Don’t Become Someone New—Return to Who You Are - Parshat Nitzavim Overview - Rabbi Avi Hoolin

It's so great to be back here with Heed Up Root on 5 Minute Overview on the Parsha with a short vart. Parshas Nitzavim. So, this week's Parsha starts off with the bris, the covenant between the Moshe Rabbeinu gives between Klal Yisrael and Hashem. And when we describe this bris, it's described that it's not only the leaders of the generation. This covenant is between everybody in the nation, the water carriers, and the children, the women, everybody's included. Not only the people that are here now, it is for all generations. The Parsha continues and discusses the great danger of a person who goes bishrirelis liboy, which means he goes based on the desires of his heart. He says, "I want to do what I want to do. I want to do what I feel like doing. I feel like doing this. I feel like hanging out." Whatever it is, the great danger of going according to his heart and not according to the intellect, which is obligated to the Torah. And the Torah uses very strong language what would happen to such a person who breaks the covenant between Hashem and his people. And the Parsha describes what we actually witnessed in history of when such a thing happens, what's going to happen to the land? And when the nations ask, "What happened to the land that Hashem has given you?" The Torah gives us the response in this week's Parsha. That for not listening to Hashem, this has happened to our land. And the Parsha continues with a beautiful the beautiful ending of what's going to happen to our nation, to our beautiful nation of Klal Israel, to the Jewish people, that at the end Hashem is going to gather us back from all the nations. And we're going to do teshuvah. Such a beautiful time to discuss this, which is right before Rosh Hashanah. We're all going to come together, we're going to do teshuvah. And the parashah continues into this beautiful theme of what's going to happen to all of Israel, to the Jewish nation at the end of days. That Hashem is going to gather us amongst all the nations, and we are going to do teshuvah, repentance. And we're all going to do a a process of repentance, which Hashem describes that he's going to do us a milah, like a circumcision to our hearts. And we're going to come back to Hashem. And the parashah continues that this thing is not far away in heaven. The matter is very close to us. In our mouth, in our hearts, and in our actions. And the parashah this week finishes with the choice. The great choice of life that we have. Will we choose the path of life or the path of death? And the path of life is the path which the Torah describes as the path of mitzvahs. So when the Torah said that this matter is not far from us, rather ki kariv alecha hadavar me'od, the thing is very close to us. Which mitzvah is the Torah referring to? So the Ramban says it's referring to the mitzvah of teshuvah. The mitzvah of repentance. And it's a beautiful thing to think about because I have a lot of friends and working in kiruv, and we could all take a second to really think about all the people that we know in our own personal journey, that there's always the thought that we see someone that's observant and he's keeping this and he's keeping Shabbos and kosher and learning and davening and we feel like, you know, this is something so not it's so far far away from us. Like like it's so not me. Like I can't I have to become something that I'm not. But the truth is it's the opposite. It's the truth of who you are. It's just coming back to that. That's what it means ki karov alecha. It's close to you. It's your true self. Who is your true self? The truth of you is your neshama. You might have fell away somewhere and went through some hard times and hard paths and hard struggles, but that's not you. Ki karov alecha. It's very close for you to return to yourself. Beficha, in your mouth. Once you express it verbally and you say, "One one second, what am I doing?" Bilvavcha, in your heart, you actually have a regret and a recognition that I want to do differently. And la'asoso, and you actually make a kabbalah, an acceptance for the future. Those are the three steps of the repentance process as we know. Vidui, confession, expressing, heart, which is what we call charatah, regretting in a real way, not guilt. Guilt and regret, totally two different things. We could talk about that, have a discussion. Hashem doesn't want us to feel guilty. Hashem loves us, but we have to regret in a way of we want to disconnect from the action. And then la'asoso, we accept upon ourselves we're going to do differently. So this Rosh Hashanah, let's ask ourselves, what is it in our life that we want to say, "You know what? I want to look at next year." Like I heard of a great guy that every single year I heard of I he he was like the same way in business a lot of people have their their yearly goals and their quarterly goals. He made every single year. He said, "This year" he didn't daven before. He said, "This year, I'm going to daven Shmona Esrei." And the next year, he picked one other goal, and he wrote it down and kept a notebook. And then when you look back at it, you're like, "Wow, I'm actually really growing." So, what's our resolution this year? We could call it the New Year's resolution. What are you going to decide? What are you going to decide this year? You're just going to flow by another year? Or could we actually say, "One second, I'm going to take something." And it could be something like what Rebbi Yisrael Salanter says, "Something small, something you're going to keep to. Something you could say it's in the middle of the winter and I could still do this." You know what I mean? Let's think about what that could possibly be that we could hold on to and make lasting change. The matter is very close to us.