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By: Rabbi Neal Borovitz, Rabbi Emeritus,
Temple Avodat Shalom
, River Edge, New Jersey, USA
Our Torah portion this week, marking the beginning of Moses’ farewell sermon to the people Israel begins with the words:
“Re’eh Anochi noten lifnaychem hayom bracha uklalah.” {Deuteronomy 11:26}
“Behold I have set before all of you, (the community of Israel) blessing and curse, blessing if you obey the commandments of Adonai which I enjoin upon you this day and curse if you do not”
This week the command is given in the second-person plural (
lifnaychem
). Four weeks from now, the sermon will conclude in Parshat Nitzavim with the words:
“Re’eh natati lifanecha hayom et hachayim v’et hatov v’et hamavet v’et hara”
{Deuteronomy 30:15)
“Behold I have set before each of you (singular), today, life and prosperity; death and adversity.”
These verses, which Biblical scholars note mark the beginning and end of Moses’ farewell sermon, tie together an important message of the book of Deuteronomy; namely, that God’s covenant with us is
both communal and personal
.
At the risk of abusing the pun, I see in this literary use of the command
Re’eh!
a very important message for 21st century Jews. In both this week’s Torah reading and in the portion we will read on the last Shabbat of the year, the Torah continually pleads with each of us, and all of us, to choose life by choosing obedience to God in every aspect of our lives. The commandments that follow in our Torah portion
Re’eh
this week govern both our ritual responsibilities to God and our social and ethical responsibilities to our fellow human beings. As Jews, even though we acknowledge the existence of holy time and holy space, we do not see the service of God as limited to any one time or one place. Over the course of the 130 years since the first Pittsburgh platform issued by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the rabbinic body of Reform Judaism in North America, and continuing through a series of updated Statements of Principle in every generation, our movement has sought out a path by which we Jews can both live within the contemporary world, using Judaism as our guide, and live full Jewish lives. Through our efforts in America, Israel and around the world the search for a personal and communal covenantal relationship with God is available to every “me” who casts their lot with the Jewish People. Moreover, a central role that Reform Judaism has willingly assumed over the last century and a half is to publicly affirm and confirm that God is approachable from multiple faith-based paths. While we passionately assert that Judaism is a valid path to The One whom we call God, we with equal voice proclaim that our neighbors who find their paths to the Eternal through Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or any other of the many religions of the world, are included in the promised blessings of our Torah.
The countdown to the Jewish New Year begins in earnest this Shabbat, since it is also Rosh Chodesh Elul. The name of the month of Elul has been interpreted by Rabbinic Judaism as an acrostic of the statement from Song of Songs
Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li
“I am My Beloved’s and My Beloved is Mine.”
Human experience teaches us that “love relationships” are always complex and are expressed in multi-dimensional emotions. I want to suggest that we can deduce from this teaching that Judaism recognizes that our love relationship with God is also not simple. With the sighting of a new moon on Shabbat Re’eh each of us individually and all of us as a community are called upon to prepare for the New Year by beginning a personal and communal inventory, and RE’EH!, seek to see how both individually and as a people we are improving our relationships with each other and repairing our personal relationships with God.
This past year has been filled with too much hate. YES, we must not cast a blind eye to the terror attacks around the world that pose a threat to our souls as well as our bodies. Yet, we must also RE’EH, see that all of God’s children are our sisters and brothers and that Judaism’s answer to the question Cain posed to God in Genesis is: Yes we are our brothers’ keepers and sisters’ as well!
Rabbinic tradition teaches that Rosh Chodesh Elul is the day that Moses ascended Mount Sinai for the second time (Exodus 34:1-10). Therefore, the day Moses brought down the commandments to the people of Israel (40 days later) was Yom Kippur. A wonderful Jewish custom is to begin sounding the Shofar daily during Chodesh Elul, as a wake-up call that the days of accountability are imminent.
David Ben Gurion, whom I consider to have been the greatest Jew of the 20th century, once said:
“Time works both for us and against us depending upon how we use it”.
This quote, which has hung above the desk in my study for 45 years, defines for me the challenge to see, Re’eh, every day that we can choose to make time work for us – individually, communally and universally – if we seek to see God’s Presence in each other and in every other human being, through introspection and reflection recognize that the image of the Divine simultaneously resides within each of us.
