Choices, Choices, Choices

Choices, Choices, Choices

Sermon on Parshat Re’ei 5781, August 6, 2021

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

Our society is, by its nature, a place of infinite choice.  The consumerism of America offers a virtually unlimited number of items, objects, and services in every area of life.  Want to buy a car?  There are literally hundreds of models to choose from, and nearly as many ways of purchasing or leasing them.  Want to go shopping for some obscure object—say, a wedding ketubah—I don’t know why I was thinking about that object... Anyway, wou wouldn’t think there would be much to choose from—until you looked at the on-line listing of literally hundreds of ketubah websites offering tens of thousands of different ketubot, all with more choices about what kind of wording you wish to have.  Even during the pandemic, Comcast and Direct TV and Cox give us the power to choose to watch, well, anything we want on video; and if it’s not there, we could certainly find it on the internet.  Quite literally hundreds of channels of choices, and thousands of things to watch. 

Choice is everywhere…

This week’s Torah portion of Re’ei begins with a powerful statement of choice: I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing if you follow God’s commandments, the mitzvot; the curse if you turn aside and choose to do evil.  It is a stark, even harsh statement—but it is also a remarkable and powerful one in its own way, and it comes from the most human, and caring of sources.

You see, Judaism believes that we, each of us, have complete free will to make our own decisions about how we will live our lives.  There is no notion of predestination, no sense that we are living according to someone else’s script.  Every woman and man has the chance, and the responsibility, to choose the kind of life he or she will live.

That’s not to say we are able to choose how wealthy or happy we will be.  It’s simply that we each have the opportunity, and the ability, to act in ways that are consistent with what we believe, to live lives of character and commitment, of mitzvot.  If we do, the rewards will be there for us: connection to God and our people and tradition, respect and love and honor. 

But what precisely does it mean to say we have free will, we can choose the course of our own lives?

In Re’ei Moses tries to explain the essential issues of choice.  “I set before you today a blessing and a curse, life and death.”  Re’ei is, figuratively speaking, the beginning of the end of Devarim, and the start of Moses final speech to the people he has led for 40 years.  He has been a father to them in virtually every way except the biological.  And now, like every parent, he must let go, give up the responsibility for these often difficult children and accept the fact of their freedom.  Still, like any good parent, he wants to get in a last word of advice, a final admonition, an enduring message of love—and concern.  It is, in its own way a tragic moment.

This is the pathos of Deuteronomy. Moses raised this generation of young, free Israelites, nurtured them, taught them, guided them through the wilderness. Now he must let go and he is afraid of losing them, as he lost their misguided parents — losing them to their fears and instincts, losing them to their immaturity, losing them to the pernicious influences that will surround them, losing them to the accidents of history. 

Moses’ parental anxiety is felt in every line of the book. This is a book of urgency. He speaks to the young Israelites, this one last time, pleading at every moral level. He appeals to their powers of moral reasoning, and to their shared ideals and values. He reminds them of their past, the ordeals and dreams of ancestors, the covenant freely upheld by forefathers. He invokes the power of public reputation and exalts them as "God’s children" (Deuteronomy 14:1). And then, exhausting all other means of persuasion, he evokes primitive rewards and punishments: "See! This day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoy upon you this day; and curse if you do not obey."

As Rabbi Ed Feinstein puts it, “We know this Moses. Every parent who has ever dropped a kid off at school knows this Moses. Bar and bat mitzvah may be the traditional moment our children are recognized as adults, but the moment it becomes real is this one, when our children move out of our families, our homes, our communities and into the universe via the university. There, they will be confronted with every manner of lifestyle, political opinion, personal values and spirituality.

“The core experience of the university is the ultimate freedom of choice. The university course catalog is the size of large city phone book. All of human knowledge and opinion is now accessible to them. Campus bulletin boards are heavy with fliers, notices and posters cajoling their participation, affiliation and support. Campus walkways are crowded with booths inviting their membership in every sort of society and cause. Chabad, Greenpeace, the Vegan Union and Campus Republicans are curiously juxtaposed on one corner. Who our children are when we bring them to the campus has very little relationship to who they will become. By year’s end, their ideas and ideals, their friendships, their diet and appearance will be radically different.

“We know Moses’ anxiety. "You are about to cross the Jordan to enter and possess the land — take care to observe all the laws and rules I have set before you this day" (Deuteronomy 11:31-2).

“What shall we say to our kids at this moment? There are new, creative rituals penned for this occasion. But what the moment demands is deeply personal — sharing my own wisdom, my own feelings, my Deuteronomy. Then let the child go. I remember that I am commanded not to let my fears inhibit his freedom to explore and experience the universe and to trust in the character and soul I’ve had these 18 years to nurture.

And so I say, “Have a good year—I love you.”  And I must leave.”

 Some of us remember our own beginnings of independence, the thrill of freedom, the wide-open world of possibility that extended everywhere.  But if we are honest, we also remember the doubts, the fears, the confusion.  Yes, we can choose anything.  What we can’t choose is how it will all come out.  And that is both empowering and slightly terrifying.

You see, freedom to choose is our essential birthright.  But it is also a challenge.  For choosing well—as adults, in ways we would wish our own children to choose—requires that we internalize Moses’s instructions.  That is, we have free will and the ability, and power, to choose from so many things.  Our mission, as Jews, according to Moses, is to choose to be good.  To decide to give to the poor so that, as Re’ei says, no one will go hungry.  To choose to protect others in our own community through the actions we ourselves take.  Even to choose to take time off, a Shabbat each week, to connect to God and our families and friends.

We have the capacity to choose lives of meaning and sanctity—or to not do so.

Just as our children assert their independence through choices we might not favor, when we choose well and freely, we know there are always risks.  Things may not turn out the way we would like, or the way we expect.  That is the gift, and that is the burden.  That is the price of free will.

But it is that very freedom that makes us truly human; and it is the choices we make that can allow us to be holy, to create goodness, and to come close to the divine through our actions.

On this Shabbat, may we each choose life and blessing, choose to live in ways that follow ethical commandments and create goodness. 

For then we may fulfill the charge of Re’ei: choose well, and live lives that matter.

So may this be; kein yehi ratson.  Shabbat Shalom.