by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman

September 30, 2008

This week’s parsha, Vayelech, is always part of the High Holy Day season. We read it either together with Nitzavim on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashana or, as this year, by itself on Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

The time is the last few hours of Moses’ life. He reassures the people that even when he is no longer with them, God will not abandon them but will bring them into the land of Israel; he charges Joshua as his successor; and he gives the people the commandment concerning the public reading of the Torah that is to take place every seven years, at Sukkot.

Then, God tells Moses that after his death, “The people will go astray after the alien gods in their midst…. They will forsake Me and break My covenant that I made with them.”

What’s interesting is that this isn’t presented as a warning, a caution not to abandon God’s covenant. Rather, it’s a prophecy, a statement of fact that the people will abandon God.

We’re expected to regret and learn from our mistakes and resolve to be a little bit better.

And so God instructs Moses to write down a poem (found in Ha’azinu) and teach it to the people so they will remember this message: that God will punish their faithlessness but will not abandon them forever. In time, God will forgive them and save them from their enemies.

God, obviously, knows us — God knows our nature, our struggles with temptation, and our ability to rationalize almost anything: “Yeah, I did it, but I had a really good reason.” God knows that none of us is perfect — that we will make mistakes, that sometimes we will willfully sin, knowing full well that what we are doing is wrong.

Therefore, from the very beginning, God built a process for us to deal with our sins, as it were, into the system. In our parsha, God tells Moses to teach the people a poem that will prompt them to examine their behavior and change it. And for us, God offers the annual rituals of the yamim nora’im — heshbon hanefesh (spiritual accounting), the opportunity to do teshuva (repentance), and the promise of forgiveness on Yom Kippur.

God doesn’t expect us to be perfect — He knows we’re not. What God does expect is that we will regret and learn from our mistakes and resolve to change our ways. God wants us to be a little bit better — a little kinder, a little more charitable, a little more caring, a little less selfish, a little more grateful for our blessings — this year than we were last year.

We learn from the gemara in Kiddushin:

“Our rabbis taught: A person should always see himself as if his guilt and his innocence were equally balanced. Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon said: The world is judged according to the majority, and each individual is judged according to the majority of his deeds. When a person does one mitzva he is blessed, for he tips the balance in his favor and in the world’s favor. When he commits one sin, he tips the balance against himself and against the world.”

This tells us that everything we do every day matters. Of course, it’s important to perform the “big” mitzvot that come our way — to observe Shabbat and holidays, to visit the sick, to eat kosher, to comfort mourners, to give tzedaka, and more. But even on an ordinary day spent running around doing errands, there are opportunities to tip the balance. It matters that you hold a door open for an elderly woman, speak pleasantly to a salesclerk, return excess change, thank your waiter, drive like a mensch.

A colleague remarked that one of the wonderful things about Judaism is that, unlike other traditions that speak of an individual being judged at the end of his or her life, we have an annual Yom Hadin, Day of Judgment, that gives us the opportunity to begin with a clean slate. In fact, we have that opportunity every day — there’s no need to wait for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Remember, your next action will tip the balance for yourself and for the world. Think about it, and then do the right thing!

Rabbi Joyce Newmark, a resident of Teaneck, is a former religious leader of congregations in Leonia and Lancaster, Pa.

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