By Rabbi Naomi Goldman

It is the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah and although by tradition there is no special blessing before the month of Tishrei, because the entire month of Elul is devoted to it, this week’s parsha, Nitzavim is a kind of blessing for the season ahead.

This is my favourite parsha of the year, and my favourite bit, I had to choose one would be Deuteronomy 30:11-14. This thing that I command you today, Moses says, is not in heaven, so high that you have to get someone else to tell you about it. It’s not over the sea, so you might have to send someone over to get the information. It’s not difficult. It’s close to you. It’s already in your mouth and heart.

Judaism isn’t difficult. It’s not rocket science. You know the most important bits already. It’s in your mouth and heart. It’s all about love. It’s about opening your heart, loving the stranger, loving your neighbour and loving that part of you which is open to the extraordinary. As Rabbi Akiva said, the greatest principle of the Torah is to love your neighbour as yourself. And for that to mean anything, you have to love yourself first. To love yourself but not to stop there!

Nitzavim presents us with the choice of life and death, blessing and curse, a choice with which we are faced every day in some form or another – and we are commanded to love. Because that, in its deepest form is what it means to choose life – to love ourselves, to love others, to love the world with a passion and authenticity that is not always easy to do. But that’s the challenge, that’s the task. It’s in our mouths and hearts to do it; we just have to unlearn some of the harshness in the world and return to be the people we were always meant to be.

It has been a very difficult year for the Jewish community on many different levels. As we prepare to renew our lives again, and to stand in judgement for our lives, Nitzavim comes to remind us to always choose life over death, to love our neighbour as ourself and to love the stranger as ourself because we too were strangers in the land of Egypt. I wish everyone a Rosh Hashanah filled with light and love. Shana Tovah u’metukah. A good and sweet new year.

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