Pivotal Moments

Can you recall one of your life-changing moments? A teacher’s complement. A piece of advice at a pivotal fork in your professional road?  

One such moment happened for our people this week. Not in September of 2024, but a long time ago. This week’s portion of Torah contains the original turning-point moment for our people. Our decisive nation-forming moment: “Pay attention. Listen Israel; today you have become a people” (Deut. 27:9). It’s ceremonial. Complete with staging and scripted proclamations. And I find it’s timing, this year in particular, to be utterly compelling. 

Its context is also telling. It arrives in a portion that opens with a story we personalize and retell every year around the Passover Seder table. “My father was a wandering Aramean…(Deut. 26:5-8). Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says something important about the difference between history and memory. History asks: What happened? Memory asks: Who am I? And the storytelling that leads into our national formation is one of personal memory. 

I can trace my own personal turning-point moment to my teen years. I was tossing a football with some buddies when the rabbi who’d inspire my life-direction appeared. He joined us. I’m so excited to share that story with our teens next Shabbat afternoon. 

Our 27-year-old son Kobi likes to say about his peers: they’re all about beliefs; they don’t bother with values. That is, they stampede toward convictions, but barely crawl around with their core values. Core values run much deeper than the impressions I may want to make. They’re forged by commitments. Fortified with deeds.

Sometimes pivotal moments are about what’s going on inside you. Teens and folks in their 20-30s get this. And sometimes they’re about what’s going on in the world around you. And sometimes it’s both. This year is one of those times. “Pay attention. Listen, Israel: Today you become a people.” 

Who am I? is the personal version of Who are We? Which brings up one last point. It’s actually the essential point. The first time we’re called a people is when others say it about us. Pharaoh does (Ex. 1:9). It says nothing important when he says it. Rather, it says everything important when we do. That is, being Jewish isn’t something we have to be. It’s something we get to be. May you find new ways this Shabbat to bring that truth to life.