A moment of scribal hesitation in this week’s Torah portion: Dəvarim is printed as הַנִּ֨סְתָּרֹ֔ת לְיְיָ֖ אֱלֹקֵ֑ינוּ וְהַנִּגְלֹ֞ת לָ֤ׄנׄוּׄ וּׄלְׄבָׄנֵ֙ׄיׄנׄוּ֙ׄ עַׄד־עוֹלָ֔ם לַעֲשׂ֕וֹת אֶת־כׇּל־דִּבְרֵ֖י הַתּוֹרָ֥ה הַזֺּֽאת׃ | Hanistarot ləHaSheim Eloqéinu vəhaniglot lánu ulvanéinu ad olam la’asot et kol divrei hatorah hazot. | “Hidden things are HaSheim, our G-d’s, and revealed ones are ours and our children’s forever, to do all the this teaching’s things.” (Dəvarim 29:28). In the Hebrew, in a way that my current font setups can’t really duplicate in English, there are little dots over the words lánu ulvanéinu a | “ours and our children’s fo”.

That truncated word isn’t a typo; the dots start over the first letter of a word and then abruptly stop before reaching its end. This is odd, but not entirely unheard of; these dots show up in other places, and they don’t always correspond one to one with the letters they mark. (And indeed, the precise number of dots sometimes varies between historically authoritative manuscripts. There is a discrepancy, for example in psalm 27, the psalm of the season of repentance, between manuscripts that print the first word of verse 13 as לׅׄוּׅׄלֵׅ֗ׄאׅׄ with four sets of dots and לׅׄוּלֵׅ֗ׄאׅׄ with three.) Still, it catches the eye. What exactly is going on here?

This verse comes in the context of a discussion of different kinds of sins: some that are done in secret, with no one else knowing about them, and others that are done in the presence of witnesses. Many commentators read the verse as a whole as a reassurance: G-d has just been fulminating against secret sins, and, lest the Yisra’eili fear that they will all face collective punishments for private wrongdoings they did not know or do anything about, this verse comes to reassure them that G-d will take care of hidden things; the community will only be held responsible for things they can actually know about and prosecute in an evidence-based court. Rashi suggests that the dots themselves come as a further consolation: The dots are here to reassure the Yisra’eili that they will not enter into this state of communal responsibility for one another’s public wrongs until they have crossed the Yardein and formally accepted the covenant in a ceremony on the other side. Until then, they’re each only responsible individually for their own sins.

The dots, then, express a qualification, a doubt. The Yisra’eili bear communal responsibility for one another, but not entirely, or not yet, at least. Elsewhere in Tanakh, they represent a similar quiver of uncertainty. Is the text right, here? Is this word exactly what it’s supposed to be?

Which, OK. But lánu ulvanéinu has ten letters, in Hebrew. Why are there eleven dots? What’s that last one doing over the first sliver of eternity?

Several other commentators suggest that the wayward eleventh dot is a hint: The dots don’t actually belong over the words they’re printed over — by rights, they should be printed over “HaSheim, our G-d” to cast doubt on the idea that hidden sins are solely G-d’s responsibility, but they couldn’t be written there because these dots also imply that maybe the words they’re on should be erased, and the scribes found the thought of erasing G-d’s name unconscionable. In some way, then, G-d’s responsibility has been shifted onto us. There are weights we “shouldn’t” have to carry that we must make our peace with all the same.

I find a great deal of confusion and uncertainty here, but perhaps that’s the point. I think it’s common to hope for a world of secret order, a world where there is some force of Justice working in the background to bring about proper ends, whether you call that force specifically G-d or not. Indeed, I think sometimes that hope is so strong it spills over from secret things to known one; I think many of us yearn for a world where everything turns out for the best without our really having to do anything, a world where Goodness just sort of prevails automatically, a world-historical win-by-default. Who among us can honestly say we’ve never wished to slough off the terrible burden of responsibility for the path of things, the crushing weight of there being no justice except what we pull ourselves together to make, the asphyxiating pressure of having to be the ones to pull and pull and pull on the moral arc of the universe to bend it even one inch towards justice?

On Rosh haShanah it is written — and on Yom Kipur it is sealed: who will live and who will die? The dots suggest it might be us. It might be our children. Maybe we will fail and our ink be erased. But they also suggest that G-d has somehow wiggled out of this same fate. The durability of the Divine Name should be in question in this, the last parashah we read every year before Rosh haShanah, but it’s not, because G-d is writing the rules. All that dreadful doubt has been put on us instead. The game is rigged, the Judge is writing the playbook.

And yet, the dots clip only a corner of eternity. All of time is not bound up together in this exact same fate. Perhaps it will be different next year. Even if we fail, something will remain. A field scythed down to the very roots will be barren for a time, but life remains underground; new leaves will sprout; there will be grass again.

A final consolation: It is possible to change. Our failures, our children’s failures, will not endure forever. The world is out of order; those responsible for maintaining justice have shirked their duties, leaving us to pick up the pieces however best we can. It is terribly unfair, and yet we dare not desist. We cannot. We will not succeed, not always, not wholly. But we will, collectively, have tomorrow. We will, collectively, have the day after that. We have, collectively, the whole unspooling tail of eternity, leading us out from under the terrible weight of this present moment into a different future, a future we can now only imagine. If G-d has abandoned us with this responsibility, G-d has also left us with this power. We will become whoever we become. The world will be whatever we make it into. It is still possible to make it into something good.

Ləshanah tovah!

[This has been an installment of one-word Torah. You can read the full series here.]