Bulletin Nitzavim

Shabbat Nitzavim/Vayelech
23 Elul 5783 • September 9, 2023
Welcome • ohtcv ohfurc
Shabbat Shalom • ouka ,ca
lkhu ohumb
בחיים
ובחרתם
Monday, September 25 | 7:30 p.m. After Nehila
RSVP by September 21 | Cost $25 p/p

Yahrtzeiten
120 sg
vfrck oburfz
Sep 8 • 22 Elul Esther Gilbert – Mother of Howard Gilbert
Sep 9 • 23 Elul David Gelb – Father of Terri Kline
Sep 11 • 25 Elul Claude McKenzie – Father of Marles Frankman
Gussie Ponter – Grandmother of Alan Rosenberg
Mary Weiss – Mother of Sue Brown
Sep 12 • 26 Elul Kalman Forman – Father-in-law of Melvin Goldfine
Sep 14 • 28 Elul Irma Heller – Mother of Ellaine Rosen
Birthdays
Sep 9
Sep 10
Sep 13
Sep 15
Anniversaries
Stuart Cohen
Steven Chizzik
Jack Brown
Norma Rosen, Ray Fant
Sep 8 Shelly & Bob Goodman (57)
Sep 10 Susan & Mark Wasserman (45)
Sep 15 Leona & Herbert Wreschner (51)
Shabbat Kiddush Sponsored
by:
Susan & Mark Wasserman
In honor of their 45 th Anniversary
Terri & Stuart Kline
In memory of Terri’s father David Gelb
Beth Tikvah
Welcomes Cantor & Mrs. Norman Brody
jna `skuv ouh
cuy kzn
Maven: Rosalee Bogo
Assisted by: Steve Chizzik, Joe & Sue Hammerman, Lee Henson,
Linda & Shep Scheinberg & Sue Wasserman
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Sponsor a Kiddush
Contact Arleen Sivakoff: 239.455.8811 • dsivakoff@aol.com

Torah & Haftarah Readings:
Shabbat Nitzavim /Vayelech: 29:9 - 30:14 (Etz Hayim p. 1165)
1. 29:9-11 2. 29:12-14 3. 29:15-28 4. 30:1-3
5. 30:4-6 6. 30:7-10 7. 30:11-14 M. 31:28-30 (p. 1178)
Haftarah: Isaiah 61:10-63:9 (p. 1180)
Torah Commentary
D’var Torah:
The Moist and the Parched - Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Standing here, on the edge of the coming holidays and on the edge of Canaan, we look forward
towards water. On Shemini Atzeret, we will begin to recite “who brings down the rain”
in the Amidah, welcoming rain back into our lives also with the beautiful Tefillat HaGeshem.
Looking out towards the Jordan in Deuteronomy, we reimagine our relationship with God
using rain as both metaphor and reality.
As we enter a land where we will become farmers, our water needs will change dramatically. In
order to receive the water we need to survive, we will need to recognize constantly that God is
the source of all water. This land is “a goodly land, a land of brooks of water, springs
and deeps coming out in valley and in mountain,” as opposed to our forty years in “the
great and terrible wilderness… where there is no water” in which God has had to bring “water
out for you from flintstone.” Unlike Egypt, in this land “from the rain of the heavens
you will drink water.” That rain is, of course, contingent on heeding God’s commandments,
“to love the LORD your God and to worship Him with all your heart and with
all your being.” The Book of Genesis was replete with famine in Canaan, where lack of water
may have caused mass starvation. Now that we are back in that land, God has given us the key
to avoiding starvation, to avoiding having to leave the land in search of food. We just have to
follow the commandments and God will grant us water and God will be to us as water.
This idea of God, goodness, and life itself as water is deepened in our parshah. We read of the
secret sinner: “Should there be among you a man or a woman or a clan or a tribe whose heart
turns away today from the LORD our God to go worship the gods of those nations, should
there be among you a root bearing fruit of hemlock and wormwood, it shall be, when he hears
the words of this oath and deems himself blessed in his heart, saying, ‘It will be well with me,
though I go in my heart’s obduracy’ in order to sweep away the moist with the parched, the
LORD shall not want to forgive him, for then shall the LORD’s wrath and His jealousy smolder
against that man, and all the oath that is written in this book shall come down upon him, and
the LORD shall wipe out his name from under the heavens.”
This passage seems to be saying, simply, that God will punish those who worship foreign gods
in secrecy. Indeed, a few verses later we read “things hidden are for the LORD our God and
things revealed for us and for our children forever to do all the words of this teaching.” We
worry about the existence of such secret wrongdoers because from those individuals much
wrongdoing can blossom, infecting the whole nation.
But the phrase “in order to sweep away the moist with the parched” demands to be interpreted.
The word translated here as “sweep” likely comes from the root safah. In the Torah, it appears
only in a few choice places. We meet it first in the story of the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, both when Abraham asks, “Will you really sweep away the innocent with the
guilty?” and also when the visitors urge Lot to get a move on it lest his family “swept away in
the punishment of the city.” It occurs next in the mouth of Moses in response to the request of
the Reubenites and Gaddites to stay on the far side of the Jordan. Moses recounts the story of

