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This week’s reading begins with Moshe declaring to the Jewish people:
“You are standing (Nitzavim), all of you today before G-d” etc.
Rashi says that the word “Standing” means the Jews will “firmly” exist forever, and “Today” means not just back then when Moshe said it, but even now.

Later Moshe makes a very amazing prophesy.
“G-d will return all your exiles…and gather you from all the nations that G-d spread you out there.” (Obviously referring to after the destruction of the second Temple, which was the only time the Jews were spread among many nations). “Even if you are spread to the ends of the Heavens, from there I will gather you”.
Obviously, this has a connection to what it said earlier about standing.
So we can ask; why has this not yet been fulfilled? And why does it say to the ends of the HEAVENS?

Here are two stories that I hope will help explain.

It was the day before the Jewish holiday of Rosh HaShanna 150 years ago in the town of Lubavitch, Russia, and Fival was going insane with worry.
His debts had reached unbearable proportions, and his hotel, hadn’t had a guest for almost a half a year. The previous night his tormented soul didn’t let him sleep. And now, at the crack of dawn, he was wandering the deserted streets of Lubavitch in aimless gloom.
Suddenly he heard a voice call out to him from on high.
“Fival, what is wrong? What brings you here?”
Startled, Fival looked up to see that it was the Rebbe Maharash (the fourth Rebbe of Chabad Rabbi Shmuel”) standing on the second-floor balcony of his home looking down at him like a king, but with the eyes of a good friend, waiting for him to answer.
Fival was terribly embarrassed to have stumbled into the Rebbe’s yard, and had an urge to just run away, but he couldn’t hold back his sorrow.
“Aaai, Rebbe, what will become of me, oy Rebbe! I have so many debts I’m going crazy! REBBE HELP!!”
“But what about your hotel?” Asked the Rebbe
Poor simple Fival was trying to hold back the tears as he just waived his hand and shook his head blurting out, “No good!”.
The Rebbe became silent for a moment and then spoke in a very quiet voice, but Fival heard every word clearly.
“Fival, I see a lot of people coming for the Holiday. It’s still early in the day; you still have a lot of time. Prepare for at least one hundred guests.”
Simple Fival did not believe his ears. “One hundred, Rebbe? OOOH! Thank you Rebbe, thank you!!!”
He stood for a moment as though putting himself in gear, then yelled out another few “Thank Yous and Thank G-d!!! ” and ran out of the yard stumbling over his feet as he went. He ran directly to the butcher shop and from there to all the other food stores.
Somehow, he convinced each storeowner to just give him another chance (he owed each one sizable sums), and an hour later returned home laden with parcels. He woke his wife, told her the good news, ran outside and hired a few of the locals to help with the preparations, and after several hours of joyous hard work everything was getting prepared for the onslaught of guests.
Ahhh! What a pleasure it was to see all the steaming pots and pans that filled his small kitchen, each filled with a nice potential profit. And any second now the guests would be arriving.
But they didn’t. He waited one hour and then another till it was already five in the afternoon. In two hours, at sunset, the holiday would begin and there was still no sign of any guests.
“Don’t worry Fival! You always worry.” his wife chided him. “Have faith in HaShem”.
But at six she began to worry also, and at six thirty they were both in a panic. Fival ran in and out of his house, first looking up and down the road in both directions for guests, and then back inside to check the pots
“Are you sure you heard the Rebbe correctly?” His wife began nagging him. “Are you sure the you really saw the Rebbe? What will we do with all this food? We have nowhere to put it all, it will spoil, Fival. Fival!! Why aren’t you answering me!!? It’s a quarter to seven!! We’re going to lose a fortune!!” But Fival was just sitting with his head in his hands.
Suddenly, ten minutes before the holiday the door burst open and two Jews frantically rushed in shouting, “Have you got a place for us to sleep!!?”
Fival took his head out of his hands, half-heartedly looked at them and asked. “How many are you””
“About three hundred all together! We were on our way to Vitebsk but we took a wrong turn. Do you have a place?”
It seems that his wife had been yelling at him at such volume that neither of them noticed the multitude of wagons that had arrived.
The guests didn’t mind the cramped rooms and small portions of food; they were overjoyed that there were rooms and food at all! The meals were festive and after the holiday they thanked and praised Fival and payed him royally for their stay.
Fival had to wait a few days to get an appointment to see the Rebbe and thank him, but when he finally did, he couldn’t help asking the Rebbe why he didn’t just tell him that the guests would arrive so late and save him the tension and aggravation before the holiday.
“I was looking from very high” (He knew that Fival would think he was referring to his second-floor balcony) explained the Rebbe. “From there even large distances seem very small”.

