Nitzavim

The sicha for parshas Nitzavim is in Vol. II of Likkutei Sichos.

It says in Likkutei Torah and the previous Rebbe mentions it in a maamer that parshas Nitzavim is read every year on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashana, sometimes along with parshas Vayelech and sometimes by itself, however it is always read on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashana.
The reason is that every Shabbos is related to the days and the events that happen in the days following the Shabbos, and that’s why on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashana, we read “ ata nitzavim hayom” - you stand today all of you before G-d, and so on, today, because the day that that happened, was Rosh Hashana, the Day of the Great Judgement.

When that day comes, the day of Rosh Hashana, then all of us must stand together, all souls have to present themselves before G-d your G-d, and they have to do it all of them together as one person, all of them equal; from the heads of the tribes until the water carriers and the wood choppers, all of them equally. From the highest level to the lowest level, all of them as one, not only do they tolerate each other, not only do the heads of the tribes tolerate the water carriers, and the water carriers tolerate the heads of the tribes, but more than that, they complete each other, and they receive from each other, so that you can’t have one without the other. Just as the head and the foot of a human body, they not only tolerate each other but they actually complete each other – the head and the foot would both be incomplete with the other.

And that is the avodah of “hayom” of Rosh Hashana, that in order that we should be able to accomplish what we are supposed to accomplish on Rosh Hashana, we read on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashana in the Torah, the statement and the instruction in Torah where we are told to be as one. And the reading of it in the Torah is what enables us to actually do it, to carry it out in action.

Along the same lines, Chassidus explains that on Rosh Hashana, we quote the verses in Torah where the Torah says that G-d should be the King of the world, and that He should respond to the sound of the shofar. And by making the statement in the name of Torah, that’s what prevails on G-d that He should actually do those things that the Torah establishes, commands to which G-d responds.

After the words “ ata nitzavim” from “ you all stand together, from the heads of the tribes down to the water carriers,” it then says, why are you standing together, “ in order to enter into a covenant with G-d.” So the purpose of the standing together, of this oneness, is to enter into a covenant with G-d.

This covenant is repeated every Rosh Hashana.

What is a covenant? When the love between two people is strong, they make a covenant, that their love should remain forever, that not matter what happens, no matter what else they see in each other, their faults and their weaknesses, the love should remain. Because this kind of a covenant is a super-rational commitment- putting aside what we see and what we understand, putting aside our opinions and our feelings, we should remain bound to each other through this covenant, and that means that the love should be not one that is dependent on a reason and on a cause but it should be an unconditional, essential love, the love of essence to essence, so that nothing in the world will ever be able to weaken it or to destroy it.

The same is true of the love between Jews and G-d; that when it comes to Rosh Hashana, that’s the time when the love is strong, because we have just gone through the month of Ellul, in which we have cleansed ourselves of all those things which prevent us from loving G-d, so the love is strong, that’s the right time to make a covenant, to enter into a covenant to become bound to G-d with an essential connection that is super-rational, above all reasons, so that no fault that we would have will ever weaken the love.

In order to have G-d reveal this super-rational love, this covenant with every Jew, we have to do the same between ourselves, we have to rise above the rational reasons for loving our fellow Jew and become one, united with all Jews on a super-rational level, to do “ me’od” to do that which is greater than ourselves and then we are deserving that G-d should do the same for us.

Now this oneness, this equality we feel towards every Jew, should be a true and honest feeling. We have to know that it is really so, that is not just a poetic or high-minded thought. Although the person thinks “ I am the head of the tribe, and this other person is a very simple, uncouth, unlearned person, so how is it that I should feel equal to this person” aside from the fact that we don’t really know yet who is the head and who is the foot, in this particular case, since we have a tendency to judge others as being smaller than they really are, and we judge ourselves to be greater than we really are, aside from that, even if it were in fact true, that you are the head and the other person is the foot, it is still true that the foot has a virtue that the head doesn’t have, and without the foot, the head is also incomplete.

