In Parshas Nitzavim, the first of this week’s double parshios - Netzavim-Vayelech - the Torah highlights the mitzvah of teshuva, repentance and return.  Not for naught is this parsha always read before Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Elul.  Elul is the month when we work on correcting the error of our ways, when we strive to be mesaken (lit. ’fix’) our middos, improving for the better in all of our ways, and a time of return to G-d and repentance from sin (in lashon ha’kodesh, ‘return’ and ‘repentance’ share the same root word ש.ב. - for to repent is to return unto G-d).   

וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד-ה’ אֱלֹקֹיךָ, וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְקֹלוֹ, כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר-אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ, הַיּוֹם אַתָּה וּבָנֶיךָ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשֶׁךָ - and you will return unto Hashem your G-d and you will listen to His Voice, like all that I command you today, you and your son, with all your heart and with all your soul (Devarim 30:2); וְאַתָּה תָשׁוּב, וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְּקוֹל ה’; וְעָשִׂיתָ, אֶת-כָּל-מִצְוֺתָיו, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ, הַיּוֹם - and you will return, and you will listen to the Voice of Hashem, and you will do all His mitzvos which I am commanding you today (30:8); כִּי תִשְׁמַע, בְּקוֹל ה’ אֱלֹקֹיךָ, לִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו, הַכְּתוּבָה בְּסֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה: כִּי תָשׁוּב אֶל-ה אֱלֹקֹיךָ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשֶׁךָ - when you listen to the Voice of Hashem, your G-d, to observe His commandments and His statutes which are written in this sefer Torah; when you return to the Hashem, your G-d, with all your heart and with all your soul (30:10).

These three pasukim are found in a perek (chapter) of our parsha that is replete with the repeated use of this root word - ש.ב. - and with its great focus on repentance.  It is a most fitting sedra to read annually before Rosh Hashanah, as we are reminded of the great avodah that lies before us, as we leave one year and enter the next.  Moshe exhorts us to examine our ways, remember Hashem, leave the ways of foreign lands behind, and cleanse our hearts and souls to be pure in our avodas Hashem.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z’l teaches that, “Teshuvah is two things: a religious-metaphysical experience of sin and atonement (based on the teachings of the Rambam/Maimonides), and an ethical-historical drama of exile and return (based on the teachings of the Ramban/Nachmanides). For nearly two thousand years, the former predominated while the latter was no more than a distant memory and a pious hope. The Temple was gone, and so too were the Prophets. But whereas there was a substitute for the Temple (the synagogue as mikdash me’at, “a temple-in-microcosm”) there was no real substitute for Israel as a nation-among-nations in the arena of history.

“In the course of the twentieth century, that changed. Jews returned. The state of Israel was reborn. The promise of the Prophets, millennia ago, came true. Yet the word teshuvah – in the sense meant by Moses in this week’s sedra, and by Nachmanides in his construal of the command – has not yet been fully realised. There has been a physical homecoming to the land, but not yet a spiritual homecoming to the faith. Among a section of the population, yes; among the people as a whole, no. That challenge rests with us, our contemporaries and our children. The words of the Prophets, never less than inspiring, have acquired a new salience. How it will happen, we do not know, but that it will happen, we do know, for we have God’s promise: that the faith of Israel will be reborn just as its land and state have been. May we live to see it, and work to be part of it” (https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/nitzavim/two-concepts-of-teshuvah/). 

As teshuva includes two distinct, complimentary, aspects: (i) to repent from sin as a religious-moral responsibility and obligation, and (ii) to return unto G-d in our homeland, which is the national-physical return to Eretz Yisrael, where mitzvos can be performed in the most optimal way, then we must ensure that we - who live in a world after 1948 - ensure that both these ideals are embraced and are simultaneous foundations of our lives, our nation and our land.  

Captain Daniel Mimon Toaff, 23, a Givati Brigade officer from the Shaked Battalion, HY”D, was among the four IDF soldiers killed in a booby-trapped building explosion in Rafah last Tuesday (Sept.17, 2024).  Captain Toaff, from Morashat, was an athlete and competitive mountain bike rider. He studied at a high school yeshiva in Sde Yaakov and, before joining the army, spent two years at the Bnei David preparatory program in the settlement of Eli.  "Daniel was in Gaza from the first day of the war. Initially, he commanded his soldiers as a platoon commander and later replaced his friend, Captain Yaron Eliezer Chitiz, who was the deputy commander of the operational platoon of the Shaked Battalion and fell in combat (in Dec.2023, at the age of 23 years old),” his father, Shlomo, said in an interview with Army Radio. "Daniel replaced him, and now he has also fallen. He fought heroically throughout this year and never complained” (https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-820664). 

Daniel Mimon Toaff HY”D penned a letter shortly after Oct. 7, 2023, before he went to war in Gaza, which was discovered and released posthumously.  In what, in retrospect, has become his spiritual tza’vah (spiritual will), Daniel wrote, "A month and a half ago was Rosh Hashanah, the Ten Days of Repentance, and Yom Kippur," he wrote, shortly before the ground offensive into Gaza began. "We all prayed for the collective, and personally, what I always strive to focus on most is praying for a good life. The intention here is not merely that we will live another year and not die; the intention is that we will have lives of meaning and doing good for the people of Israel and the land of Israel. I always direct my prayers toward this goal and ask for lives dedicated to the collective, giving for the people and the land, lives where I make the world a better place, making my people better. This is the purpose of life, and I have reached the moment where I have had the privilege to do this and live this life, a life of universality and doing good for the people of Israel with my very body.”

At the close of the letter, addressing his parents, Daniel quoted a Hebrew song of prayer: “'May I merit to raise sons and grandsons wise and understanding, loving God, fearing God, true holy seed clinging to God, illuminating the world with good deeds and every task for the Creator.’ This is what you have done and succeeded in, and I pray I will succeed like you. See you soon and always ask to keep a smile no matter what happens, and continue to act for the People and the Land. I love you endlessly.”

הֲשִׁיבֵ֨נוּ ה’ אֵלֶ֨יךָ֙ וְֽנָשׁ֔וּבָה חַדֵּ֥שׁ יָמֵ֖ינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם - Return us to You, Hashem, that we may be returned; Renew our days as of old (Eichah 5:21).  May we merit it immediately and in our days.

בברכת בשורות טובות ושבת שלום