Atem Nitzavim Hayom… You stand, all of you. Second person plural. This portion is the ultimate community building portion. You stand here today. All of you, I saw a button recently which said, “We are all in.” What does that mean? I think it means with your whole self–your heart, mind and might. Just like the V’ahavta says, which you will hear echoes of shortly. You are all in for G-d. You are about to sign this covenant.
You are all in. You are all standing: Your tribal heads, and your officials, all of the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from your woodchopper to the water drawer.
Who are these wood choppers and water drawers?
The construction of the sentence suggests that they were foreigners, in the midst of the camp to do the menial labor, chop wood and draw water. They were the migrant farm workers, the construction laborers, the landscapers, the hotel cleaning crews of the day. The people who do the jobs we don’t seem to want to do. And by placing them squarely in the text they were not invisible. This could be the moment to discuss the growing refugee crisis. The stranger within our camp that needs to be welcomed.
Rabbi John Feigelson who runs an organization for college campuses called Ask Big Questions asked a really big one on Facebook this week. If our parents and grandparents could take in refugees in their tiny apartments, why can’t we open our homes, our large suburban homes? There is more on this, but I am saving it for Yom Kippur. Consider this the highlight reel of coming attractions.
But there are no accidental words in the Torah, the rabbis teach us. So the rabbis go further. Why wood choppers and water drawers? Why not camel drivers and butchers? The traditional explanations include that they were Canaanites who wanted to convert. Or the wood choppers were men and the water drawers were women.
Rabbi Bradley Shavit of the Zeigler School helps us understand at another level based on a teaching from Reb Shlomo Carlebach:
He understands woodcutters to be a metaphor for possible abuse in our interpersonal relationships. We cut down people, prove them wrong (guilty as charged!), or shape them into what we want them to be. It happens in our families, in our synagogues, in our work world and in our wider communities. “Instead of chipping away at the edges to see what is truly beneath a person’s exterior, we (often by accident) cut too much, creating scraps that are difficult to reassemble.” He reminds us that we do this with G-d as well.
He understands water drawers: as a metaphor for water drawers are a symbol of inspiration, “waiting for us to engage them, learn from them, be nourished and satiated by them, and to ultimately compliment one another. This suggests that our relationships go two ways. We give, and we receive (and the two are not always equal). There are limits, though. A well can dry up if one draws too much without replenishing it, offering something in return. But finding that balance is not so simple.”
We will hear these words again as we stand at Yom Kippur. All of us together. None of us perfect. Let’s remember that each of us have likely been water drawers and woodchoppers. According to Shavit, “Our job, like God’s during this time of year, is to find the inner strength, and the external help, to gently tilt ourselves to the latter.”