Why Does the Torah’s Covenant Bind Every Jew in Every Generation?

Parashat Nitzavim begins with a covenant between Hashem and the Jewish people: “You are standing today, all of you, before Hashem your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders and your officers, every man of Israel; your children, your wives, and the convert within your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water, to enter into the covenant of Hashem your God and His oath, which Hashem your God is making with you today, in order to establish you today as His people, and that He may be your God, as He spoke to you and as He swore to your forefathers, to Avraham, to Yitzchak, and to Yaakov” (Deuteronomy 29:9–12).

These verses raise two fundamental questions. First, why was another covenant necessary? Hashem had already established a covenant with the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Moreover, Parashat Ki Tavo concludes by referring to “the covenant that Hashem commanded Moshe to make with the Children of Israel in the land of Moav, besides the covenant He made with them at Horeb” (Deuteronomy 28:69).

Also, why does the Torah go to such lengths to list the different groups within Jewish society: the tribal leaders, elders, officers, men, children, women, converts, woodcutters, and water drawers? Why not simply say that the covenant was made with “all of you”?

How Can a Covenant Bind Generations Not Yet Born?

The Torah continues: “Not with you alone do I make this covenant and this oath, but with whoever is here, standing with us today before Hashem our God, and with whoever is not here with us today” (Deuteronomy 29:13–14). Rashi explains that “whoever is not here” refers to future generations.

This creates a profound difficulty. The Maharal asks in Gur Aryeh: If those future generations did not yet exist, how could a covenant possibly be made with them?

Rabbi Yitzchak Arama, in Akeidat Yitzchak, deepens the question. Ordinarily, a person cannot impose a vow or oath upon his descendants for all generations. Yet our Sages teach that every Jew is considered “already sworn from Mount Sinai” to observe the Torah. How can one generation accept an obligation on behalf of people who have not yet been born?

Generally, when something is done on another person’s behalf, that individual eventually has the opportunity to accept or reject it. Yet the Torah’s covenant does not appear to depend upon each future Jew reaffirming it upon reaching adulthood.

The Abarbanel raises a related legal principle: “One may confer a benefit upon a person in his absence, but one may not impose a liability upon him except in his presence.” He also cites the Talmudic principle that “a person cannot bequeath an oath to his children.” How, then, could the generation that stood at Sinai bind every future Jew to the Torah and its covenant?

The question becomes even stronger when we consider the words of Yechezkel. The prophet describes Jews who wish to abandon their identity and become like the surrounding nations, only to be told by Hashem: “What enters your mind shall never come to pass, when you say, ‘We will be like the nations, like the families of the lands, serving wood and stone.’ As I live, says the Lord Hashem, surely with a strong hand, an outstretched arm, and poured out wrath I will rule over you” (Ezekiel 20:32–33).

Apparently, the covenant cannot simply be abandoned. Why?

The Covenant Is With the Jewish People as a Whole

In Netzach Yisrael, the Maharal explains that the covenant Hashem established with Israel was not made with millions of separate individuals, but with the Jewish nation as a single spiritual entity. The covenant is with Knesset Yisrael, the collective soul of Israel. Individual Jews are born into and draw their spiritual identity from that collective soul. Therefore, the covenant naturally encompasses future generations as well.

Rabbeinu Bachya expresses a similar concept. A father is the root and his descendants are the branches that will eventually emerge from that root. The covenant can therefore encompass generations that have not yet appeared because they are already contained within the spiritual root from which they will emerge.

The Maharal explains that this is a collective bond between Hashem and Israel. Individual members of the nation may change, but the essential identity of the nation does not. A particular Jew may distance himself from Torah or even rebel against the covenant, but that does not erase the covenant itself. The covenant was never dependent upon the behavior of one particular individual, but was established with Israel as an eternal people.

This explains the Torah’s words: “Not with you alone do I make this covenant... but with whoever is here... and with whoever is not here with us today.” The covenant includes future generations because they, too, will bear the identity of Israel.

As the Maharal explains, the covenant was not established with the people standing before Moshe merely as individuals, but as members of the nation of Israel. Future generations belong to that same nation. Individual Jews can sin, and generations can rise and fall spiritually, but the essential covenant between Hashem and the Jewish people remains unchanged.

How Can an Eight Day Old Baby Enter a Covenant?

This principle also helps explain something deeply familiar in Jewish life: brit milah. A Jewish boy enters the covenant at only eight days old. He cannot understand what is happening, much less consciously agree to it. How, then, can he enter a covenant?

According to the Maharal’s approach, the answer is clear. His relationship with the covenant does not begin with his intellectual understanding or personal consent, but comes from his belonging to the Jewish people. His soul is already connected to the collective soul of Israel.

The covenant is therefore not imposed upon him as an outside obligation. It is part of the spiritual identity into which he was born. His inclusion in the covenant does not depend upon his consent but upon the fact that he is part of Klal Yisrael.

“A Jew, Even Though He Has Sinned, Is Still a Jew”

This also sheds light on one of the Talmud’s most famous teachings: “A Jew, even though he has sinned, is still a Jew” (Sanhedrin 44a).

A Jew does not cease to be part of the covenant because he has sinned. The Gemara derives this from the verse “Israel has sinned” (Joshua 7:11). Even after the sin, the Torah still calls them Israel as their sanctified identity remains.

