Parshat Nitzavim: You will be found

How many of us played hide and seek growing up?  How many of us still like playing?

There’s a story of a Hasidic Rebbe who is walking through the town with his students.  As they’re passing a narrow alleyway between two buildings they notice a little girl leaning on one of the buildings and crying. 

The Rebbe approaches her and asks, “Little girl, why are you crying?”  The little girl responds, “We are playing hide and seek, and I’ve been here so long, and I don’t think they’re looking for me anymore.”  He reached out his hand and walked her home.

In that moment, the Rebbe took a valuable lesson from this wise little girl about the meaning and message of Rosh Hashanah.  At this time of year the Shofar calls us to make sure we’re still looking for God.  God, in a sense, is lonely, hoping we’ll be searching, as our the Prophet Isaiah teaches us, dirshu Ado-nai be-hi-matz-oh, k-ra-u-hu bi-hyoto karov(55:6), search for God when God is to be found, call out to God when God is close.  And that moment is right now, as the New Year begins.

And this time of year is also about searching for each other.  Throughout the year we may lose contact with each other, even our families, through the grind of routines and busy schedules and staying afloat while working, caring for family, taking care of ourselves, we, and the people we care about, may feel lonely even if we’re traveling the same circles even living in the same house. 

The Torah shouts out this message to us in its own quiet but forceful way in our Torah reading today.  We will see in Chapter 29, verse 28, of our reading today the following message, “The hidden things are for Ado-nai our God, and the visible are for us and for the next generations forever for us to fulfill the words of our Torah.”

Over the Hebrew words lanu ulvanenu, for us and the next generations, we find 10 small circles handwritten into the Torah scroll and printed in our chumashim.  The great Rashi explains that prior to crossing the Jordan our ancestors are liable for neither the hidden things, the darkness inside, nor for the visible, the wrongs we commit out in the open.  When we cross the Jordan and seal the agreement between God and us forever, only then we become fully arevim ze lazeh, responsible for one another.

With these specially written marks in the Torah scroll, the Torah shouts out to us we’ve crossed the Jordan, which for us is the New Year, the boundary between  the old year and the new, and now, like the game of hide and seek, we’re fully responsible for each other and it’s time to repair, rebuild, and renew.  It’s time to search for and find each other – who have we lost touch with?  Is there someone sitting nearby us at synagogue we haven’t met yet?  What is one way we may want to connect in and grow in our Judaism and spiritual growth this year?  

One of the more powerful current stories that speaks of loneliness and the hope of reconnection is the play Dear Evan Hansen.  In the music of this show, we find a statement that would make the little girl playing hide and seek feel better, a message that can remind us to avoid despair and avoid giving up when life hits us hard.

Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

Well, let that lonely feeling wash away
Maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay
'Cause when you don't feel strong enough to stand
You can reach, reach out your hand

And oh, someone will coming running
And I know, they'll take you home

Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
And when you're broken on the ground
You will be found

May we all be found in this New Year.  Shabbat Shalom.