Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Jasmine Rikin Bat Mitzvah
Shabbat Re’eh
August 23, 2003
YO!
In this week’s Torah portion we discover one of the most powerful lessons in personal motivation ever written. The opening verses of Re’eh teach us the idea known as "free will." "See, I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the mitzvot (the commandments) of Adonai, your God, which I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of Adonai, your God, but turn away from the path which I enjoin upon you this day . . ."
It is no accident or coincidence that we read this section of Torah right before the Hebrew month of Elul begins. I suggest that this Shabbat we officially inaugurate the Rosh Hashanah countdown – five weeks from today Jews throughout the world will gather in their synagogues to welcome a New Year. The shofar will be an alarm clock for the truly sleepyheads, because the real wake-up call comes in the first word of this week’s Torah portion. We usually translate Re’eh as "behold" – behold, I set before you blessing and curse. But other sources translate Re’eh as "see." We are talking about a bold statement that says "look here!" I think that in our time perhaps the best translation would be "Yo!" God is trying to get our attention. Another year is rapidly coming to a close. See what you have done. Look where you are headed if you continue living this way.
And God says, it is up to you to determine the course of your life. The ability of each Jew to choose good or evil, involvement or indifference, is the cornerstone of Judaism. Without the presumption of the human ability to choose between obedience or rebellion, the whole notion of mitzvot, commandments, makes no sense. Judaism presupposes that we humans have the power to say "no" to God.
Furthermore, and equally appropriate for the upcoming Holyday season, is the theme of consequences. Re’eh begins by saying that a choice is constantly before us – we must choose and then face the consequences of these choices. As we wake up this morning – Yo! – what can we learn that will help us to make the right choices?
Immediately after Re’eh, it says: Anochi notayn lifnaychem – "I set before you." Notice the present tense rather than the past – I have set before you – as we might have expected. "I set before you" teaches that God continually gives up choices, each and every day of our lives. In fact, day by day, hour by hour and minute by minute, we are given the choice of filling our lives with blessings or curses. On Yom Kippur afternoon, as the Holyday season begins to conclude, we read from Deuteronomy 30: Uvacharta bachayim, which is usually translated "choose life", but literally it says "choose during life."
Too often we feel trapped by the past. I hear people say "This is just the way I am." Or, "This is what I always do; I’m a creature of habit." One of the most important lessons we can learn today is that the past is just the past. We are not trapped forever by our past choices or our past behaviors. If that were so, we would not have our High Holydays every year. We Jews believe we have the power every single day to choose differently than we have ever chosen before. If we have chosen addictive behaviors of various kinds, dangerous activities like drinking and driving, today we can make a different choice. In fact, every day we can make a different choice and, in so doing, transform our lives.
That is the lesson of this week’s sedra. The good life depends on our on-going choices and not upon what we have done in the past, or, for that matter, what we intend to do in the future. Every day is another chance to change.
"See, I have set before you this day blessing and curse." In a Midrash on this passage Rabbi Levi says that this can be compared to a servant to whom his master said – here is a golden necklace or here are iron chains. Rabbi Levi was saying: if you Children of Israel do good and obey the laws of God you will get the necklace, the blessing; if you do not obey God’s commandments, you’ll get the chains, the curse.
I believe that the image of the necklace and the chain is instructive. You know and I know that beautiful jewelry can be made out of iron and indeed has been for thousands of years. Conversely, heavy chains can be forged from gold. Sometimes the blessing and the curse may actually be made of the very same material. What God places before us is the potential to draw from our lives either the blessing or the curse, to create from the materials we are given either beautiful jewelry or burdensome shackles.
This is not to say that each of us is given equal materials from which to work. Life is not always fair. For some, the raw materials provided are rather meager; still they are able to forge what they have been given into the beautiful jewelry of a purposeful life. Others begin life with all of the advantages, yet they are able to create only handcuffs and foot fetters which drag them down, along with all who are tied to them. The choice before us daily is whether we take the golden chain and wear it like a necklace, or do we let it ensnare us like a straitjacket?
There is a parable by the Dubner Maggid which I think most of you know. It tells us about a king who had a beautiful and precious diamond. One day it fell and was scratched. The king hired one expert after another, but no one could take the scratch out of the diamond. Finally one man approached and said to the king, "let me try." He could not take the scratch away, but what he did was etch a beautiful flower and used the scratch to form the flower stem. He chose to see the same scratch differently.
The word intelligence comes from two Latin words – inter and legere. Inter means "between" and legere means "to choose." Intelligence is the capacity to choose between alternative courses of action, to make moral decisions. Translated into theological terms, this means that you and I possess free will. We can either be jewelers or jailers of our own potential selves – the choice is ours.
(3) Re’eh makes it all sound so simple. Behold, I place before you blessing and curse. If we could so easily see whether our actions will result in a blessing or a curse, there is no question what we would do. If we received an electric shock every time we misbehaved and a $100 bill every time we obeyed God’s commandments, there would never be any doubt about how we would behave.