The second story is about a hippy called Sam. Sam was brought up in a typical American non-observant Jewish family, and when he entered University, he quickly threw off the little Jewish identity he had.
“Nature is god, The Torah is unreal, pleasure is everything” were his life mottos.
But it wasn’t long before he tired of crass pleasures, drugs and wild parties, and sought more “spiritual” endeavors. He joined a cult that was a mixture of nature worship and pure idolatry, and felt right at home.
His parents had long ago given up on him, and didn’t even know where he was. And he meanwhile, back in the cult, he became progressively more involved and didn’t mind that it revealed itself to be a branch of a very organized missionary movement.
The big day was arriving. Sam would perform a ritualistic ceremony and be initiated into the inner-circle of believers. But, paradoxically this was to save his Jewish soul.
The conclusion of the ritual was to build a large wooden altar in a certain place in the woods and then ignite it and pledge his allegiance to his new faith. As he was searching through the forest for twigs and fuel for his “magic” fire, he noticed an old page from a newspaper entangled in some weeds. A bit surprised to see such a thing in the middle of the forest, he added it to his bundle, but as he did, he noticed on it a picture of a white bearded rabbi with interesting eyes.
He didn’t pay it much attention, but when he got back to the altar and unpacked his bundle, he noticed it again. This time he looked at it for a second, again noticing those eyes, and then stuffed it into the wood on the altar and struck the match.
But, although it seemed to be a calm day, a wind blew the match out, and then the second. “Strange” he thought to himself as he tried to figure where to stand, to block the wind from blowing out the next match.
The picture again peeked out from between the pieces of wood. He plucked it out of the woodpile, stuffed it in his pocket, told his peers that he was going into the woods to collect more fuel, and when he was sufficiently far from the others, took out the picture and read the caption.
“A New Year’s Message from the Lubavitcher Rebbe”.
Those eyes seemed to be begging him to stop and think before going too far.
He stood in the woods just staring at the picture for a few minutes. Then turned and walked silently back to town a free man.
A few months later he was walking down a street on the campus, and saw the same picture on the front of a building called “Chabad House”. It wasn’t long before he was learning Torah with Rabbi Daren – the Chabad House manager on Campus, and decided to live like a Jew.

This answers our questions about when Moshiach will arrive and how will he return Jews from the ‘heavens’.
True, Moshe prophesized the gathering of the exiles, but he did it from very “high up” as in our first story. From there even great distances seem close.
But the Torah tells us here not to worry; that we are “STANDING TODAY”. In other words, we must ‘stand’ and do ALL WE CAN, even one more good deed TO BRING MOSHIACH NOW!
But we aren’t alone; we have the help of the Rebbe and of all the Tzadikim of all the generations peeking out at us.

Together with them, very soon we will see even those that are at the ends of the spiritual “heavens” like Sam in our story, will return “home”.

The Talmud tells us that the word ‘today’ here also refers to Rosh HaShanna. THE day that G-d completed the creation and created man.
May we all firmly stand together this Rosh HaShanna and cry out with all our hearts and souls:
G-d. Please start ruling the world in a revealed way! Send the Moshiach NOW!!

And we have the power to make it happen one moment sooner!
We are standing on the merits of thousands of years of Jewish faith, hopes, prayers and suffering. Now it could be that just one more good deed, word or even good thought, can do it.
Wishing all our readers a happy, healthy, successful NEW year with …….. Moshiach NOW!!

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad, Israel

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