Ever since the yearly cycle of Torah readings was standardised towards the end of the Second Temple era, and the fixed calendar as calculated by Hillel II (Hillel ben Yehudah, Nasi or head of the Sanhedrin) was adopted in 4119 (359 C.E.), Parashat Nitzavim has invariably been read on the final Shabbat of the year (in about two-thirds of years combined with Parashat Vayeilech as a double parashah, as happens this year 5784).
Shabbat Parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilech, in addition to being the final Shabbat of the year, marks two other endings as well:
1. This parashah concludes Moshe’s final farewell discourse to the Children of Israel.
The bulk of the Book of Deuteronomy is the transcripts of Moshe’s farewell discourses to the nation that he loved and had nurtured for forty years:
The first discourse is recorded in Deuteronomy 1:6-4:10, the second in 5:1-26:19, and the third began last Shabbat in Parashat Ki Tavo (27:1), and concludes this week with the final words of Parashat Nitzavim:
“I call heaven and earth today to testify for you: Life and death I have placed before you, the blessing and the curse. So choose life so that you shall live – you and your seed! To love Hashem your G-d, to listen to His voice, and to cleave to Him, because He is your life and the length of your days; to dwell on the Land which Hashem swore to your fathers – to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob – to give them” (30:19-20).
With these words, Moshe concludes his mission. He leaves us with the freedom to choose blessing, life, and the Land of Israel – or to choose curse, death, and exile. Moshe’s final exhortation to us is to choose blessing, life, and the Land of Israel out of our own free will.
2. The other ending that this Shabbat marks is the final consolation after the Three Weeks of mourning. The Haftarot (the prophetic readings which follow the Torah-readings) generally complement the parashah; but the final ten weeks of the year follow a different paradigm.
For the three Shabbatot of the Three Weeks, the Haftarot were theתְּלָתָא דְּפֻרְעָנוּתָא , the three Haftarot of Castigation – the prophetic warnings of doom as a result of disobeying G-d, from Jeremiah and Isaiah.
And then, for the next seven Shabbatot (Va-et’chanan, Eikev, Re’eh, Shoftim, Ki Teitzei, Ki Tavo, and Nitzavim-Vayeilech), the Haftarot are the שֶׁבַע דְּנֶחֱמָתָא, the seven Haftarot of Consolation – all abstracted from Isaiah, all depicting the magnificent future that awaits us. After the mourning comes the rejoicing, after the exile comes the return home, after the destruction comes the renaissance.
The Haftarah for Parashat Nitzavim, Isaiah 61:10-63:9, concludes this period of consolation. With this final Shabbat of the year, our healing from the ravages of the Three Weeks is complete.
And this is the often-overlooked link between the Parashah and the Haftarah.
Last week, Parashat Ki Tavo concluded with the תּוֹכֵחָה (Tocheichah) – the castigation (Deuteronomy 28), Moshe’s assurance of G-d’s blessings that He will shower upon us when we keep His mitzvot, and His terrifying punishments if we reject His Torah and mitzvot.
This chapter obviously parallels the previous תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Bechukkotay (Leviticus 26). And indeed, there are at least two other factors which they have in common.
The first common factor is historical: they were both given immediately before our [planned] entry into the Land of Israel.
The תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Bechukkotay was just a few weeks before Moshe sent out the twelve spies on the reconnaissance mission, which was intended to be the prelude to our conquest of our Land. The תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Bechukkotay is the “instruction manual” of how to use the Land correctly.
And the תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Ki Tavo was just a few weeks before our actual entry into the Land of Israel, led by Joshua. Again, we received the “instruction manual” of how to use the Land correctly immediately before taking possession of the Land.
The second common factor is liturgical. The Talmud cites Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar as saying:
“Ezra decreed for Israel that they read the curses in Leviticus before Shavuot, and the curses in Deuteronomy before Rosh Hashanah. What is the reason? – Abayyé said (though some say it was Reish Lakish who said): So that the year should finish with it curses.
“This explains reading the curses in Deuteronomy before Rosh Hashanah; but what about those in Leviticus? Is Shavuot the beginning of the year?!
“ — Yes, Shavuot is also a beginning of the year, because the Mishnah (Rosh Hashanah 1:2) has said, ‘On Shavuot the world is judged for the fruit of the trees’” (Megillah 31b).
There is, however, a major difference between the two castigations:
The תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Bechukkotay, after detailing all of G-d’s punishments, concludes with a promise of comfort and hope:
“Then I will remember My Covenant with Jacob, also My Covenant with Isaac, and also My Covenant with Abraham I will remember – and I will remember the Land… even when in their enemies’ lands I will not reject them, nor will I violate My Covenant with them by annihilating them, because I Hashem am their G-d; so I will remember for them the Covenant with their earliest generations, that I brought them out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their G-d – I, Hashem” (Leviticus 26:42-45).
The תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Ki Tavo, however, has no such message of comfort at its conclusion:
“Hashem will return you to Egypt in slave-ships, on the way that I told you: you will never see again; and there you will try to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves and maidservants – but none will buy. These are the words of the Covenant which Hashem commanded Moshe to forge with the Children of Israel in the land of Moab” (Deuteronomy 28:68-69).
