D’Var Torah RE’ EH – See and Choose Life August 17, 2017
“Whom do you believe? Me, or your lying eyes?” Well, for many, “the (truthful) eyes have it.” This week’s Torah portion or Sedrah, RE’ EH, Deut. 11:26- 16:1, powerfully opens with the Hebrew command “RE’EH”, translated as “See.” “RE’EH” comes from the Hebrew infinitive root, “Lirot,” “to see.” Deut. 11:26, as translated by the Conservative Jewish Torah Commentary “ETZ HAYIM” reads, “See, this day, I set before you blessing and curse.” The commentary to Verse 26 aptly notes that many people absorb information in different ways—some by seeing, some by hearing, and some by touching. Those Israelites who were not persuaded by hearing God’s commandments at Mt. Sinai, or by hearing Moses’ many exhortations, are now asked to “see” the difference that following God’s ways can make in one’s life. In this week’s Torah portion, Deut. 11:26 is followed by verses 27-28. In those verses, Moses tells the people, there will be “blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day, and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day…”
Verses 29-30 explain how the Israelites will, through the power of seeing, understand the difference between following God and rejecting Him. Deut. 11:29, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to possess, you shall pronounce the blessings at Mt. Gerizim and the curse on Mt. Ebal.” “Both (Gerizim and Ebal) are on the other side of the Jordan…(Deut. 11:30).” In Deut. 11:32, Moses warns his people that once they have entered the Promised Land, they must “take care” to observe all the laws and rules that I have set before you this day.” The elaborate nature of this visual presentation of the blessings and curses on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal is detailed in Deut. 27:12-14, in the future Sedrah Ki Tavo. The 12 tribes of Israel will be divided between these two mountains, with the tribe of Levi standing around the Ark midway between Gerizim and Ebal. The ceremony would be antiphonal in character. The Levites would first turn toward the tribes on Mt. Gerizim where Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh), and Benjamin stood. The Levites would then pronounce the blessing and all the Israelites would say “Amen.” The Levites would next face toward the tribes standing on Mt. Ebal, where Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali stood, and pronounce the curse for disobeying God’s laws. All the Israelites would again say “Amen.” The Hertz Torah Commentary calls this a “most solemn scene likely to impress the whole people with enduring awe.”
Again, why all this elaborate pageantry on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal? The ETZ HAYIM Commentary states—to emphasize that humans, as opposed to all other animals, have the ability to choose the values by which they live. The Torah repeatedly affirms that humans have free will, the ability to choose whether to do good or evil, to choose life or death. This visual emphasis on choosing good/ life is found throughout the Torah and in the Jewish liturgy. In Deuteronomy, just before the Ten Commandments are read, Moses again uses visual power in emphasizing being good and choosing life. He says, “You saw with your own eyes, what the Lord did in the matter of Baal-peor, that the Lord your God wiped out from among you every person who followed Baal-peor (the pagan seducers in Num.25:1-9), while you, who held fast to the Lord your God, are all alive today (Deut. 4:3-4).” The Hebrew verse in Deut. 4:4, “Ve Atem Hadveikim Ba’ Shem Elokeichem, Haim Kulchem Hayom,” “you who held fast, clung to God, are all alive today,” praises those who obeyed God and chose life. This verse is always recited just before the Torah is read. On Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, the cantor also chants Deut. 4:4, “choose life.” He/she does this just before the congregation says a series of “Amens,” to “May God Strengthen Us, Bless Us, and Remember Us for Good, the “HaYom Teamzeinu” prayer, similar, in a sense, to the Mt. Gerizim ritual.
And why were Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal chosen for this visual evocation of God’s blessings and curses? Mt. Gerizim (called by the Arabs Jebel al-Tur) is 2,849 ft. high. It lies to the south of Shechem, modern Nablus. Mt. Ebal (in Arabic, Jebel Islamyia) is 3,077 ft. high and to the north of Shechem. Gerizim has numerous springs rising at its foot and is the more fertile of the two (Plaut, “The Torah, A Modern Commentary,” Union of American Hebrew Congregations). Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a famous 19th-Century German Jewish Orthodox Rabbi, commented that Gerizim and Ebal were both located in the same Ephraim mountain range. They both rose from one and the same soil, both received the same amount of rainfall and dew, and both had the same pollen wafting over them. Ebal, however, remained barren and bleak, while Gerizim was embellished with vegetation. In the same way, Hirsch noted, blessings and curses are not conditional upon external circumstances but on our “own inner receptivity for the for the one or the other, or on our behavior towards that which is to bring blessing.” Translation: our own free will, our own chosen behavior will bring blessings or curses, life or death. It is in our hands.
I once read where a recently freed concentration camp prisoner asked one of his GI liberators where God was during the time of his suffering. The soldier replied, “God in His wisdom gave us laws and ethics and it was up to us to follow them. If we don’t, if we mess up, this-- hell on earth-- is what you end up with.” Exactly. Man has free will to use for good or for evil. God sets before us and makes us see the blessings and the curses. At our best we are, as written in Ps. 8:6, “but little lower than the angels.” At our worst, as the Holocaust and other acts of inhumanity have shown us, we are less than beasts. Human cruelty is the result of choice but so is altruism as well as decency. With the High Holiday season about one month away, we must do our best to “see” the blessings and curses and use our own free will to choose life.
Shabbat Shalom