This year Jews through the length and breadth of America will celebrate the 300th anniversary of the landing of the first Jews on American soil. And this Saturday we of Kodimoh, as all Jews of Forest Park, devote to that theme – the Tercentenary. It is an occasion for happiness, pride and rejoicing. But aside from the sense of celebration, we American Jews must and will indulge in the ancient Jewish sport of self-analysis and self-criticism. The eight-month period is not going to be, nor should it be allowed to become, a birthday party with a lot of singing, guest speaker, a cake with candles and a rousing “Happy Birthday." The occasion is too solemn for that. For we must now undergo a collective cheshbon ha’nefesh. And perhaps, upon reflection, we will find that there is much to be desired, and that we must revise our thinking about American Jewry. In the words of contemporary American diplomacy, we may have to experience an “agonizing reappraisal." When, as we read in this morning’s portion, Israel was about ready to enter its promised land, when it had completed its monumental sojourn in the desert and was prepared to reaffirm its covenant with G-d, G-d made sure to make them aware of the fact that they were now in the historical spotlight. Atem nitzavim ha’yom, you are now standing this day, each and every one of you, before the appraising eyes of G-d and before the jury of history. And one might say that the same command is applicable to American Jewry today: you stand before the jury of generations, on this day you are to be judged and evaluated – be ready for the task, nay, for the ordeal. And who are we to judge our people – whether then or now? The massorah, Tradition, plays upon the word atem – “you” – sensing that in this word G-d orders a self-appraisal to His people. And the massorah connects it with three other verses which begin with that provocative, almost accusative, atem. Tradition tells us, as it were, that when atem nitzavim, when a people stan…

See Rashi, beginning Sidra, quotes Tanhumah as to why Atem Nitzavim follows upon Tokhachah. Answers: Moses told them the 100 less two curses, their faces blanched, “who can survive such terrors?” He began to pacify them – history is like Ha-yom, just as the day turns dark then light again, so you will suffer the darkness of curses then the light will come. But two questions: first, why the idiomatic oddity of “100 less two?” Should say explicitly 98 and avoid the appearance of the algebraic puzzle. Second, if actually count maledictions enumerated, find they are 100, not 98. Answer given by Grandfather, zz”l. Of the 100 curses, 98 are explicit, all gory details. Two are only in dark hints: “also every sickness and plague not written in this Torah.” What does this mean, and why inexplicit? Rabbis: Refers to the death of Zaddikim and Talmidei Chakhamim. In other words, other curses, horrible as they are, are bearable, can still undertake to spell out their agony to the last anguished syllable. But there is something too horrible, too incredibly evil, too unspeakably awesome to be able to express in words: the death of the appreciation of righteousness and the respect for scholarship. When these are gone, nothing is left for Israel to live for. So overwhelming are the implications of this malediction that the Torah did not want to spell it out openly, and so merely hinted at it in the words “every sickness and plague not mentioned…”So that the 100 curses include these two unspeakable ones, and therefore, the euphemistic expression “100 less 2.” And that is what happened when Moses mentioned the curses. When they heard the other 98 that was bad enough. But you can survive physical punishment, political oppression, disease, poverty, and racial excesses. But you cannot survive the “less 2,” the indescribably horrible thoughts of Missas Tzaddikim and Missas Talmidei Chakhamim. So Israel’s face blanched and they said Mi Yakhol laamod b’elu, who can possibly survive the oth…

