For whom do you stand? I don’t mean physically (though we’ll get to that shortly). I mean existentially: for whom do you stand?
This week’s Torah portion rehearses a pivotal “Stand Together” moment we will experience on Yom Kippur. Now over 700 days post-October 7, its call lands on me very differently.
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Nitzavim 5785 (2025)
For whom do you stand? I don’t mean physically (though we’ll get to that shortly). I mean existentially: for whom do you stand?
A prophet today would bellow this question with a megaphone, so loudly that it reverberates in our bodies, pierces our inattention, rocks our soul. A prophet today would galvanize us, demanding of us answers we can live with – and by those answers truly live. A prophet today would insist that we make those answers real.
As I must, I leave to the reader whether prophets exist today. Prophets or no, Torah asks this question right now, in a profound way.
In just a few weeks, on Yom Kippur morning, we will reprise this week’s Torah portion, which begins with us physically standing up – as our spiritual ancestors did long ago – to renew the covenant. We stand up, in Torah’s words (Deut. 29:9-14), with and for “all who are here with us today” and also “all who are not here with us today.”
At this time last year, I wrote about how this moment is one of my favorites of the Jewish year. We literally will stand, invoking past, present and future – all standing with us, all prodding us, asking our best selves, loving us into being our best selves, demanding that we try with all we’ve got.
Last year, I understood these words to evoke that power of timelessness. This year, now over 700 days into the Mideast conflagration that began on October 7, 2023, Torah’s words “all who are not here with us today” land on me very differently.
Yes, I stand with my loved ones and my community. Of course I stand with each of you.
Yes, I stand with my country, and for her values however much they may falter around me.
This year, I feel keenly how much in our world feels emotional and spiritual distant, intimacies of heart and soul freighted by busy pace, inertia, numbness, politeness, hurt, fear, anger and despair. I ask you to feel them, too: they are with us.
This year, I feel keenly my own parts in them. I ask you to feel your parts, too.
This year, I stand for my best self that sometimes failed this year. I ask you to do likewise.
This year, I stand for those who cannot stand on their own. I ask you to do the same.
This year, I stand with our people, and people everywhere, on the receiving end of wrongful mistrust and toxic hate for who they are, how they look, how they pray or whom they love.
This year, I stand with the people of Israel, who have lived under existential threat generation after generation. I stand with the families of October 7, whose beloveds lived in peace and assembled for peace only to be butchered.
And yes, this year I stand with the over 2 million who suffer the unthinkable in Gaza. I stand with the innocents, especially the children whose innocence died even if their bodies did not. I stand with the parents whose children did die, innocent casualties of war as if without end.
Torah calls us to stand with all who are here, and all who are not here. For whom do you stand? Let your answers be as if from a prophet with a megaphone. Live your answers fully and bravely – now, and tomorrow, and into the High Holy Days, and in the year to come.
And in standing up, truly live.
From my heart to yours, I send shanah tovah blessings for a sweet and good new year.
David Evan Markus 