09/04/2026
Shabbat Shalom! 🕯️
This week’s parsha is Nitzavim-Vayeilech (Deuteronomy 29:9–31:30).
Moses gathers the entire nation together — leaders, elders, children, and every member of the community — to renew the covenant.
And then comes one of the most powerful teachings in the Torah:
“It is not in the heavens… nor is it beyond the sea.”
What we need is not somewhere far away. It is close to us — in our mouths, in our hearts, and in our hands.
There is something almost magical in that reminder.
So often we imagine that change, blessing, purpose, or the life we long for exists somewhere outside of us — waiting for the right moment, the right person, the right circumstance.
But Torah tells us otherwise.
We have been given an extraordinary power to participate in the creation of our own lives.
Nitzavim places before us blessing and curse, life and death — and then tells us: choose life.
Again and again, we are given the opportunity to choose what we nurture, what we release, what we speak into being, and where we place our energy.
Not everything that happens to us is ours to choose. But what we create from it can be.
As we move closer to Rosh Hashanah, perhaps this is our invitation: to remember how much possibility has already been placed within us.
The next chapter is not only waiting to happen.
In so many ways, it is waiting to be written.
May we choose life, blessing, love, courage, and the kind of future we want to help bring into being. đź’«
Love and light,
Cantor Chelsana
