Bulletin Nitzavim

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.