In inducting Israel into the berit or covenant with G-d, a covenant which consists of Torah and mitzvot, Moses warns his people against one kind of sinner whom he regards as particularly noxious. Pen yesh ba-khem shoresh poreh rosh ve’laanah – “lest there be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood;” in other words, lest there be found among you one whose attitude and conduct is such that he is a poison root in the garden of faith. One would imagine that this strong condemnation – “a poison root” – be followed by a list of horrible crimes and unforgivable sins perpetrated by the person so designated. Yet we are somewhat taken aback by the unexpected mildness of the wrong-doings of this shoresh poreh rosh ve’laanah, this “poison root.” This is how the Torah describes him: ve’hitbarekh bi-levavo, when he hears the terms of the oath of the covenant, he will congratulate and reassure himself, saying, shalom yihyeh li, all will be well and peaceful with me, ki bi-sherirut libi elekh, for I will follow the thoughts and views of my own heart (see the translation of Onkelos and the interpretation by Rashi).What we see is a man who is, at most, small, self-centered, self-satisfied, smug, perhaps egotistical – but not a “poison root.” Why, then, the bitter denunciation and harsh epithet?The author of Ha-Ketav ve’ha-Kabbalah offers an answer which makes the passage of the Torah relevant directly to the situation of modern man. He sees in the response of the man, described as a “poison root,” to the commandments of the covenant, an attitude which is remarkably and unfortunately contemporary. Hearing the various duties imposed by G-d upon Israel as obligatory, this individual does not reject them all peremptorily. He is, rather, selective.He will accept whatever appeals to his conscience and his reason. Ki bi sherrirat libi elekh – after all, he says, I have a good heart, a healthy conscience, and a passably intelligent mind; therefore, if a mitzvah can be explained to me …

The summer is over, and we observe today the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. As the last syllables of the dying year fade away, we shall begin, tonight, the Selihot – the appraisal of ourselves, our failures and our successes, and our petition for forgiveness as we look forward towards the new year. How do most of us respond naturally when we challenge ourselves to this self-appraisal, to evaluate the year we are now ushering out? What have been our attainments and our accomplishments? No doubt, the majority of us and those in our social class, in this economy of abundance, will be able to record an impressive number of achievements and feel a warm glow of satisfaction. Business, I am told, has been good, our reputations have been upheld or enhanced, we have made progress on almost all fronts. And yet – if that is our attitude, it is the wrong one with which to end the old year and begin the new. Listen to how the prophet Jeremiah sums up what ought to be our mood on this threshold of the changing years. Avar katzir kilah kayitz va’anahnu lo noshanu – “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (Jeremiah 8:20). For the prophet, the dominant mood at summer’s end is not one of jubilation and satisfaction, but one of disappointment and frustration. He turns to his contemporaries, in the agricultural society of those times, and tells them: you may have had a good and bountiful harvest, you may be pleased with yourselves at the in-gathering of the summer’s fruit; but that is not what really counts. Va’anahnu lo noshanu – “we are not saved.”Those are hard words, words with a cutting edge, words that etch like acid on the flabby and complacent heart. Yet without these words and the attitude they summon up, we remain blind, out of contact with reality, caught up in the euphoria of a dream world. Our sacred tradition prefers that we end the old year and prepare for the new year with the heroic self-criticism of a Jeremiah – with a confession of frust…

Our Biblical portion of this morning contains one of the most eloquent and inspiring passages in a series of such magnificent verses delivered by Moses at the end of his life.The old leader speaks to his people, assembled about the Holy Ark, calling to witness heaven and earth, he says to them: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy children; to love the Lord thy God, to hearken to His voice, and to cleave unto Him, for that is thy life and the length of thy days…” (Deut. 30:19, 20).“Choose life, that thou mayest live.” But what does that mean? People often say, colloquially, “he doesn’t know what it means to live,” or, “he really knows what it means to live.” So, what indeed does it mean “to live?”The Jerusalem Talmud (Kiddushin 1:7) offers us interpretations of these terms by two of the greatest Tannaim, Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva. However, on first blush, they seem devastatingly disappointing and apparently bring us down from the sublime to the ridiculous.Rabbi Ishmael says, zu umanut, “that thou mayest live” refers to a trade or a craft. “From this, the Sages learned that a man is obligated to teach his son a trade or craft.” Rabbi Akiva says that from this we learn that a man is required to teach his son the water-arts, how to swim, and how to row.What a letdown! How pedestrian the rabbinic interpretation sounds when compared with the majestic Biblical cadences of the verses which it purports to interpret! Is that really what Moses had in mind at the dusk of his life, at the climax of his Prophetic career, as he bade farewell to these people whom he had shepherded through forty years of the great wilderness? – that heaven and earth are his witnesses that he sets before them the way of life, in the sense of how to make a living, how to be a real estate manager or insurance salesman or shoemaker or tailor or cloak-and-suiter or stock-broker or diamond-cutter, or – according…

