NITZAVIM-VAYELECH 5764
Readers of these essays are by now familiar with the notion of a keyword, or “milah mancha” in Hebrew.
The Torah often subliminally sets the tone of its surface-level comments through repeated words or
phrases—things which we might not notice on our first reading, but which ring in our ear and stand out
upon further inspection. Many of these essays have dealt with such keywords and the themes they
undergird, and this week’s essay is no exception.
The word that keeps recurring in the double-parasha of Nitzavim-Vayelech is “this,” “zot” or “zeh” in
Hebrew. The word recurs in phrases like, “This covenant and this curse” (29:13), “This Jordan” (31:2),
“This people” (31:7), and “This song” (31:21-22). Most frequently we find “this” in the phrase, “This
book,” or “This book of Torah,” which occurs ten times.
“This” stands out not only because of its repetition, but also because of its concentration in these parashot.
The words “zot” and “zeh” occur a combined total of 208 times in the Torah. Of those, over half (107) of
the usages are found in Deuteronomy, and of those, nearly 25 percent are found in these three chapters.
Nowhere else in the Torah do we find such a concentrated dose of “this.” The Torah is going out of its way
to repeat the word. To what end?
One possibility is that the Torah is continuing its project of claiming authority for itself and its program.
Just as we have seen the centralization of power in the legal system and the future capital of the state, so we
find with this self-referencing that the Torah is making itself into an identifiable object of power. “This
Torah,” “This book,” is the book that contains within it all the instructions for how Jews are to live their
lives. Not some other book, but this one, right here—this is the book with authority. Traditional Jews enact
this authorization every week when the Torah is lifted in synagogue and, in the words of the Shulchan
Aruch (O.H. 134:2), we point and call out, “This is the Torah that Moses put before the children of Israel
by the mouth of God, by the hand of Moses.”
A related, though slightly different function of “this,” is to establish a relationship between the subject and
the object in question. We indicate a sense of closeness when we say “this.” If we wanted to show farness
we would say, “that [book, table, chair, painting].” But when we point to an object and say “this [book,
table, chair, painting],” we imply that the object is in our immediate vicinity, that it is something right here,
present in our lives. By repeatedly referring to “this book of the Torah,” Moses connotes his own closeness
to it, and makes it a live thing in the lives of the people. He goes further and makes that intimacy explicit
with his beautiful lines in ch. 30: “For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for
you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up for us to heaven, and
bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go
over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you; it is in
your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” (11-14)
Another function of this closeness is to bring comfort. It is interesting to consider that all of these “this”-es
are being uttered by a man who is about to die. Moses is certainly trying to get across the message that this
book that he is giving the Israelites should receive the same respect he got in his lifetime. He is trying to
build a relationship between the Torah and the people. But from the viewpoint of Moses the man, one
wonders whether he is also trying, in a way, to hang on. By constantly referring to “this book,” “this land,”
“this people,” Moses projects his life in relation to the things around him. In doing so, he comforts
himself—as long as he can say “this book,” he is still in the world with it. In this process, Moses comes
full-circle, mirroring the kind of object-identification that he first undertook as a baby. Now he does not
bestow names on objects, but rather takes those names and refers to his relationship with them.
One cannot read all these “this”-es uttered by a dying man without also hearing Shakespeare’s John of
Gaunt in Richard II, who sings the praises of his land in his final words:
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…
Like Moses, John of Gaunt seems to be holding on to his beloved object as he prepares to leave it. He also
imbues England with the sense of eternality that Moses gives to the Torah. Through this he inspires a
feeling of awe and respect for England (or the Torah), and he does something more: He opens the gates to
the next world, where this eternal thing will continue to exist. But in that next world, he will not be
separated from it. Instead he will be one with it: John will be with England, Moses with Torah.
This tells us something about the challenge and the potential beauty of this world: we maintain our
separateness from the things and people around us. They are “this,” or “that,” but are still distinct from us.
And yet the possibility of “this” implies that we can come close, tantalizingly close, and can perhaps—if
only for a moment—go beyond the bounds of self, and find ourselves no longer alone. We can merge with
our beloved—our spouse, our friend, our land or our Torah, not only in Heaven, but in this world as well.
“It is not in heaven,” as this Torah says of itself. Rather it is “very near you; in your mouth and in your
heart, that you may do it.”
Shabbat shalom.