You Are Still Standing

There is a particular quality to the week before Rosh Hashanah in Atlanta. The heat has not broken yet — it won't, not really, not until October — but something in the light shifts. The afternoons are shorter by a minute or two. You notice it in the parking lot after Selichot, walking to the car in a darkness that arrived earlier than it did last week. The year is turning whether you feel ready for it or not.

Parashat Nitzavim lands here every year, the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. This is not a coincidence. It is the last regular Torah reading before the new year, and the rabbis placed it here deliberately, because of what happens just before it.

Last week's parsha — Ki Tavo — contains ninety-eight curses. Drought, siege, exile, disease, madness. A catalogue of everything that could go wrong if the covenant fails.

The Midrash says the people heard those curses and turned pale. Who can survive this? Moses looked at them and said: atem nitzavim hayom — you are standing here today. You already sinned. You already fell short. And you are still here, all of you, standing.

אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם רָאשֵׁיכֶ֣ם שִׁבְטֵיכֶ֗ם זִקְנֵיכֶם֙ וְשֹׁ֣טְרֵיכֶ֔ם כֹּ֖ל אִ֥ישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

You stand this day, all of you, before the ETERNAL your God: your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials—the entire body of Israel—

— Devarim 29:9

All of you. The text runs through the whole list — heads, elders, officers, children, wives, the stranger in your camp, the woodchopper, the water-drawer. Nobody is left out of this count. The covenant is made with every person standing at the foot of that mountain, and then Moses says something extraordinary:

כִּי֩ אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֨ר יֶשְׁנ֜וֹ פֹּ֗ה עִמָּ֙נוּ֙ עֹמֵ֣ד הַיּ֔וֹם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵ֑ינוּ וְאֵ֨ת אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵינֶ֛נּוּ פֹּ֖ה עִמָּ֥נוּ הַיּֽוֹם׃

but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the ETERNAL our God and with those who are not with us here this day.

— Devarim 29:13–14

Those who are not with us here this day. The Talmud reads this as every Jewish soul that would ever exist — including converts, including children not yet born, including people who would find their way to this covenant centuries later through paths no one could predict. A covenant made in the desert with people who were not yet standing, and it held for them anyway.

I converted to Judaism four months ago. I was not at Sinai in any sense the body understands. But the tradition says I was — that every soul stood there, including the ones that hadn't arrived yet, including the ones who would choose in, who would stand in a mikveh in Atlanta in May and emerge into a calendar that was already theirs.

The parsha says the covenant was made for me before I knew it existed. That is either a beautiful idea or a wild one. Most weeks I think it's both.

Yesterday, a study out of Hebrew University confirmed what marine scientists have been cautiously hoping for years. The coral reefs in the Gulf of Eilat survived four consecutive summers of intensifying heatwaves — including a record-breaking 113-day event in 2024 — without mass bleaching. Five species held. No collapse. In a year when reefs worldwide are dying, the corals off Eilat's coast are still standing.

The researchers called the Gulf one of the last strongholds of reef survival on the planet. Those corals migrated north through the Red Sea thousands of years ago, passing through the brutally hot Bab al-Mandab strait between Djibouti and Yemen. Only the ones that could endure that crossing made it through. The heat selected for survival. What arrived in Eilat was already built to last.

There is something in that image — organisms shaped by the passage they survived, carrying resilience they didn't know they had — that rhymes with the parsha's logic.

The covenant was shaped by the wilderness. Forty years of failure, rebellion, thirst, death, golden calves, and the constant grinding question of whether any of this was worth it. And at the end of all that: you are still standing. Not because you were perfect. Because you endured.

The parsha builds to the line everyone knows:

הַעִדֹ֨תִי בָכֶ֣ם הַיּוֹם֮ אֶת־הַשָּׁמַ֣יִם וְאֶת־הָאָ֒רֶץ֒ הַחַיִּ֤ים וְהַמָּ֙וֶת֙ נָתַ֣תִּי לְפָנֶ֔יךָ הַבְּרָכָ֖ה וְהַקְּלָלָ֑ה וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּחַיִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן תִּֽחְיֶ֖ה אַתָּ֥ה וְזַרְעֶֽךָ׃

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live—

— Devarim 30:19

Choose life. The command is simple and the choice is not.

Choosing life means choosing the whole thing — the holidays and the fasts, the sweetness and the weight, the years when the honey flows and the years when it doesn't.

It means standing again on Rosh Hashanah and saying hineni — here I am — knowing you fell short last year and will fall short again.

It means choosing in again, every time, not because you're certain but because you showed up.

A few verses earlier, Moses tells the people the commandment is not in heaven and not across the sea. It is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart.

Not far away. Not hidden. Already here, in the words you say and the life you live.

The coral doesn't travel to find its resilience. The resilience was built into the passage.

In a few days, I will stand in shul with my husband as someone who has been a Jew for a full season — through Shavuot, through Tisha B'Av, through the long summer of counting. It is not my first Rosh Hashanah in a synagogue. It is the first one where the covenant made at the foot of a mountain with those who were not yet there belongs, formally and irrevocably, to me.

The apples are already in the kitchen. The honey is on the counter. The year is turning.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham