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…

At the end of the second Sidra we read today, we learned of Moses giving Israel the law relating to the Sefer Torah. He commanded them to place the scroll of the Law in the Ark, at the side of the tablets, and he declared: ve’hayah sham bekha l’ed, “and it shall be there as a witness against you.” What he means by this, as the verse is usually interpreted, is that the Torah will be a witness for Israel in those times when our people will have forgotten its spiritual mission, and, as in the days of King Josiah, will search for its purpose in history. At that time the Torah will reveal the nature of Jewish existence and the goals of Jewish life. Furthermore, the word bekha means “against you,” that is, if Israel will begin to wonder at its fortunes or misfortunes, at the nature of its destiny and its fate, it will be able to search in the Torah which will testify to the purpose of Jewish living, and therefore, reveal the reasons for the success or failure of the people of Israel.However, when Maimonides codified this Law, he introduced one small change that is rather perplexing. At the end of the Laws of Sefer Torah, he describes the reverence that is required in the presence of the Sefer Torah, and he adds the words: she’hu ha-ed ha-ne’eman le’khol baei olam, for it is the trustworthy witness to all “who come in the world,” that is, to all human beings. Now the difficulty is this: The Torah says it will be a witness bekha, for or against Israel, whereas Maimonides has the Torah being a witness le’khol baei olam, for all mankind. By what right did Maimonides universalize the function of Torah as a witness, and extend it from Israel to all humanity?I heartily recommend a solution offered by my revered teacher, Rabbi Joseph B. Solovitchik, who, in the Jewish manner, answers this question with another question. At the time of the giving of the Torah, Israel heard only the first two of the Ten Commandments mi-pi ha-gevurah, from God Himself, as it were. Afterwards they a…

In coming to the end of the Five Books of Moses, we reach the climactic incident, recorded in today’s Sidra, that is so full of poignant drama and so profoundly saddening: the declaration by God to Moses, hen karvu yamekha la-mut, “Behold, your time has come to die.” In studying this verse, the Rabbis were intrigued by – of all things! – what is apparently the least significant word, hen – “behold.” In the Midrash, they relate the following parable. A man desired to honor his king with a gift, and presented to him a very precious and sharp sword. When the king received it, he commanded that the sword immediately be used to chop off the head of the man who gave it to him! Upon hearing this command, the donor approached the king and said, ba-meh she’kibadetikha atta metiz roshi, “I intended this sword as a gift of honor to you; is it right that you use it to behead me?”So, the Rabbis aver, Moses complained to God: I honored You with the word hen, when I exclaimed to my people Israel, hen la-Shem shamayim u-shemei shamayim, “Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens belong to the Lord.” And now, ba-meh she’kibadetikha atta metiz roshi, with the very same expression which I used to enhance Your glory, You pronounce my doom, saying: hen karvu yamekha la-mut, “Behold, your time has come to die?”Moses asked a good question. It does seem ironically unjust that the same interjection which Moses used to enhance the honor of God, God now uses to inform Moses of his end. What is God’s answer?Here, the Midrash produces a surprise ending to this dialogue. It tells us that God responded to Moses: you are a shakhen ra, a bad neighbor! For when I sent you to redeem Israel, your immediate response to Me was, ve’hen lo yaaminu li, “But behold, they will not believe me.” Hence, you slandered Israel, and therefore, with the same expression of hen, “behold,” I shall now pronounce your death sentence.Do we have here a mere play on words? No, assuredly not. What the Midrash teach…

The Jewish tradition has maintained that the central theme of all prophecy, from Moses to the last and the least of the prophets centuries later, was that of teshuvah, repentance or return to God. Each prophet formulated the theme in terms relevant to the context of his own time, whether of international politics or national uprightness or personal morality. Each prophet summoned his contemporaries to return to God and to execute the divine will in his own lifetime.The source for this most significant of all Jewish values and precepts is today’s Sidra. And at the climax of the exhortation and command to do teshuvah we read three words that strike us as somewhat unusual: ve’hashevota el levavekha, “And you shall return to your heart.” Apparently, the Torah considers the lev, heart, as the repository of man’s noblest and finest instincts – in the language of the Jewish tradition, his yetzer tov, his good inclination.However, this is somewhat surprising. For we are all acquainted with the passage which we read twice daily, in which the Torah, in Shema, (parshat tzitzit), warns us that: ve’lo taturu aharei levavkhem, “and you shall not stray after your hearts.” The heart, in other words, is the source of man’s moral weakness, his propensity for corruption, or again in the terminology of the Jewish tradition, his yetzer hara – his evil inclination.Which, then, is it: is the heart the source of man's nobility or his degeneracy, his good inclination or his evil inclination?This question is, of course, not biological. The word lev or heart in the Torah’s language is meant as a symbol for man’s thinking and feeling capacities, and as such is the term we use for his fundamental nature. When, therefore, we ask whether the Torah considers the heart as identifiable primarily with man’s yetzer tov or his yetzer hara, we are asking a profoundly spiritual, anthropological question: what is the nature of man according to Torah?In Western thought, opinions have generally clustered a…