Do it today

What an interesting experience it would be if we looked upon Judaism every day as if it was brand new.

By ELYSE GOLDSTEIN
What an interesting experience it would be if we looked upon Judaism every day as if it was brand new. (photo credit: PEPE FAINBERG)
What an interesting experience it would be if we looked upon Judaism every day as if it was brand new.
(photo credit: PEPE FAINBERG)
“SHA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA live for today…” I grew up hearing that 1967 song by The Grass Roots many times. I fell asleep to it at night and it was our mantra during the day. We hung up colorful posters with phrases like “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” and we thought we got it.
The book of Deuteronomy, replete with what seem to be reruns of previous stories and reiterations of laws and directives, is interestingly also deeply concerned with what happens today. Our history must be preserved, thus the retelling of common themes and narratives.
But we must also be cognizant of living the historic covenant on a daily basis, and thus the emphasis on the word today (hayom haze), which appears twelve times in Deuteronomy. Worried about the people of Israel backsliding once Moses is gone, God’s expectations of us fulfilling all the commandments takes on new urgency.
Do it today. Live it today.
In the Torah portion, Ki Tavo, we read, “This day, the Lord, your God, is commanding you to fulfill these statutes and ordinances, and you will observe and fulfill them with all your heart and with all your soul.”
The urgency on this day is palpable. No longer a command only to do the mitzvot, it is a command to do the mitzvot with full intentionality – starting today. To do them not “by heart” but “with heart.”
The French medieval commentator Rashi comments on the verse “this day, the Lord your God is commanding you” saying, “Every day, you shall regard the commandments as if they are brand new, as though you are just today being commanded regarding them!” And in our today? Much of our prayer lives have become rote and our ritual lives done like a color-by-numbers sheet. What an interesting experience it would be if we looked upon Judaism every day as if it was brand new. If every one of us saw Judaism through the eyes of a Jew-by-choice for whom each Jewish experience was the first time, each Jewish holiday a new adventure, each tune learned a new thrill. I’m building a sukka! I’m wearing a tallit! That is the kind of Jewish experience Rashi is imagining the Torah portion holds out to us.
Later on in the portion, the same urgency to be in relationship with God today recurs. “This day, you have become a people to the Lord your God.” Once more “this day” is used and once again Rashi pinpoints the need for spiritual attentiveness. “‘This day, you have become a people’: Every single day, it should seem to you as though you are today entering into a covenant with God.”
When a marriage becomes stale and we forget the vividness and excitement of that first romance, we go to marriage counselors to find out how to “keep the flame lit.” In an intimate relationship that renews itself, every day should seem as if we are today entering that very first covenant of marriage. As if the marriage contract is being written before our eyes as we stand under the wedding canopy once again every night – let the dishes pile up and the floor go unswept! Starting today.
And our today? When it comes to spiritual intimacy – the feeling that we are in relationship with God, with something bigger than us – we feel unsettled and frightened. We read how-to books about those who shed their material wealth to live a life of contemplation and meditation, but most of us will always feel unable to be that radical. The word “God” is fraught with politics and the politics of meaning. Instead, what an interesting experience it would be if we looked upon our spiritual lives through the eyes of a child, as if each encounter with the Divine is new and unspoiled by agenda or specifics of definition. A snowflake! A sunset! A wondrous moment of understanding between old friends! That is also the kind of Jewish experience Rashi is imagining the portion holds out to us.
In the Talmud, this urgency of spiritual renewal and spiritual intimacy today is captured in Berachot 29b. “Rabbi Eliezer taught: One who makes his prayer fixed, that prayer is not true supplication.
What is fixed”? Rabbi Jacob ben Idi taught in the name of Rav Oshiya: Anyone whose prayer is like a heavy burden on him.
We live in a time of spiritual urgency and can today take Rashi’s words to heart.
Rabbi Elyse Goldstein is the founding rabbi of City Shul in Toronto after 20 years of being an adult educator. She is the author of four books on Jewish feminism.