When a Jew stops to think on Rosh Hashana, before the blowing of the shofar, when he is asking G-d “ to choose us as Your portion ” which means that we are asking G-d not to make a rational choice but a true choice which means choose us from Your essence, not from Your reasoning, that G-d’s essence should choose us, and really stops to think what is the essence of G-d – the essence of G-d is that which is higher than G-d’s attributes, above and beyond all limitations even of holiness, and he starts to think about how much greater the essence of G-d is, even to the holiest of worlds, and here in his prayers, he is asking this essence of G-d to choose him, to make a covenant with him - if he thinks about this and spends a little time on it, then he will automatically have no time left to be judging others.

Reb Hillel Parditcher, a famous chassid, wanted to see the Alter Rebbe. But every time that he came to the city where the Alter Rebbe was, he found that he had come too late and that the Alter Rebbe had already left. So finally in desperation, he decided that he had to do something special to assure that he would see the Rebbe. He found out what city the Rebbe would be in, and he went to that city, arriving there before the Alter Rebbe. Then he found out which house the Rebbe would be staying in, and he went to that house and hid in the room where the Alter Rebbe would be.

He had come prepared with the question that he had in the Gemarrah on Eruchin, the Gemarrah where it talks about establishing a monetary value for human beings. If a person says for example, I donate my value to tzedaka, well, how much does that mean, how much is a person’s monetary value. When the Alter Rebbe walked into the room, even before Reb Hillel could come out of hiding, the Alter Rebbe said, when a young man comes and he has a question on Eruchin, meaning the valuation of human worth, he should first evaluate himself. When Reb Hillel heard this, he fainted, and by the time he came to, the Alter Rebbe had already left the city. Reb Hillel never again tried to see the Alter Rebbe, and he became a chassid of the Mitteler Rebbe and then the Tzemach Tzedek.

What this story tells us, what is relevant for us, is that the monetary value of a human being is not a rational one, because the halacha is that a person is valued monetary by his age, all people of the same age have the same monetary value. Now a person can say, how can I have the same monetary value as another person when I have spent my years devoted to Torah and mitzvos, doing that which pleases G-d, and even rationally all human beings would agree that I have achieved some higher worth, and the other person’s years were spent in wasteful activity, they amounted to nothing, and now you tell me that we are both worth the same? And the response to this from the Alter Rebbe was, evaluate yourself more honestly and then you won’t be making critical statements about others and your question will disappear.

Concerning the mitzva of tzedaka, when the rich man gives the poor man, we find the expression, matanos l’evyonim, in the Megillah where it says, ish l’reahu, matanos l’evyonim, so the Rebbe points us that matanos l’evyonim, gifts to the poor, should not be seen as the rich man giving away what is his, out of kindness and generosity, and giving it to somebody else, but rather when there is matanos l’evyonim, it is ish l’reahu, he is giving it not to somebody who is below him, somebody less worthy than him, but it is l’reahu, to his own peer, to his chaver, because they are equal in their standard.

So when he thinks of the giving of the tzedaka, he thinks of it not as giving something away that belongs to him, but he is returning to his friend that which was intended for his friend, as the chassidim used to say, in the times of the Alter Rebbe, the piece of bread that I have, is yours as much as mine, and they would say yours before mine. And that’s what we were saying before; the equal codependence of the head and the foot, that one without the other is not complete.

Just as a person is composed of a body and a soul, so there is tzedaka for the body and there is also tzedaka for the soul, a spiritual tzedaka. Just as with physical tzedaka, even a poor man has a mitzva of giving tzedaka, of the little bit that he has, he should give a bit to tzedaka, the same is true also in the spiritual, that every person, even one who has learned very little, is obligated to give spiritual tzedaka. When he meets with another person and he can help him by sharing a thought, then he is obligated to do so since by Divine providence they were brought together and G-d doesn’t create anything in the world without a purpose and without a reason. So the meeting also between these two people must have a reason and a purpose and therefore even a person who is poor spiritually should share with the other whatever bit of spiritual inspiration he has.

