Though not counted among the 613 mitzvot, the command to "be strong and of good courage" is repeated three times in Parashat Vayelekh. It echoes throughout the opening of Joshua as well, so we are bound to take this with the utmost seriousness. We meet this same charge in Psalm 27, recited throughout Elul and the Days of Awe: "Wait for God; be strong and take courage." Before troubles come, we wait for God. After they pass, we wait for God. In between, we are strong and take courage.

This is not courage in the ordinary sense of bravado. It is the capacity not to be shattered, the refusal to let a blow become a collapse. The Talmud teaches that in the World to Come, every person will be shown their yetzer hara, the evil inclination they struggled against their whole life. To the righteous, it will appear as a towering mountain; to the wicked, as a single thread of hair. This seems backwards until we understand it: the righteous resisted temptation again and again, one small refusal at a time, each one feeling as slight as a strand of hair, yet a lifetime of such refusals piles up into a mountain. The wicked, having given in almost immediately, never even got past that first thread. The obstacle's size was never fixed; it was created by whether one pushed through it or not.

This is precisely our condition approaching Rosh HaShana, when resolutions are made sincerely and abandoned within days. Sin, can always be repaired but only if we do not let it break us. A fall is simply part of living; being cast down is not. As one merchant put it after years of gains and losses: lose money, and you have lost nothing; lose your courage, and you have lost everything.

Parashat Vayelekh offers no triumphant fanfare, only the sober promise that we will stumble, and the deeper promise that stumbling need not be the end. Whatever happens: be strong, and take courage.

Questions to Contemplate

How might we understand teshuva not as erasing a fall, but as the courage to not be cast down by it? Where does "returning" end and simply "not giving up" begin?

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