This week’s Parasha, Nisavim is always read the week before Rosh Hashanah. It starts off with..
אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם
You are standing in front of Hashem today…
Our rabbi say that, “today“ refers to Rosh Hashanah….
כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם רָאשֵׁיכֶם שִׁבְטֵיכֶם זִקְנֵיכֶם וְשֹׁטְרֵיכֶם כֹּל אִישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל
All of you together, your leaders, your elders, all together, to go through the covenant with God.
Every year we recommit ourselves when we stand in front of Hashem on Rosh Hashanah.
Rashi says that the word Nisavim, which means standing tall, is used because in the previous parasha, we read the 98 curses. Their faces turned green and they were petrified but then Moshe Rabbenu gave them hizuk/encouragement, and said, “Don’t worry. You are standing here today, you are you are going to last, you are still here. You went through a lot, you angered God, but He never destroyed you. He still loves you…” and he gave them words of hizuk.
That is how we have to stand in front of God on Rosh Hashanah.
After all of the selichot, all of the crying and all of the work, we must come into Rosh Hashanah with Nisavim/ standing upright, with confidence and a positive feeling about last year, and toward the upcoming year.
There is a beautiful midrash by Yikrah Rabah (unit 5/8) that gives a mashal about two sharecroppers. A sharecropper was someone who made a deal with a landowner, to work a part of the field for a percentage of the profits. If the sharecropper did well, he’d also get a bonus or commission.
The mashal compares a good sharecropper, who knows how to deal with his boss, with a bad sharecropper, who does not.
It was a bad year. The sheep, the goats, the crops….they all did poorly.
But the good sharecropper comes to the boss with nice clothing, combed hair, his staff and his ring.
The boss asks how the fruits did, and the sharecropper says, “You will really enjoy the fruit this year.”
When the boss asks how the sheep did that year, the sharecropper says, “You will really enjoy the sheep this year.” The sharecropper answers every question with a positive outlook.
The boss then asks the sharecropper what he wants for his bonus, and the sharecropper asks for $10,000 above his regular commission. The boss says, “$10,000? I’ll give you $20,000!”
That’s how it goes with the good sharecropper.
On the other hand, the bad sharecropper walked in after a bad year with his hair disheveled and his clothing stained. He looked like a mess. When the boss asked him how the fruit was, he said they would be lucky if they got got as much fruit as the seeds they had planted.
When the boss asked him how the cows did, he said they were thin… the goats were weak…etc.
When the boss asked him how much he wanted to get paid, the sharecropper asked for the $10,000 they had agreed upon, but the landowner told him he would be lucky to get $5,000.
As strange as it sounds, this is what the Midrash says. Then it goes on to describe David Hamelech as a good sharecropper, because he gives a positive outlook on creation, and at the end, he says, “Forgive the sins that I did by mistake, forgive the sins that I did on purpose…”
Is this Midrash teaching us how to fool our bosses? Or in this case, how to fool God?
Rav Eliyahu Svei, z’l, the late Rosh Yeshiva of the Philadelphia Yeshiva, says that this isn’t intended as a way to fool the boss. We aren’t trying to deceive the boss at all. The boss understands that it wasn’t a great year. But if the sharecropper is positive and confident, the boss is willing to invest another year.
If the sharecropper comes in broken and disheveled, the boss doesn’t see any hope.
Rav Elya Svei explains that this is the nimshal for us; You can’t come into Rosh Hashanah saying, “Oh, what a bad year, what a horrible year I had!”
We should say that it was a good year, and that we did good things. We have to focus on the good things.
As we have mentioned in the past, when we blow the shofar there is a Tekiah, which is straight, then a Teru’ah, which is broken and then Tekiah again.
That means we should start off by focusing on what is good and straight about us. Yes, we do have some things to fix and we will fix them, but we will have a good year. As the pasuk says, “from the beginning of the year to the end of year.”
Every year, we have to start off with the feeling that this is going to be the year. This will be the year that we will conquer the traits that we want to conquer. This will be the year that we will add to our learning. This year will be the year that we will do more acts of kindness, or improve in whatever area or challenge we need to work on…This will be the year.
And when the Boss sees that you are coming in with that attitude, He’s ready to invest in another year with you. That is why the Shulchan Aruch says that on Erev Rosh Hashanah, (or for some, a little bit earlier), we take a haircut, clean ourselves up and wear new clothing. We come in groomed and ready, because we are confident that Hashem will make a miracle for us. We come in positive. That doesn’t mean that we are oblivious to our year. We know that the year wasn’t a great one. We know we made mistakes. We know that we have things to fix, but we come in Nisavim, positive and confident that the next year will be an even better year.
Have a Shabbat Shalom
B’ezrat Hashem our final Rosh Hashanah lesson will be on Monday.