Nitzavim-Vayeilech: In Your Mouth, In Your Heart

Everyone seems to know what I need to do.

“Do the Daf,” they say. “Do Amud Yomi. Learn the Zohar, Chumash-Rashi, Kumzitz, Chassidus, and Mussar. This is what a frum person does. This is what a person who davens in this shul and went to that yeshiva does.”

Everybody knows what's best. And it’s mostly good advice. Yeah, there’s always the weird stuff people get hooked on. But in general, in the frum community, whatever shul or yeshiva you go to, the people around you want what’s best for you.

Yet the culture develops around you, everyone is an expert, and the right things become trendy. Everyone is into the Daf now. Everyone is into kumzitzes. Everyone is doing X, Y, and Z.

This happens in the secular world too. The endless shelves of self-help books promising efficient lives, fully actualized lives, in book after book. Not to mention the endless content online. There is no end to the amount of people pontificating about what the right way to be is.

Even this newsletter. I write about what I think people should do or about what I think people are doing wrong. Truthfully, it’s more a referendum on myself than on anyone else. But my content can come off as self-help in a generalized, sweeping way that may not be appropriate for everyone. 

But I want to focus on one of the downstream effects of all the "should-dos." It is easy for me to think that I need to model my life completely on what others are doing. That I should copy and paste someone else’s program onto mine. 

And when you go down the road with that programming, how long do you think you can keep it up? Your neshamah knows what’s true, even if your body doesn’t. It knows when you are honest with yourself. Is it truly sustainable to keep up someone else’s mahalach? The avodah of avodah is a difficult sugya, brother.

This is a subtle thing, because we do want people to learn from each other, to be inspired by our rabbanim, kinas sofrim. But that is only to be inspired to develop your own program. If you are just copying someone else’s avodah, how can you call it your avodah?

The parsha opens with the pesukim, אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם… מֵחֹטֵב עֵצֶיךָ עַד שֹׁאֵב מֵימֶיךָ “You are standing today, all of you, before Hashem your God…from your woodchopper to your water carrier.”

Everyone stands together before Hashem, particularly now, in preparation for Yom HaDin. The leader, the askan, the gvir, and the water carrier.

The Mei HaShiloach brings the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah that teaches us, יִפְתָּח בְּדוֹרוֹ כִּשְׁמוּאֵל בְּדוֹרוֹ “Yiftach in his generation is like Shmuel in his generation.”

The Ishbitzer teaches us that Yiftach did everything in his life that he was supposed to do, just as Shmuel HaNavi did. Yiftach was basically a gangster before he became one of the Shoftim. But he lived to the best of his ability, changed, and grew to become uniquely himself, just as the tzaddik Shmuel HaNavi did.

We all stand before Hashem with what is uniquely ours. And we are judged not by how well we mimicked others, but by how well we grew into our own true selves. Even if we do everything right, if it's not our own, what is it?

Do you do the Daf because it’s trendy to do the Daf, or do you do the Daf because it touches your neshamah? Is the work you are doing for teshuvah this year just a rehashing of other people’s ideas, or are you taking your rebbe’s words and the words of your chaverim, becoming inspired, and then forging a realistic path for yourself?

The pesukim later in the parsha read, וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ… וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ וְשָׁמַעְתָּ בְקֹלוֹ “You shall return it to your heart…and you shall return to Hashem your God and listen to His voice.”

Rav Kook taught, “When the essence of one’s own soul is forgotten, everything becomes confused and uncertain. The primary teshuvah…is for a person to return to himself, to the root of his soul.”

The Rebbe Reb Zusha famously said, “When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won’t ask me, ‘Zusha, why weren’t you as wise as Moshe Rabbeinu or as kind as Avraham Avinu?’ Rather, they will ask me, ‘Zusha, why weren’t you more like Zusha?’”

When you are doing teshuvah, you need to return to the mission that Hashem gave you. Don’t be fooled by the shiny objects of other people’s avodah.

The Mei HaShiloach then brings the famous pasuk, also of our parsha, כִּי קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד, בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ “The matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.”

And he says that עִיקָּר הוּא הָעֲשִׂיָּה, the main thing is the doing. But what thing should you do? The thing that is in YOUR heart and in YOUR mouth. That is what you must do. What I must do.

The most successful people I know, in ruchniyus and gashmiyus, have internalized this lesson. Whether they started young or later in life, their success comes from the small step that was appropriate for them on the level they were on. They were inspired by others, but they took that inspiration and pulled from it the spark, the ohr, they needed to fit their needs.

I have heard enough advice to last a lifetime. And surely there is still more for me to learn. But it will never amount to anything if I do not find my path. If I keep following someone else’s program, I will never grow and become what I need to be, to fulfill the mission that Hashem made for me and only me.

This is the avodah of Elul, Rosh Hashanah, Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, Yom Kippur, and beyond: to find your thing. The mission you were meant for.

It is close to you. It is in your mouth and your own heart to do it.

Kesivah V’chasimah Tovah!