was achieved at Sinai. The culmination of this realization awaits us with the coming of Moshiach. May it happen speedily in our days, Amen. (2)

Footnotes

1. Shemos Rabbah ch. 40. This is based on the following verse from Job 28: 27, “He saw and told, prepared and also researched and [then] spoke to man.”\
2. This essay is largely based on the Chassidic discourse, Basi Legani, 5730.