And just as in the physical tzedaka, when the rich man gives to the poor man he is really doing himself a favor, the same is true also in the spiritual tzedaka. When you share your learning, or your knowledge or your inspiration with another person, you are doing yourself a favor, it benefits you more than you are benefiting the other person.

The Tzemach Tzedek was once speaking about the greatness of tzedaka, how the mitzva of tzedaka, helping another person with his livelihood and his financial needs, creates an opening of the mind and the heart, that allows you to receive G-dliness revealed from above. The Tzemach Tzedek told this story to his son, the Rebbe Maharash, and this is what happened to the Tzemach Tzedek himself. The Tzemach Tzedek, after the Alter Rebbe had passed away, remained very close to the Alter Rebbe, and from time to time he would see the Alter Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe would come to visit him, only there would be different forms and degrees of clarity.

So the Tzemach Tzedek was looking forward to a very intimate meeting with the Alter Rebbe, when he would arrive back in Lubavitch after his travels. But when he arrived in Lubavitch not only did the Alter Rebbe not come to him, but he felt that he was being rejected, that there was a distance between them. He was very broken-hearted over all of this, and he began to question what it was that he did that caused this distance. He felt that he had fallen from the highest level down to the lowest level.

And he began to think, what could he do, what kind of tshuva he could do, in order to be able see the Alter Rebbe again. On his way to shul to daven, the Tzemach Tzedek met a chassid by the name of Pinchus, and the chassid asked the Rebbe to lend him three rubles in order to go to the marketplace and buy something to then sell it, so that he would have enough for Shabbos. The Tzemach Tzedek told him to come to his house after davening and he would give him the loan. When the Tzemach Tzedek began to prepare for davening, and he already had the tallis over his shoulder, it suddenly occurred to him, that Pinchus was telling him that today is the market day and the market opens very early, so Pinchus probably needed the money right away. So the Tzemach Tzedek took off the tallis, and he went and found Reb Pinchus and took him to the house and gave him five rubles in order for him to make a profit. When the Tzemach Tzedek came back to davening, he was washing his hands, when suddenly the Alter Rebbe appeared to him and answered all the questions he had wanted to ask the Alter Rebbe, and the Alter Rebbe’s face was shining with pleasure.

So we see from this story that tzedaka has an effect even in the spiritual: that the Tzemach Tzedek, with all of the closeness that he had to the Alter Rebbe, yet all of this didn’t help him be able to see the Alter Rebbe. Only when he met a Jew in the street, not in the Tzemach Tzedek’s house, or in shul, but out in the street, and he didn’t meet this Jew while the Jew was saying Tehillim or doing something holy, but when he was looking for a loan, in order to make a few rubles profit, and in order to help him, the Tzemach Tzedek put aside his davening, the Tzemach Tzedek’s davening, which we can’t even begin to imagine how great and holy that davening was, and yet all of this would not have helped him see the Alter Rebbe and have the Alter Rebbe answer all of his questions as much as the simple act of tzedaka that he gave to this chassid Pinchus.

What does it mean in practical application?

There are those here who have both the ability to give tzedaka, spiritual tzedaka, and they also have the energy with which to give it. And so, on both days of Rosh Hashana, the first day and the second day, being that each day has an advantage over the other, as we were saying before, like the head and the foot, they compliment each other, on both days of Rosh Hashana, those who have what to give and the energy to give it, should go and visit other Jews on both days of Rosh Hashana, in order to share with them the inspiration of the Yom Tov. And if he says, I have made all these preparations, and I only have forty days out of the year in which to figure myself out and unravel myself and get myself on the right path, how can I devote two days out of the forty to others? So the answer is, matanos l’evyonim ish l’reahu, that when you give a gift to the needy, it is really giving yourself a gift as well, because by giving to the others, you gain much more yourself.
 

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