Bulletin Nitzavim

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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 k ” z Sponsor a Kiddush Contact Arleen Sivakoff: 239.455.8811 • dsivakoff@aol.com
Torah & Haftarah Readings: Shabbat <strong>Nitzavim</strong> /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
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Bulletin Nitzavim

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