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Nitzavim
Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20
Isaiah 61:10-63:9

In just a few days Jews (and fellow travelers) will stream back to the

synagogues again to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. For some, this will be one more synagogue visit in a series of regular visits; for others it will be their annual opportunity to reconnect. In either case, if social research and anecdotal evidence is to be believed, they leave disappointed. The Days of Awe have turned into the days of "Aw."

What is it that we hope to find in our pilgrimage to the synagogue? Some, I presume, hope to find God. Others are looking for connection and community. Still others simply want good conversation. (You know the old joke: "Goldberg goes to synagogue to talk to God; I go to talk to Goldberg.") Mostly, I think, people are yearning for an experience of transcendence, to lose themselves for a little while, to experience the oceanic, to be connected to the One, to find some meaning that might guide and comfort them into tomorrow. If it was only that easy.

What is in our way? What is it that has our consciousness in a headlock, that prevents us from drawing close to the vision of meaning, and of God, that we desperately search for?

In a wonderful recent book, "The Art of Possibility," co-author Rosamund Zander offers a vignette of a family counseling session initiated by a 16-year-old son who had suggested therapy for himself and his parents. During the first session, the father, most distraught, presents the problem by saying, "He doesn't communicate with us; he's put up an impenetrable wall that excludes us from his life."

The therapist responds that it's odd for the man to describe the problem this way, since it was his son who had initiated the counseling session. Zander notes that "by the alchemy of language, the four people in the room were instantly transfigured into four people and a wall. The more the father described it, the more the wall increased in density."

I can't help but think how congruent this vignette is with a classic teaching of the Ba'al Shem Tov. The Ba'al Shem Tov asks how is it possible that we often feel so far away from God, when in reality there is nothing but God? He answers by suggesting that we perceive wall upon wall, separating us from our hearts' desire, but the walls, he teaches, exist only in our perception. We have only to truly yearn, to open eyes and hearts, and the walls melt away into thin air, revealing us to be in the embrace of the Beloved. The spiritual truth, says the Ba'al Shem Tov, is that the walls of separation are real only because we think they are.

This same idea of God's radical immanence is expressed beautifully in this week's Torah portion of Nitzavim. In pleading with the people to observe the covenant, Moses assures them that its precepts are not too difficult to understand. Boldly he announces "Lo BaShamayim Hi" — "It is not in the heavens ... neither is it beyond the sea ... no, the precept is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it."

It is as if Moses reminds us that there is no wall of separation. The God who seems so distant already dwells in depth of the heart, in the innate wisdom of the soul.

Transformation begins with our own quiet, when we cease to struggle, when we take a deep breath, when we begin to pay attention and relax into connectedness. Healing begins when we, like the distraught father in the therapist's office, begin to speak the words that come from the heart. The words we sing on Friday evening might be just the words we need for our encounter with God on Rosh Hashanah: "Please, Holy One, Beloved One of my heart, hurry and do not hide from me."




Rabbi Lavey Derby is spiritual leader of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon and founder of the Neshama Minyan for the exploration and experience of soulful Judaism.

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