There is a Scriptural “aside” in today’s brief but beautiful Sidra which is full of significance. After announcing the terms of the berit or covenant, with all the benedictions and maledictions which follow upon obedience or disobedience, the Torah now directs its remarks to the individual Jew: "והיה בשמעו את דברי האלה הזאת והתברך בלבבו לאמר שלום יהיה לי כי בשרירות לבי אלך… לא יאבה ה' סלח לו."“And it shall be that when he will hear the words of this curse that he will bless himself in his heart saying: I shall have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart… the Lord will not want to forgive him.”There are two Hebrew words in this passage which remain quite difficult: והתברך בלבבו, which we have translated, “And he will bless himself in his heart.” What do they mean?One of the later Jewish exegetes, the author of “כתב סופר”, has read this idiom quite literally: he will bless himself, or congratulate himself, upon his “heart.” He will tell himself that while it is true that his actions are deplorable, his intentions are good. We all recognize the syndrome of what has been called the “cardiac Jew”: whenever you challenge him to perform his duties as a Jew, he replies, pounding his chest like some latter-day Tarzan, “Rabbi, I’ve got it here!” Every form of misconduct is excused by good intentions in this contemporary theology of the good heart.However, while this interpretation is beautiful and relevant, it is not peshat, it is not the original meaning of the Biblical verse. Biblical man was simply too intelligent, too realistic, and too authentic to accept such a phony theology.What is the real peshat? Permit me to commend to your attention two interpretations by classical commentators which are in essence, a delineation of two sources for moral defeat and failure. Actually, both go back to the two ancient Aramaic translations of the Pentateuch, Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan b. Uziel.Targum Onkelos renders our two words as, simply, ויחשב בלבה, he will t…

The question in this title sounds strange indeed. It might be more appropriate coming from the context of Christianity, which is frank in its prejudice against the affluent, holding that the chances are indeed poor for a rich man to enter the “kingdom of heaven.” Judaism, however, has never entertained such economic discrimination. It believes in צדקה to the poor, but it does not deny גמילת חסדים (lending money) to the rich too. It holds to the ideal of absolute justice, and this may not be weighed in favor of the rich or even the poor – ודל לא תהדר בריבו, you may not discriminate in favor of the poor and thus cause a miscarriage of justice.Why, then, bother to ask the question?My explanation is that the question is based on the practicalities of sociology, not the abstractions of theology. Of course we do not discriminate against the rich – the Talmud even tells us that רבי מכבד עשירים, Rabbi Judah respected rich people. But the hard fact of life is that success often leads to failure, that material plenty is frequently the prelude to spiritual poverty. Moses already complained וישמן ישורון ויבעט, that when Israel grows fat it begins to rebel against God. Maimonides plaintively noted that in his generation when a man became wealthy or achieved social or political prominence, he began to leave his Judaism, and that the degree of his defection was in clear proportion to the degree of his rise on the social ladder. In the United States, as a general rule (but with significant exceptions), the spectrum of Orthodox-Conservative-Reform follows an ascending economic pattern. So, unfortunately, economic opportunity and social mobility, which are the pride of the United States, present a formidable challenge to Jewish tradition and continuity. The question, then, does make sense: can good come from affluence?In attempting to answer the question, let us look at our Sidra and especially at the פרשת התשובה, the portion which speaks of repentance – both the challenge to repent…

Theme of תשובה (=T). Usual intro. Now: If T means only turning this sin – what if sages’ paralse to man who is כל ימיו תשובה – Mub it man he סמוך instantly? And for this, is this greatest if all מצוות to be denied to our who intentioned enough to be a צדיק גמור? Following analysis is mostly but not completely based in חב”ד