The Standard That Defines Us: Nitzavim-Vayelech 5786

This piece by Rabbi Kenigsberg, first published in the Hanassi Highlights on Thursday 3 September 2026, is also available in Hebrew, thanks to ChatGPT. For the Hebrew version, click here.

There is something strange about the way we approach Rosh Hashana. For a few precious days, we try to be at our very best. We daven with greater concentration, take on additional practices, and make resolutions about the people we hope to become. Indeed, the Shulchan Aruch records the practice of adopting additional stringencies during the Aseret Yemei Teshuva, even when we know that we may not maintain them throughout the year.

But is that really meaningful? If we already suspect that in a few weeks’ time we will have returned to our usual routines, what is accomplished by reaching for a standard that we cannot sustain? Perhaps the answer lies in a central theme of Parshat Nitzavim. Moshe Rabbeinu gathers the entire nation and declares: “You are standing today, all of you, before Hashem your God… to enter into the covenant of Hashem your God” (Devarim 29:9–11).

Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap explains that the essence of a brit (covenant) is that two parties establish their relationship at a moment of particular closeness. They know that circumstances will change and difficulties will arise. Precisely because that moment cannot last forever, they make a brit: they declare that the relationship will always be defined by the closeness they experience now. Rav Charlap explains that the purpose of the covenant is that “their relationship to one another should always remain as it was at the moment the covenant was forged.” Perhaps this idea can transform the way we understand Rosh Hashana, and indeed the entire period of the Yamim Noraim.

Rosh Hashana is not a performance in which we pretend for two days to be people we are not. It is the moment when we identify who we most deeply want to be. During the year there will inevitably be distractions, failures and moments when we fall short. But those moments need not define us. Before the year begins, we establish the standard—the ideal by which we truly wish to be defined.

That may be why Nitzavim is always read as Rosh Hashana approaches. “Atem nitzavim hayom” — today we stand before Hashem. Every person, from the leaders of the nation to the “drawer of water,” enters the covenant. No one is excluded.

As Rosh Hashana approaches, the question is therefore not simply whether we can guarantee that every resolution will last. The deeper question is: What do we want our relationship with Hashem to look like when we are at our best? These final days of the year give us the opportunity to answer that question - and to establish the brit that can define the year ahead.

Shabbat Shalom veShana Tova!

Renewing the covenant: Nitzavim-Vayelech 5784

This week’s Torah reading provides a fitting conclusion to the year. At the end of his long life and after decades of service to the Jewish people, Moshe renews the covenant between God and the people of Israel. Addressing the new generation of Jews standing before him, Jews who were neither part of the Egypt experience nor present at the moment of revelation at Sinai, Moshe make it clear that the original covenant between God and the Jewish people remains in force. Not only that, but it will continue to be so throughout the Jewish future. This covenant cannot be repealed, altered or ignored: it is the basis for all Jewish life, the leitmotif of all Jewish history. Moshe concedes that there will be times and events and occurrences in the story of the Jewish people that will seem cruel, inexplicable and irrational. As he phrases it, there will be many “hidden, mysterious” events ahead of them.

Moshe offers no easy explanation for those events except to say that they are somehow related to the attempts of sections of the Jewish people to annul the covenant—and to the consequences of those attempts. The “hidden” part of the covenant belongs to God but its revealed part—the obligations of Torah commandments and Jewish life—belongs to the Jewish people and is relevant in every generation and locale. The Jewish people and the Jewish State will always be judged through their commitment to this eternal pact, the existence of which has caused us much pain and angst throughout the centuries. The other nations of the world harbor resentment against us because of the uniqueness of our relationship to the Creator, which this covenant exemplifies. Many Jewish thinkers have attributed anti-Semitism, both in its virulent or more benign forms, to a jealousy over the existence of God’s pact with the Jewish people.  

The covenant has remained the rock of Jewish identity throughout the ages. Just the knowledge of its existence has created a stubborn Jewish people which possesses a resolve to maintain its faith and lifestyle though a very small minority in a world of many billions. The Torah details its terms and conditions, and its study helps formulate the life that Jews are expected to live. That is why the Torah demands that we study and are aware of these terms morning and night, whether traveling or at home, in all times and places. 

There were, and unfortunately still are, those amongst us who wish to discard the covenant and its obligations and merely to blend in with the surrounding society. The Lord, so to speak, has warned us many times that He would not allow this to occur. All Jewish history teaches us regarding its strength and eternity. In the year that is now dawning, we should all resolutely renew the covenant in our hearts, minds and actions, in order to be blessed with a year of health, success and peace. 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein