Sep 22, 2025
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Standing Together: A Reflection on Parashat Nitzavim
Standing Together: A Reflection on Parashat Nitzavim
Rabbi Menachem Creditor & Rabba Daphne Lazar Price
The Torah names not just leaders but also children, women, and even the stranger, from “woodchopper to water drawer. (v.10)” It could have said simply “everyone,” but by enumerating groups, the text ensures that no one can be overlooked. Children may not fully understand but will carry memory. Women, often excluded from ancient (and, all too often, modern) political structures, are named as part of God’s covenant. Even strangers are included - not Israelites, yet embraced by the Torah’s care. The Torah’s language of “all of you” followed by each group challenges us to be vigilant about who is included - and who might feel excluded - when we say “everyone.” Naming in this way is an act of dignity and inclusivity.
Moshe is speaking urgently in these verses, as he knows his time is short. He warns of a spiritual danger, imagining that once we “arrive” in the Promised Land, we might think ourselves safe from the harshness of the world, immune to the consequences of actions, finished in our moral development. “I shall be safe, though I follow my own willful heart, (v. 18)” says the verse. This is a false security.
Our own lives echo this danger. Moments of progress can lead to self-satisfaction, as if justice or equality is accomplished once and for all. Yet Torah reminds us that covenant is ongoing. We are never done. We cannot say “we’ve arrived” while inequality persists, or while suffering remains in our midst, or when Jewish safety is threatened, as it so frequently is these days.
In recent years, many of us have felt knocked down, struggling to find footing in a broken and frightening world. War, displacement, hatred, loss, and uncertainty weigh heavily. We feel the urgency to “get it right,” to act faithfully even when the world feels unstable. And yet, voices of resilience remind us that there can still be a good ending, even if we cannot yet see it. Jewish wisdom teaches, “It is not upon you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. (Pirkei Avot 2:16)” Every act matters, even when we cannot control the outcome.
We may never feel that we have truly “arrived.” Even on our best days, there is more work to do, more perspectives to hear, more compassion to extend. That awareness, rather than diminishing us, calls us to humility, perseverance, and hope.
A puzzling verse in Nitzavim offers a way to bring these thoughts together:
“The hidden things belong to God, but the revealed things are for us and our children forever, to do all the words of this Torah. (Deut. 29:28)” Some versions even mark words with dots, suggesting uncertainty about what belongs to us at all.
Perhaps the message is this: we will never know everything. Control is not ours. What is ours is responsibility - to act with integrity, to live Torah in real time, even in confusion. As the ancient sage Hillel taught a student who doubted his shifting lessons (and likely his own feeling of uncertainty), “You trusted me yesterday, trust me today. (Shabbat 31a, paraphrased)” Faith does not erase uncertainty but empowers us to act despite it.
As we prepare to close one year and enter another, we hold two truths: we are ready for this year’s pain and heaviness to end, and yet, we must not rush through time. This year has included great meaning and joy too. These final days of the year are also part of the gift of life, to be savored before the new year begins.
Standing together - all of us - we are called into covenant again, hayom, today. We may not know what tomorrow brings, but we know this: our task is to show up, to stand present, and to do the work of Torah with whatever strength and wisdom we are blessed to share.
How blessed we are to stand together.
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Introduction to "Anti-Zionists, Unwitting Zionists (When Obsession Becomes Proof of Attachment)"
INTRODUCTION
The fiercest hatreds often mask a form of love. Hatred is not the opposite of attachment; it is its distortion. When a person cannot stop looking at, talking about, and defining themselves against an object, a people, or an idea, they reveal a bond they would rather deny. This book argues that a great deal of contemporary anti-Zionism belongs to that category. By building an entire moral universe around opposition to Israel, many anti-Zionists unwittingly affirm the centrality of Jewish self-determination in their own lives. Their obsession becomes proof of attachment.
To say this is not to score a glib psychological point. It is to invite a more honest conversation. Zionism is not a monolith, and Jews are not of one mind. We argue - heaven knows we argue! - and that is a feature, not a bug, of our tradition. I affirm the Jewish value of diversity, of principled pluralism. A Zionism worthy of our ancestors and our children must make room for dissent, dispute, and change. Zionism at its best is anti-fundamentalist: an evolving project of peoplehood that thrives on moral self-critique, the courage to revise, and the humility to listen.