Rabbi Abba illustrates this with a popular saying: A myrtle growing among thorns is still called a myrtle. Its surroundings do not change what it essentially is.

So too, a Jew may behave in ways completely inconsistent with his spiritual identity, yet the deepest bond between his soul, the Jewish people, and Hashem remains. Just as the Jewish nation itself is eternal, the sanctity of Israel continues from generation to generation and remains within every Jew regardless of his actions.

The Difference Between a Convert and a Ger Toshav

This distinction also explains the difference between a full convert to Judaism and a ger toshav. A person who undergoes a full conversion joins himself to the spiritual identity of the Jewish nation and accepts the Torah and mitzvot. His Jewish sanctity therefore extends to his descendants.

A ger toshav, by contrast, believes in Hashem and rejects idolatry but has not fully accepted the mitzvot or joined the sanctity of Israel. His status is therefore personal and does not automatically pass to his descendants.

Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk explains in Meshech Chochmah that this is because the status of a ger toshav is individual, whereas Jewish sanctity is collective. It is rooted in the enduring spiritual identity of the nation and is therefore eternal.

One People, One Body

This principle also explains the extraordinary solidarity and mutual responsibility of the Jewish people. Our Sages compare Israel to a single sheep: If it is injured in its head or in one of its limbs, the entire body feels the pain.

Jewish solidarity is therefore more than an emotional ideal, and has practical halachic consequences. The Ritva explains that even after a Jew has personally fulfilled certain mitzvot, he can sometimes perform them again on behalf of another Jew because “all Israel are responsible for one another, and they are all like one body.”

If the Jewish people were simply millions of independent individuals, this concept would be difficult to understand. But if Israel possesses a collective spiritual identity, mutual responsibility becomes natural, and what happens to one part affects the whole.

The Man Drilling a Hole Beneath His Own Seat

The Midrash expresses this idea through a famous parable. Several people were traveling together in a boat. One passenger took out a drill and began making a hole beneath his own seat.

The others cried out, “What are you doing?”

He answered, “Why do you care? I’m drilling only beneath my own seat.”

They responded, “Because the water will come in and sink the entire boat!”

A Jew’s actions are never entirely private. Every individual is part of something larger. This also explains a puzzling passage in Parashat Nitzavim. The Torah describes someone who hears the warnings of the covenant yet reassures himself: “I will have peace, though I follow the stubbornness of my heart.”

Why would he think he was safe? According to the Ibn Ezra and Abarbanel, he may reason that the covenant is with the nation as a whole. The righteous are numerous, while he is only one sinner. Perhaps, he thinks, he can benefit from the collective merit of everyone else without his personal behavior making a difference.

However, the Torah rejects this reasoning. Precisely because every Jew is part of the collective, the actions of an individual affect the whole. A single person cannot claim that his spiritual choices concern only himself.

The Torah therefore says that Hashem will separate such an individual from the tribes of Israel for punishment. Because he assumed that his individual actions had no effect upon the collective, he is judged individually rather than being allowed to hide within the merits of the nation.

“You Are Standing Today, All of You”

We can now return to the opening words of the parashah: “You are standing today, all of you.”

According to the Ohr HaChaim, the purpose of this covenant was to introduce a powerful dimension of mutual responsibility. Every Jew became responsible, within his ability and sphere of influence, for helping others remain faithful to Hashem.

The word nitzavim, “standing,” can itself suggest being appointed to a position of responsibility, as we find in the Book of Ruth regarding the one “appointed over the reapers.” The covenant did not merely establish an individual relationship between each Jew and Hashem. It established a nation whose members are responsible for one another.

The Kli Yakar, a student of the Maharal, develops this further. Hashem established this new covenant after the earlier covenant had been damaged through the sin of the Golden Calf, which occurred before the Jewish people had fully entered a state of mutual responsibility.

Once the covenant was established with the nation as a whole, each Jew became responsible for others. Similar to a guarantor who sees a borrower wasting his money and intervenes because he knows that he may ultimately have to pay the debt, the spiritual choices of one Jew can have consequences for others.

Everyone Has a Sphere of Responsibility

This finally explains why the Torah lists every level of Jewish society, from the heads of the tribes to the woodcutters and water drawers. Responsibility does not belong only to rabbis, leaders, or scholars. Every Jew has a sphere of influence.

Our Sages teach in the Talmud (Shabbat 54b) that someone capable of influencing his household bears responsibility for his household. Someone capable of influencing the people of his city bears responsibility for his city. And someone capable of influencing the entire world bears responsibility on that larger scale.

Each person is responsible according to his position and ability. For this reason the Torah emphasizes: “Your heads, your tribes, your elders and your officers, every man of Israel; your children, your wives, and the convert within your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water.”

Everyone stands within the covenant, everyone belongs, and everyone has a role.

The Maharal’s teaching reveals the extraordinary depth of the covenant in Parashat Nitzavim. Within every Jew lies a spiritual root connected to the eternal soul of the Jewish people. Whatever a person may do externally, that deepest point of connection remains embedded within the soul.

The covenant therefore applies to every Jew in every generation. It is not merely an agreement our ancestors made thousands of years ago, but is part of who we are.