Parshat Nitzavim-Vayelech: All of You
No one is meant to imagine that the covenant belongs only to the important people, the learned people, or the people at the center. “All of you” means you, too.
This week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim-Vayelech, opens with a striking image. Moses is nearing the end of his life, and the Israelites are nearing the end of their long journey through the wilderness. Before they cross into the Promised Land, Moses gathers them together and says: “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God.” And then, almost as if he is worried someone might hear the words “all of you” and still assume he means somebody else, Moses begins to name them: the tribal leaders and elders, the officials and workers, men and women, children and strangers, “from woodchopper to water-drawer.” Everybody. No one is meant to imagine that the covenant belongs only to the important people, the learned people, or the people at the center. “All of you” means you, too.
There is something quite radical about that list. These are not necessarily people who would have chosen one another as friends. They occupy different places in society, carry different kinds of power and responsibility, and surely understand their Jewish lives differently from one another. And yet Moses insists that they enter this covenant together. Jewish community, in this telling, is not simply a gathering of people who like one another, agree with one another, or have similar lives. It asks something larger of us: Can we create a “we” capacious enough to include people beyond the boundaries of our natural social circles? Can we recognize obligation and belonging even across difference?
And then, just a few verses later, Moses makes the circle wider still. “I make this covenant not with you alone,” he says, “but both with those who are standing here with us this day … and with those who are not with us here this day.” The rabbis understood those mysterious absent people to include future generations—including us. Suddenly the community Moses is describing stretches not only across the encampment, but across time. We belong not only to the people standing beside us, but also to the generations who stood before us and to people who have not yet been born.
Most of our experience of community happens, understandably, in the present tense. Who is coming for Shabbat? Who needs a meal? Who haven’t we seen in a while? Who is new and needs someone to say hello? Those questions matter enormously. But Nitzavim invites us to hold another set of questions alongside them: What have we inherited? What are we responsible for carrying forward? What kind of Jewish life are we creating for people we may never meet?
“You stand this day, all of you.” Perhaps the invitation of Nitzavim is to keep expanding what we mean by “all of us”: wider, toward people whose lives or experiences are different from our own; and longer, toward the generations before us and the generations still to come. Jewish community makes the strange and beautiful claim that people we might never have chosen, and people we may never even meet, nevertheless belong to one another. Our work is to keep making that belonging real.
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Welcome to Torah in Harlem! As we move through each week, we’ll explore the stories and insights of the weekly Torah portion—the ancient text at the heart of Jewish life—and let them inspire conversation in our community. Our hope is to cultivate a gathering place where learning belongs, reflection brings joy, and we can all grow together. Want to hop into the conversation? Join our Torah in Harlem Whatsapp Group.
Artwork by Hillel Smith.
