The Blessing and The Curse
D’var Torah for Parashat Re’eh
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
August 23, 2022
In this week’s Torah portion, Re’eh (“Behold,” Deuteronomy 11:26—16:17) we read: “Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” It’s as clear as day and night. There is no middle ground. You either do the right thing—and are blessed in return; or else you choose to do the wrong thing, and you are cursed.
If only life were so clear!
Indeed, some choices are obvious. This portion has commandments against shedding innocent blood, dealing unjustly with the widow and orphan, and refusing the needy when you yourself are blessed with plenty. Yet sometimes our choices aren’t so clear. Take eating meat, for example. Are we not shedding innocent blood when we slaughter an animal, even for the purpose of eating it?
And why is it OK to free a Hebrew slave at the end of six years of servitude—but not a foreigner?
We are told that three times a year we must make pilgrimage to “a place which the Eternal will choose” to make an offering and celebrate national/religious holidays. Yet allowance is made for those who cannot travel far or don’t have the wherewithal to sacrifice. And while Jerusalem may be presumed to be that chosen place, in this portion “the place” remains unnamed, in essence enabling us to declare other places sacred too; after all, isn’t the whole earth God’s creation, and therefore holy?
We are left to wonder: Is there a basic right and wrong? Are there essential morals that underlie our behavior, by which we are judged? Or is everything up to us to determine?
The text realizes the challenge before us. It recognizes that within society there will be teachers (“prophets”) whose teaching may vary from the fundamental laws of the Torah. Choice is a human trait; it may be God-given, but it is ours to make, ours to determine.
It’s important that we understand the circumstances under which the Torah was written, particularly the fifth book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy. Its historical purpose was to unite a divided people under one God and one constitution—the Torah. Yet there is a higher purpose as well. The laws of Torah are based not only on our need to unite as a nation, but also to establish within us a high level of ethics and morals. Re’eh warns the Israelites from assimilation not because we are better, but because we can be. Our human condition is not pre-determined: It is ours to choose and determine, based on precepts we believe to be Divine.
While some will see this portion as rooted in ignorance and primitive fundamentalism, others will view Re’eh as a starting point for further development and interpretation—which in fact is what has happened over the centuries.
Wherever one finds oneself on this spectrum of understanding and belief, there are two undeniable truths in this portion: There is right and wrong in the world, and the choices we make will bear consequences.
The choice is ours: We are free to make life a blessing, or to turn it into a curse instead, for us as well as for others.
Especially as we enter the season of reckoning in the Jewish calendar, it’s important that we keep this in mind.
© 2022 by Boaz D. Heilman
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