the spies, explaining how their wrongdoing led to wandering in the wilderness for forty years,
before concluding that the request of the Reubenites is even worse: “And, look, you have arisen
in your fathers’ stead, a breed of offending men, to add still more of the LORD’s flaring wrath
against Israel.” Here, “to add” is likely from the same root as the word we have been translating as
“sweep.” The final time the word appears in the Torah is in the Song of Moses, as God describes
all the terrible ways God will destroy us - “I will sweep disaster upon them, my arrows I will
finish on them.” The idea of sweeping away in the Torah contains divine collective punishment
for individual crimes. It is only too appropriate that it appears in our context of fear of individual
wrongdoing.
The words “moist” and “parched” are more complicated. Some interpret these words as
representing totality, two opposite ends of a spectrum encompassing everything in between
them. “To sweep away the moist with the parched” becomes then another way of saying “to
sweep away everything and everyone.” In the Deuteronomic scheme of water, the moist are
surely the good, the followers of the commandments, and the parched are those who do not.
The secret sinner is the parched and the community is the moist and God must figure out how to
administer justice. The word translated here as moist is haravah. The precise meaning is unclear.
It comes from ravah, meaning watered, soaked, satiated. Rashi will go so far as to interpret the
meaning as drunk, God will sweep away the drunk with the thirsty or even the sober. The word
translated as “parched” is hatzmeah. This word appears in the stories of great thirst, of need for
water, in our desert wanderings.
Even as we enter the land, we carry those desert wanderings with us. We carry the memory of
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. We carry our entire history, our entire relationship
with God, the entire array of human possibility and human error. The land we are entering is
fundamentally different from anything we have experienced in recent memory. But we are the
same. As we look towards water and look towards God, it is only through our recollections of
lack of water, of drunkenness, of unjust destruction, that we can hope to change ourselves and
our society in a way that will allow for water and goodness to flow.
Rosh HaShanah 5784
First
Night
Friday
September 15
Candle
Lighting
6:00 p.m.
Evening
Service
6:15 p.m.
First
Night
Friday
September 29
Evening
Service
6:15 p.m.
First
Day
Saturday
September 16
Morning
Service
9:00 a.m.
Torah
Service
10:30 a.m.
First
Day
Saturday
September 30
Morning
Service
9:00 a.m.
Second
Day
Sunday
September 17
5784 Morning – 2023-2024
Sukkot
Service
9:00 a.m.
Torah
Service
10:30 a.m.
Simchat
Torah
Friday
October 6
Evening
Service
6:15 p.m.
Yom Kippur
Kol
Nidrei
Sunday
September 24
Candle
Lighting
5:50 p.m.
Evening
Service
6:00 p.m.
Shmini
Atzeret
Saturday
October 7
Morning &
Yizkor Srvc.
9:00 a.m.
Yom Kippur
Day
Monday
September 25
Morning
Service
9:00 a.m.
YIZKOR
Service
11:30 a.m.
Mincha
& Neilah
5:00 p.m.
Break the
Fast
7:30 p.m.
daeh dnizg
Saturday evening September 9 th - 8:00 p.m.