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✡︎ Shalom and Good Shabbos, Friends ✡︎
Parshas Nitzavim-Vayelech: Choose Life and a Future
In Parshas Nitzavim, we receive the Divine commandment to protect and defend innocent human life in order to ensure generational integrity and human flourishing.
We have a double Torah portion this week, Nitzavim-Vayelech: Devarim (Deuteronomy) 29:9 - 31:30. Nitzavim opens on Moses' last day of his 120 years on earth. He gathers all the people together to impart final instructions regarding their bilateral spiritual contract with God given to us at Sinai.
The Contract 2.0
On this day, Moses introduces a second version of the contract that obligates all Jews in the future. The covenant is binding only if future generations accept its terms. God anticipates widespread rejection of the contract among the Jewish people, and therefore, of God Himself. This spiritual divorce puts the Jewish people outside the protective care of the Almighty.
Moses once again describes the dire consequences for the Jews when they abandon life centered in service to the Supreme Being. God allows this disengagement to make learning possible through suffering actuated by human folly without Divine guidance. The people will see the error of their ways. They will renew the contract and experience gladness and thanksgiving for God's love and mercy.
The rest of the nations will witness the Jewish experience and duplicate it, ushering in the promised level of human actualization known as the messianic era. At this time, a universal Divine consciousness and love of God and neighbor will inform all human purpose.
Victor or Victim
This portion includes the profound life and death message in Deuteronomy Chapter 30:15-20.
15 Behold, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil,
16 inasmuch as I command you this day to love the Lord, your God, to walk in His ways, and to observe His commandments, His statutes, and His ordinances, so that you will live and increase, and the Lord, your God, will bless you in the land to which you are coming to take possession of it.
17 But if your heart deviates and you do not listen, and you will be drawn astray, and you will prostrate yourself to other deities and serve them,
18 I declare to you this day, that you will surely perish, and that you will not live long days on the land, to which you are crossing the Jordan, to come and take possession thereof.
19 This day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses [that I have warned] you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live;
20 To love the Lord your God, to listen to His voice, and to cleave to Him. For that is your life and the length of your days, to dwell on the land which the Lord swore to your forefathers to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give to them.
Nitzavim closes as God speaks directly to Joshua, telling him to forego consultation with administrative officials, whose bad advice will doom society. Joshua should rule with confidence in God's guidance. Torah law must be the law of the land.
The Life Giving Gift of Torah
In Vayelech, our second portion this week, Moses begins by repeating that God is the only reliable source of protection from invasion and cultural devastation. So that God can be present and His protection always available, on this final day of his life Moses miraculously transcribes the complete oral Torah 13 times, one for the priests to consult and 12 others for each of the 12 tribes.
Those holding the written Torah scrolls receive instructions to regularly read the Torah to the people in order to keep them engaged and informed of this special arrangement with God. Anyone with a sincere desire to follow Torah has the ability to understand it, provided it is transmitted accurately. The portion ends with a promise of salvation, setting the stage for the final Torah portion next week.
A Voice of Hope
In our Haftarah: Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 61:10 - 63:9, Isaiah's prophecy of salvation echoes across the centuries to give hope to a troubled world.
1 For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent, and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest, until her righteousness comes out like brilliance, and her salvation burns like a torch.
2 And nations shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory, and you shall be called a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall pronounce.
3 And you shall be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a kingly diadem in the hand of your God.
4 No longer shall "forsaken" be said of you, and "desolate" shall no longer be said of your land, for you shall be called "My desire is in her," and your land, "inhabited," for the Lord desires you, and your land shall be inhabited.
Choose Life is Not a Choice
Joshua's mind is in a state of complete surrender to the Holy will. He is not corrupted by ego or ambition. He channels a Divine consciousness that far surpasses that of any advisor in his time. and of any current head of state now involved in the decline of human survival and happiness.
As we observe worsening world conditions aggravated by international posturing and escalating hostilities, we understand why Joshua was told to refrain from expert advice on leading his nation. However well intended advisors may be, ill fated statesmanship begins with limited foresight and lack of wisdom.
Beyond injudiciousness, leaders at every level of government and society rule to satisfy never ending power seeking ambitions rather than to uphold life affirming rule of law and social conduct.
Institutionalized corruption among experts to whom we have given power and authority has proven Moses right. Moral, scientific, and social confusion abounds, allowing mass manipulation and cooperation leading to the extinction of millions of people. Choose life was never a choice for good reason. It is a first principle, a rule by which we must live or else destroy ourselves.
Choose Life Turned Upside Down
Abortion homicide, promoted for decades as an essential right needed to 'save women's lives', is now available by choice or by force with a few pills. Abortion activists shout their abortion and define their lives by how much they expand legal, tax payer funded access to baby killing. They are celebrated and memorialized beyond the grave.
Legal abortion up to birth in a growing number of jurisdictions is legally justified as a treatment for late term pregnancy, now classified as a potentially life threatening medical condition.
This redefinition of pregnancy accommodates demonic doctors getting paid thousands of dollars for killing children in the womb and profiting handsomely from the sale of full term baby parts for medical research and organ transplantation.
Mothers plan murdering their own children while mental health experts and family members fail to treat her malady or protect her children. After the murders, she escapes prosecution based on a defense of hormonal imbalances. The idea that she needed to kill her children to relieve her suffering entered this sick woman's mind because she is surrounded by messages of choose life turned upside down.
It's a Baby and our Future, not a Choice
These days, insanity and moral confusion override soundness of mind and common sense in many circumstances that influence our lives. We hope and wonder if God will show us the patience we need to learn the spiritual lesson of cause and effect.
Can we muster up the courage and conviction to change the way we think and behave? Will Choose Life become the foundational principle of science, medicine, and governance? Will we individually and nationally learn that Choose Life is an imperative not a suggestion?
In Deuteronomy 30:6 of Vayelech, God promises each and every penitent the awesome gift of total surrender to His will and the joy and happiness that is our birthright as God's children. He wants to give these gifts to us. This gift goes far beyond a human capacity to change ourselves after years of manipulation and conditioning, and sadly faltering under pressure.
And the Lord, your God, will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, [so that you may] love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, for the sake of your life.
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