What a depressing way to finish! Why didn’t Moshe conclude with some message of comfort?
The Radba”z (Rabbi David Shlomo ibn Avi-Zimra, Spain, Israel, Morocco, and Egypt, 1479-1573) offered an explanation, following the Zohar (Volume 1, Parashat Ki Tavo 98a):
“Parashat Nitzavim is the direct continuation of Parashat Ki Tavo, and its entire subject is the Covenant which is expressed most powerfully of all in the words ‘to pass you into Hashem your G-d’s Covenant and imprecation’ (Deuteronomy 29:11). So you will see that [the תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Ki Tavo] does indeed conclude with consolation, as it says ‘When all these things – the blessing and the curse – come upon you…you will return to Hashem your G-d…and Hashem your G-d will return you and He will have compassion upon you; you will return, and He will ingather you from all the nations among which Hashem your G-d has scattered you’ (Deuteronomy 30:1-3), and [this consolation] continues until the end of the Parashah” (Responsa of the Radba”z, section 2, #769).
For seven weeks following the 9th of Av, every Haftarah has been a Haftarah of consolation. And the ultimate consolation, concluding not only the mourning of the Three Weeks but also the תּוֹכֵחָה in Parashat Ki Tavo, is in Parashat Nitzavim (in this year Nitzavim-Veyeilech), with the unconditional guarantee that we will return to G-d, He will return to us, and we will return home to Israel.
The Torah’s precise wording here is significant. Earlier we translated it as “Hashem your G-d will return you and He will have compassion upon you; you will return, and He will ingather you from all the nations among which Hashem your G-d has scattered you”.
But the phrase וְשָׁב ה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ could also mean “Then Hashem your G-d will return with your return” (taking the word אֶת to mean “with”). That is to say, as long as we are in exile, He and His Shekhinah are also in exile. He can only return when we return.
The return to Zion is the final Redemption. For Moshe writing the Torah, for the Prophet Isaiah, it was the distant future; for us, our current reality.
The Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, Spain and Israel, 1195-c.1270) gave a remarkably prescient indication of how this final Redemption would begin:
“The beginning of the future Redemption will be with the permission of the nations, and there will be just a slight ingathering of the exiles. And after that Hashem will increase His involvement, as it says ‘Hashem your G-d will return with you and He will have compassion upon you; you will return, and He will ingather you from all the nations among which Hashem your G-d has scattered you’” (commentary to Song of Songs 8:12).
It is only too easy to view our current situation as gloomy, frightening, uncertain, and depressing.
I am writing these words very early Thursday morning, the usually-peaceful air rent by the roar of fighter-jets, sporadic alerts of aerial attacks from Lebanon, more than a hundred of our people still trapped in sub-human conditions by the sub-human monsters of Hamas in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Israelis displaced, mobilised into the Army reserves, on the front lines, defending this country with their lives if necessary.
No one knows what will have happened by the time that you, kind reader, read my words. How will this conflict continue? How long? How many ר"ל will die before we reach the promises of the Parashah and the Haftarah?
We know only that this story has a happy ending. We have no guarantee of when that happy ending will come, or how much we will have to go through to reach it.
But the final page of this book, the final scene of this film, is in the final Parashah and the final Haftarah of the year.
The Prophet promises us at the beginning of this Haftarah:
כִּי כָאָרֶץ תּוֹצִיא צִמְחָהּ וּכְגַנָּה זֵרוּעֶיהָ תַצְמִיחַ כֵּן ה' אֱלֹקִים יַצְמִיחַ צְדָקָה וּתְהִלָּה נֶגֶד כָּל־ הַגּוֹיִם:
“Because like the land puts forth its plants, and like a garden causes its seeds to sprout, so Hashem G-d will make righteousness and praise sprout facing all the nations” (Isaiah 61:11).
Like the Parashah, the Prophet’s wording is ambiguous: we have translated the phrase נֶגֶד כָּל־הַגּוֹיִם as “facing all the nations”. Others translate it as “before all the nations” (JPS, Jerusalem Bible, Margolin, Hertz), or “opposite all the nations” (Judaica Press), or “in the face of all the nations” (ArtScroll).
But the word נֶגֶד literally means “against”. Hence: “Hashem G-d will make righteousness and praise sprout against all the nations”.
Just last week, the United Nations voted overwhelmingly (yet again) against Israel. It is all too easy to feel that all the nations – well, not quite all the nations, just the overwhelming majority of them – are united against us.
The Prophet Isaiah guarantees us that G-d’s ultimate righteousness will yet sprout and flourish, if necessary against all the nations.
We are heading, more swiftly than ever, for this ultimate consolation. In the words of so many of our Sages:
תִּכְלֶה שָׁנָה וְקִלְלוֹתֶיהָ, תָּחֵל שָׁנָה וּבִרְכוֹתֶיהָ!
“Let the year with its curses end, let the year with its blessings begin!”
