Adapted from: Rabbi Frand on the Parashah

אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם — You are all standing here today. (Devarim 29:9)

Immediately after enumerating the long litany of ninety-eight curses they would face if they disobeyed Hashem, Moshe called together the Jewish people and said, “You are all standing here today.” What is the significance of this sequence of events?

The Midrash, quoted by Rashi, explains that when the Jewish people heard the curses they turned green. “Who can withstand all these curses?” they moaned despondently. “What will become of us?”
Therefore, Moshe called them together to calm them down. “Don’t be so worried,” he said. “You are all standing here today. After forty turbulent years in the desert, after angering Hashem so many times — with the Golden Calf, the Meraglim, the complainers — you are still here today. Hashem has not destroyed you. So you see, you do not need to despair.”

The commentators are puzzled. Moshe seems to be taking the wind out of his own sails. First, he read off all the horrible curses to scare the Jewish people into obedience, to put “the fear of the Lord” into them. The threat of the curses accomplished their purpose. The people were terrified. Then, all of sudden, he relented and told them that it’s not so bad. They don’t have to be so terrified. Wasn’t he defeating his whole purpose by taking the sting out of the Tochachah?

The answer is that there is a vast difference between healthy fear and hopelessness. It is a good thing to be realistically apprehensive about the future. It is unhealthy to live in a fool’s paradise, believing you can do as you please without suffering any consequences. But hopelessness is destructive. It demoralizes, debilitates and reduces a person to a bowl of quaking jelly.

Moshe saw that the Jewish people had gone beyond fear when they heard the curses. They lost hope and threw in the towel. Therefore, he had to calm them down until they recovered their hope and all they felt was a healthy fear.

Our Sages tell us (Bava Metzia 59a) that after the destruction of the Temple “all the gates of prayer were closed, except for the Gates of Tears.” The Gates of Tears are the channel of last resort for prayers, and they are never closed.

But if they are never closed, asks Reb Bunim of Peshis’cha, why is there a need for gates at all? Why not remove the gates and leave the entranceway wide open?

There are some tears that do not get through, says Reb Bunim of Peshis’cha. The gates screen out tears that don’t sincerely cry out to Hashem for help; tears that simply express despair and hopelessness. Yet if a person in a state of helplessness then turns to Hashem as his sole hope, wringing out the perspiration of his heart and soul and sending his hope-laden tears heavenward, there are no barriers in Heaven to a prayer of this sort. It travels directly to the Heavenly Throne.

The Izhbitzer Rebbe explains that this is the reason why all Jews are called Yehudim, specifically after Yehuda. Because when the brothers stood accused of theft before Yosef in Egypt, the Torah tells us that Yehudah “stepped up” to argue in their defense. When all seemed to be lost, when faced with the overwhelming weight of evidence against them, Yehudah never gave up hope. That is the definition of a Jew, a person who knows that the Almighty will never abandon him. A person who never gives up hope.