But life is not so simple and our actions hardly ever produce such obvious results. Sometimes what we think is a blessing turns out to be just the opposite. In the 19th century, for example, medical science unveiled a newly-developed drug. It was better than anything then available to relieve severe pain. Since it was not addictive, it could be used as a replacement for morphine. The name of this great scientific advance was heroin. Later, the same breathlessly enthusiastic claims would be made for cocaine. Sometimes what is thought be a blessing can turn out to be a curse, or vice versa.
You remember the story of the Shammas in a small London synagogue? He had worked as a Shammas, a sexton, at the Water Street Shul for a number of years when he was summoned to a meeting of the Board. The wardens told him: "It has been brought to our attention that you do not know how to read or write English. It is beneath the dignity of our shul to have someone on our staff who is illiterate. So, unfortunately, we must discharge you."
Unemployed and without any hope for a job, the Shammas decided he would emigrate to America and try his luck there. He landed in New York, started in the garment trade and after a few years found out that he was extremely gifted in business. Before the decade was over, he was a millionaire.
The New York Times sent a reporter to interview him, and he began the interview this way. "I’ve been told that you never learned to read or write, and yet you are tremendously successful. What do you think you could have accomplished if you had learned to read and write?"
The man replied: "Oh I know that. I would have been the Shammas of the Water Street Shul." Sometimes what initially appears to be a curse, turns out to be a blessing.
What about your dreams of winning the lottery? (Yeah, I know, the Kansas lottery or the Texas lottery.) The conventional wisdom is that the lives of big lottery winners are often destroyed by their sudden wealth. But somebody has published a study suggesting that many of the winners turned out to be quite happy. The truth may be mixed. Most of us imagine that for us it would be a blessing, but we can not know for sure. That is why I never understood that phrase "ugly as sin." If sin were always ugly, no one would ever be attracted to it. Often sin appears quite beautiful; only later it turns out to be truly ugly. So how can we identify real blessings?
Listen again to the opening words of today’s sedra: Re’eh anochi notayn lifnaychem. I set before you blessing and curse. Lifnaychem – before you. If our choice turns out to bring us closer to people, it is a blessing. But if it alienates us from people, if winning the lottery isolates you like Howard Hughes at the end of his life, then you have not a blessing, but a curse.
(4) Fourth, and final lesson from today’s sedra. Blessing and curse is a strange expression for what our people are being promised in this Torah portion. It would have been more appropriate if Moses had said to the people that they have a choice between reward or punishment. Rewards and punishments are a matter of consequence, while blessings and curses imply a state of being.
The blessing is that you obey God’s mitzvot. In other words, what Moses was telling his people is that the blessing of fulfilling the commandments is not necessarily some type of reward but the very act itself. When you live by the commandments, you are blessed. That does not mean that your life is going to be easier or that you will be richer or granted a cushier retirement. In the Talmudic tractate, Pirke Avot, we are taught s’char mitzvah mitzvah – the reward for fulfilling a commandment is the fulfilling of the commandment. The blessing is that we live a life of meaning and richness despite the uncertainties of the world around us. The curse is if you do not obey the commandments of God. That is, not striving to live by God’s word can be a curse. While our lives may appear to be outwardly blessed, there is something lacking if we feel empty and meaningless inside. If all we have to look forward to is our next trip to the mall or a two-week vacation each summer, then what meaning does our life have? You have a choice, Moses tells the people. What will you choose for yourself – the blessing or the curse, meaning or emptiness, hope or despair, goodness or apathy?
The blessing and curse is a product of how we live. No one can promise us success, wealth or fame; but the choice of goodness, hope and meaning are before us. Every time we chose to bring more joy or compassion, love or holiness into our lives and the world – that very choosing is its own blessing. Blessing comes in many forms, not the least of which is our own enhanced self-esteem as we increasingly feel good about ourselves and who we are with every positive, nurturing choice we make.
As we enter this season of self-reflection and inventory-taking in preparation for a New Year, let us pause and ask ourselves what we really want out of life. What are our blessings and what can we do to avoid life’s curses? A day should not pass that we do not stop to consider the choices we have. Yes, there is much we have no control over in our life; but, how we live, what we give and how we respond are our choices that can never be taken away from us. I believe that the quality of our lives is directly a reflection of the quality of our choices. Every choice we make either brings more blessing into our lives and into the world, or diminishes the holiness of the world in which we live. The blessing and the curse are always there, and the choice is up to us. I pray that the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah will be thoughtful and meaningful for each of us. May they be a true blessing. Amen
The ideas and words of the following colleagues have contributed to this message –
Rabbis Mark B. Greenspan, Shamai Kanter, Steven Carr Reuben and Paul Yedwab.
