Nitzavim-Vayelekh
Deuteronomy 29:9-31:30
Isaiah 61:10-63:9
“You have only moments to live.”
These stark words form the beginning of an extraordinary book, “Full Catastrophe Living,” by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Written by the director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, the book is a manual describing the use of mindfulness meditation as an aid in living with pain and illness. The chapter title is not intended as the proclamation of a death sentence. It is simply a description of the way things are.
Kabat-Zinn writes convincingly that most of us spend much of our time living anywhere but the present moment. We are busy thinking about the past, worrying about the future, internally commenting on our own or others’ thoughts and motives, always engaged in a futile struggle against the clock. We are constantly wrestling with the sensation of “not enough time.” Yet the time we have — the present moment — escapes our attention, because we are too busy to attend to it.
Truly, we have only moments to live — with God’s help, many moments. But only in the present moment can we appreciate the blessings and opportunities of life. Only in the present moment can we savor a beautiful sunset, enjoy a moment with a loved one, make an important decision about the direction of our lives, say “I’m sorry.”
We find the same eternal piece of wisdom at the start of this week’s parashah, which always falls on the last Shabbat prior to Rosh Hashanah. “You stand this day, all of you, before Adonai your God…” (Deuteronomy 29:9).
It is said that Rabbi Yitzhak of Berditchev believed that this verse was intended to describe the Day of Judgment itself (Itturei Torah , vol. 6, p. 174). Listen to the majestic words of this verse, and it is easy to imagine yourself transported to the day of Rosh Hashanah, in a room teeming with people, as all of us commit to review our lives in the presence of God and community.
Yet Rabbi Yitzhak’s teaching reminds me of a favorite passage in the Talmud that conjures up a very different set of images. The subject appears to be a debate about when Judgment Day actually comes. Not surprisingly, there are differences of opinion about even this.
“All are judged on New Year’s Day, and their sentence is fixed on the Day of Atonement. So says Rabbi Meir…Rabbi Yossi says the person is judged every day…Rabbi Nathan holds that the person is judged at every moment” (Rosh Hashanah 16a).
Did you think that every rabbi in the Talmud might agree that Rosh Hashanah is Judgment Day? Sure enough, not all see the issue in the same way. Rabbi Meir’s view, which came to be adopted by the Jewish people, is that we are all judged each year on Rosh Hashanah. But two other rabbis believed Judgment Day arrives more frequently.
For Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Nathan, the issue is not the liturgical calendar. For them, the issue at hand is how we think about our lives. When is the time, in the words of our parashah, when we, all of us, stand before God? When does God care to examine our actions and our motivations?
When is the time that we can change, choose a new path, examine our own failings, seek forgiveness? If that is the question, the answer is clear. The “Day of Judgment,” the day to look deeply at our lives, our actions, our priorities, is today. We have only this day, this moment, to live well.
May the year ahead be filled with moments of blessing, for us, our loved ones and all the world.