I write as a rabbi who believes Zionism is not merely a political program but a moral obligation. The Jewish people’s right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland is not a privilege begged from history; it is the restoration of dignity after history’s theft. But that restoration is never only for us. From Torah’s command - tzedek, tzedek tirdof, justice pursued justly - to Israel’s founding vision of equality and freedom, the Jewish return to sovereignty is inseparable from the responsibility to build a society that reflects the image of God in every human being.
How, then, do we understand those who oppose this project with near-religious intensity? Some oppose particular policies; these are our partners in debate. Critique is a blessing in any democracy, and Israel, like all states, must be answerable to moral judgment. But something else has emerged in recent years: a fixation that organizes identity around the negation of the Jewish collective. When “Israel” becomes the single lens through which the world is read, when the Jewish state is singled out as the world’s only inadmissible “mistake,” when the language of human rights expands everywhere except to include the Jewish people’s right to a home - then we have crossed from critique into a consuming counternarrative.
That counternarrative, I submit, cannot let Israel go because, deep down, it cannot imagine a world without us. If Israel is the axis of your righteousness, if the Jew among the nations must always be on your mind, then the Jew among the nations is central to your moral self. You are in relationship - albeit a broken one - with Zion. The more breathless the denunciation, the more it testifies to Israel’s gravitational pull.
This is not a taunt; it is an invitation. If you care this much, then admit that you care - and let us turn that distorted attachment into a shared responsibility for life, dignity, and justice.
For our part, we Zionists must refuse the seduction of certainty. Power can numb empathy; fear can shrink moral horizons. Jewish sovereignty requires the grown-up work of holding two commitments at once: defending the lives of our people and honoring the full humanity of our neighbors. We must be brave enough to say when we fail, and steadfast enough to keep trying. Our tradition demands nothing less.
“Who is mighty?” asks Ben Zoma. “One who masters their impulse.” Strength, in Jewish terms, is disciplined power, ethically constrained.
Pluralism is thus not a public-relations tactic; it is theologically Jewish and politically Zionist. We argue for the sake of Heaven, recognizing that truth is found in the friction of principled disagreement. The doubling of tzedek in the biblical verse teaches that ends and means are inseparable. We cannot reach a just future through unjust paths. The boats on the narrow river of our sources pass in turn so that all may pass; the same wisdom must govern a crowded land and an intensely anxious century. Compromise is not cowardice when it serves life.
This book will name the obsessive forms of anti-Zionism for what they are, not to shame their adherents but to unmask the relationship they deny. And it will argue for a confident, self-critical Zionism that welcomes disagreement and expects accountability - from others and from ourselves.
If you have been told that Zionism demands silence, know that our sages canonized argument. If you have been told that loving Israel means hating someone else, know that our covenant commands love of the stranger. If you have been told that Jewish self-determination is a betrayal of universal justice, know that our return to sovereignty is precisely how we bring our particular gifts to the universal human table.
To my fellow Jews who are weary, who feel abandoned by allies who seem to champion every people’s dignity but recoil at ours: do not surrender your moral voice. Our story is neither simple nor spotless, but it is righteous in its essence.
To critics who care enough to read this far: I am listening. Come argue with me. Bring your passion, and I will bring mine. Bring your fears, and I will bring my people’s memory of statelessness and massacre alongside our stubborn, generative hope. Let us test one another not with slogans but with lives - Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and not - in view.
And to the uncompromising anti-Zionist whose days and nights circle Israel like a moth around a lamp: your heat tells the truth your words conceal. You are already in relation to the reality you deny. What if that energy were recast as responsibility? What if the passion that fuels negation were converted into the hard, sacred labor of building a future where two peoples live with dignity? Obsession can destroy; it can also be transformed.
“Anti-Zionists, Unwitting Zionists” is a provocation, yes - but also a prayer. May our attachments be healed. May our love be less distorted and more courageous. May we learn again that justice is a path we walk together, and that argument - honest, plural, rigorous - is a form of love. May our people’s return to history be a blessing to all who share the land and all who share this fragile world.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Rabbi Menachem CreditorElul 5785September 2025
Sep 3, 2025
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