D’var Torah for Parshat Nitzavim

              Parshat Nitzavim contains one of the most iconic sections of the Torah. In chapter 30, verses 11-14, we read that the Torah is not in heaven or across the sea. We don’t need anyone to go and get it for us because it is near us, in our mouths and in our hearts so that we may do it. This passage is important in traditional Judaism because it is a prooftext demonstrating that the Torah is meant to be interpreted by us. Many of us are probably familiar with the Talmudic story of the oven of Akhnai. The rabbis reject the testimony of miracles in determining halakha because the Torah “is not in heaven.” Once God gave it to us, it became ours to interpret and apply; God no longer gets a say. It is also a handy prooftext for counter-apologetics because it subverts the Christian claim that the Torah is impossible to uphold, creating the need for a mediator. But it is one of my favorite passages for a different reason, one that I believe supports the position of Jewish Science.

              We read in this parsha that God is our life (30:20) and that we must choose life (30:19). In other words, we must choose God. How do we choose God/Life? By clinging to God, loving him, and obeying his commandments. How do we know what God’s commandment is? It is the commandment in our hearts and mouths, placed there by God when God “circumcises our hearts” as it says in 30:6. We don’t need a mediator because God and his Torah are already within us, within all of us. As it says at the beginning of the parsha, the covenant is sealed with everyone from the most important member of society to the lowest, including converts and people who are not even present at the time of Moses (29:9-14). And it is because the Torah is within us that the covenant with God can never truly be broken, only ignored or forgotten. It is a part of us. By awakening to the reality of the covenant with God and following his commandments, we receive blessings that promote life. By ignoring or forgetting, we receive the negative consequences of our actions, the so-called curses.

              The claim that we don’t need anyone to bring us the Torah undercuts the entire narrative of the text we refer to as the Torah. Famously, the text was allegedly brought down from Sinai by Moses and taught to us. I believe that this passage in Nitzavim is teaching us that the Torah is not a text at all, because no finite text could ever be the final word of an infinite God. A living God requires a living Torah; an infinite God requires an infinite Torah. Because God is within us, his Torah, the manifestation of his Wisdom, is also within us.

              So then, what is the place of the text if the Torah is within us? The text is a teaching tool and record. We don’t need to be tied to the exact words and events that are portrayed in the text. Indeed, it is a Jewish tradition to go far beyond what the text says with interpretations, stories, common sense, the needs of the community, and, indeed, the command to choose life. If a Torah commandment will lead to death, it not only can be abrogated, it must be. We can still recognize the Divine within the text of the Torah, but few of us today are able to claim the entire text is from God with its commands for genocide and severe corporal punishments, for example.

              The text is our history; it shows where we came from and how we’ve developed. It is the word of God in the sense that the authors felt it revealed something about God. It was grounded in their experience and produced through the lens of their understanding. But as Psalm 19 says, “the Torah of Adonai is perfect, restoring the soul.” And we know that the text is not perfect. Therefore, the true Torah is not simply the text. The text reflects the Torah, but the Torah is far more multifaceted. The Midrash tells us that the Torah has 70 faces, but I think even that may be too limited. The faces of the Torah are uncountable.

              None of us will ever receive the full Torah, not even Moses. (Kabbalah expands on a concept of the Talmud to demonstrate this. Moses was granted access to 49 gates of spiritual understanding, but not the final, 50^th gate.) As an emanation of the Divine, the Torah is necessarily infinite and eternal, and we are finite and bound by our time and circumstances. The best we can do is exactly what this parsha says: to love God, cling to him, listen to his voice within us, and obey the commandments we receive from him.