Standing Firm | Parshat Nitzavim

Rabbi Yaakov Cohen brings down a beautiful lecture on connecting to HaShem at Rosh Hashanah.

Nitzavim, Nitsavim, Nitzabim, Netzavim, or Nesabim (נִצָּבִים‎ — Hebrew for “ones standing,” the second word, and the first distinctive word, in the parashah) is the 51st weekly Torah portion (פָּרָשָׁה‎, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the eighth in the Book of Deuteronomy. It constitutes Deuteronomy 29:9–30:20(Deuteronomy 29:10 onwards in some versions of the Hebrew Bible).

In the parashah, Moses told the Israelites that all the people stood before God to enter into the covenant, violation of which would bring on curses, but if they returned to God and heeded God’s commandments, then God would take them back in love and bring them together again from the ends of the world. Moses taught that this Instruction was not beyond reach, and Moses put before the Israelites life and death, blessing and curse, and exhorted them to choose life by loving God and heeding the commandments.