Our Torah portion this week, marking the beginning of Moses’ farewell sermon to the people Israel begins with the words:
“Re’eh Anochi noten lifnaychem hayom bracha uklalah.” {Deuteronomy 11:26}
“Behold I have set before all of you, (the community of Israel) blessing and curse, blessing if you obey the commandments of Adonai which I enjoin upon you this day and curse if you do not”
This week the command is given in the second-person plural (
lifnaychem
). Four weeks from now, the sermon will conclude in Parshat Nitzavim with the words:
“Re’eh natati lifanecha hayom et hachayim v’et hatov v’et hamavet v’et hara”
{Deuteronomy 30:15)
“Behold I have set before each of you (singular), today, life and prosperity; death and adversity.”
These verses, which Biblical scholars note mark the beginning and end of Moses’ farewell sermon, tie together an important message of the book of Deuteronomy; namely, that God’s covenant with us is
both communal and personal
.
At the risk of abusing the pun, I see in this literary use of the command
Re’eh!
a very important message for 21st century Jews. In both this week’s Torah reading and in the portion we will read on the last Shabbat of the year, the Torah continually pleads with each of us, and all of us, to choose life by choosing obedience to God in every aspect of our lives. The commandments that follow in our Torah portion
Re’eh
this week govern both our ritual responsibilities to God and our social and ethical responsibilities to our fellow human beings. As Jews, even though we acknowledge the existence of holy time and holy space, we do not see the service of God as limited to any one time or one place. Over the course of the 130 years since the first Pittsburgh platform issued by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the rabbinic body of Reform Judaism in North America, and continuing through a series of updated Statements of Principle in every generation, our movement has sought out a path by which we Jews can both live within the contemporary world, using Judaism as our guide, and live full Jewish lives. Through our efforts in America, Israel and around the world the search for a personal and communal covenantal relationship with God is available to every “me” who casts their lot with the Jewish People. Moreover, a central role that Reform Judaism has willingly assumed over the last century and a half is to publicly affirm and confirm that God is approachable from multiple faith-based paths. While we passionately assert that Judaism is a valid path to The One whom we call God, we with equal voice proclaim that our neighbors who find their paths to the Eternal through Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or any other of the many religions of the world, are included in the promised blessings of our Torah.
The countdown to the Jewish New Year begins in earnest this Shabbat, since it is also Rosh Chodesh Elul. The name of the month of Elul has been interpreted by Rabbinic Judaism as an acrostic of the statement from Song of Songs
Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li
“I am My Beloved’s and My Beloved is Mine.”
Human experience teaches us that “love relationships” are always complex and are expressed in multi-dimensional emotions. I want to suggest that we can deduce from this teaching that Judaism recognizes that our love relationship with God is also not simple. With the sighting of a new moon on Shabbat Re’eh each of us individually and all of us as a community are called upon to prepare for the New Year by beginning a personal and communal inventory, and RE’EH!, seek to see how both individually and as a people we are improving our relationships with each other and repairing our personal relationships with God.
This past year has been filled with too much hate. YES, we must not cast a blind eye to the terror attacks around the world that pose a threat to our souls as well as our bodies. Yet, we must also RE’EH, see that all of God’s children are our sisters and brothers and that Judaism’s answer to the question Cain posed to God in Genesis is: Yes we are our brothers’ keepers and sisters’ as well!
Rabbinic tradition teaches that Rosh Chodesh Elul is the day that Moses ascended Mount Sinai for the second time (Exodus 34:1-10). Therefore, the day Moses brought down the commandments to the people of Israel (40 days later) was Yom Kippur. A wonderful Jewish custom is to begin sounding the Shofar daily during Chodesh Elul, as a wake-up call that the days of accountability are imminent.
David Ben Gurion, whom I consider to have been the greatest Jew of the 20th century, once said:
“Time works both for us and against us depending upon how we use it”.
This quote, which has hung above the desk in my study for 45 years, defines for me the challenge to see, Re’eh, every day that we can choose to make time work for us – individually, communally and universally – if we seek to see God’s Presence in each other and in every other human being, through introspection and reflection recognize that the image of the Divine simultaneously resides within each of us.