The Torah commands us to treat people as adults. That, as adults, we are responsible for our actions. We treat children as children until they reach adulthood.
With Freedom Comes Responsibility — Parshat Nitzavim
Good morning. Now for a quick devar Torah.
As I mentioned yesterday, Parshat Nitzavim takes place on the final day of Moses’ life. The Jewish people are about to enter the Land of Israel, and Moses is giving them his final instructions before they begin the next stage of their national existence.
For forty years they have lived in the wilderness under God’s direct protection. Now they are going to enter the land, establish communities, build a government, work the land, conduct business, administer justice, and create a functioning society.
And that was really the purpose of the entire journey from Egypt.
The Exodus was not simply about taking slaves out of Egypt. It was about transforming those slaves into free people capable of building an ethical and moral society based upon law. They were entering a land situated at the crossroads of the ancient world, where other nations could see what a society governed by the principles of the Torah could look like.
That is why Moses makes a remarkable point at the beginning of the parsha. He says that everyone is standing there: the leaders, the elders, the officers, the children, the strangers, even those who chop the wood and draw the water.
Everybody.
From the greatest scholar to the simplest laborer, from the wealthy to the poor, everyone is part of the same covenant.
The Torah was not given only to Moses, the priests, the judges, or an intellectual elite. It was given to the entire nation. Every person therefore has both a place in society and a responsibility toward that society.
And Moses emphasizes that this covenant is not a one-time agreement. It is an enduring commitment extending beyond the generation standing before him. The society they are about to build must transmit these principles from generation to generation.
In a sense, Moses is describing a society that must be built from the bottom up, not merely from the top down.
A society that depends entirely upon a king or ruler can change when the ruler changes. But when ordinary people accept certain principles as their own responsibilities, those principles become embedded in the culture itself. They become much harder to erase.
This brings us to another important lesson: personal responsibility.
Today we sometimes become so concerned with explaining people’s behavior that we begin excusing it. We say someone came from a difficult background, had poor opportunities, or did not know better. Those circumstances may help us understand why someone acted a certain way, and they may even affect how we judge the person. But they do not eliminate the fundamental idea that human beings are responsible for their choices.
There is an old principle in American law: ignorance of the law is generally no excuse.
Moses is making sure that the Jewish people cannot say, “Nobody told us.” The Torah has been placed before the entire nation. They have accepted it, and therefore they have responsibilities under it.
That responsibility is itself part of what it means to be free.
We cannot blame a lion for killing an antelope. The lion follows its nature. We cannot blame the antelope for running from the lion. It follows its nature as well.
Human beings are different.
God gave us the ability to choose. We can consider our actions, distinguish right from wrong, and decide how we are going to behave. That freedom gives human beings tremendous dignity—but it also places a tremendous burden upon us.
We are responsible for the choices we make.
That may be one of Moses’ most important messages on the final day of his life. The Jewish people were leaving the protected existence of the wilderness and entering the responsibilities of freedom.
And the lesson remains just as important today:
Freedom without responsibility cannot build a lasting society. With freedom comes responsibility.
Something to think about.
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