Choosing Blessing
Sermon Shabbat Re’ei 5784, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, Arizona
It’s Labor Day weekend, which back East means that the summer is officially over on Monday night; no mor white clothing until the spring, supposedly. Here in Tucson, of course, public school started three or even four weeks ago, our Beit Simcha Religious School began last Sunday, and the High Holy Days are coming up in just over a month. We will bless the new month of Elul on this Shabbat because Rosh Chodesh Elul is Wednesday, the beginning of the last month of the Jewish year 5784. It's the time of year for us to think about the state of our relationships, to prepare to do a cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the state of our souls, to reflect on where we've been, where we are in our lives, and where we are headed.
We are beginning this yearly journey of getting ready for the chagim, the Jewish fall holidays, examining the choices we continually make and the way our choices have worked out for us in the past year.
The opening lines of this week's parsha, Re'ei, are about choice. In that passage Moses says to us, the people of Israel,
Re'eh, anochi noten lifneichem hayom bracha u'klalla.
Et habracha asher tishm'u el-mitzvot Adonai Eloheichem asher anochi m'tzaveh etchem hayom.
V'haklallah im-lo tishm'u el-mitzvot Adonai Eloheichem…
See, I give you today a blessing and a curse.
The blessing, if you listen to the mitzvot of your God which I command you today.
And the curse if you don't obey or listen.
Re’ei goes on to talk about the danger of turning away from God and the mitzvot, and commands us, when we go into our land, to read this blessing and this curse on top of two different mountains there. The directions are clear and dramatic: half of the Israelites stand on one mountain and shout out the blessings, and the other half stands on the neighboring mountain and shout out the curses. And everyone says “Amen, Amen; we agree, we accept.”
On the surface, it seems like a simple, powerful, restatement of the central message repeated all through Devarim: if you do good, you will be blessed; if you do evil, you will be cursed, the Deuteronomic covenant that lies at the heart of the Torah’s understanding of ethics.
Now, Judaism is a religion that absolutely believes in personal choice: God gives us commandments, but it’s always up to us whether we choose to follow them. There is nothing predetermined. Everything comes down to what we decide to do. On the continuum of religions, between free will and determinism, we Jews are radical free choice advocates, made clear here once again.
The idea that good choices lead to good results is a central aspect of the berit, the covenant established throughout the Torah and so vigorously emphasized here in Re’ei, and in Deuteronomy. Blessing comes when you follow commandments; curses arrive when you do not. Quid pro quo.
But commentator Nechama Liebowitz points out that it's not really the case that there are two parallel “ifs” here in Re’ei, “blessing IF you listen, curse IF you do not."
You see, the Torah uses two different words: it reads "et habracha ASHER tishm'u", "v'haklalla IM-lo tishm'u". That is, the blessing comes because you listen, while the curse comes only if you do not.
In a footnote on Rashi the commentary Torat Chayim summarizes this loophole as K'tiv haklallah b'lashon tnai, v'habracha b'lashon vedai, "the curse is written in the conditional, and the blessing in the declarative." That is, the blessing of God is definite; while the curse is only a possibility.
Nechama Liebowitz makes a key point out of this. She says God actually gives us a line of credit, a mitzvah equity loan if you will, and we can borrow blessing on the speculation that we are likely to do mitzvot. It seems like a good deal for us, although not necessarily a good one for God. In this understanding, God leans towards us, favors us even before we act well.
This credit analogy is comforting; we get blessings from above loaned to us on the hope that we will do mitzvot. God rewards us and then trusts—and maybe prays—that we Jews will act ethically. God gives, we accept, and everyone hopes we do right and good.
But what if we read this passage a little differently, as other commentators do who focus on a different part of the verse? How about if we translate it,
"I'm setting before you now a blessing and a curse,
a blessing because you are with me today listening to the mitzvot of God your Lord that I am sharing with you,
the curse if you don't continue to listen and be linked in community with Me and with each other and instead turn off to a path that leads to you not knowing what is holy in your life."
This takes the phrase at the beginning of Re’ei, asher tishm'u, “if you listen” and reads it as "because you are already currently listening together with your community."
Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the Maharam, a 13th-century German commentator, agrees with this. He points to a connection between these lines in Re’ei and Psalm 133, when it says Ki sham tziva Adonai et habracha, chayim ad-ha-olam. “Because there, [in the mountains of Zion] God commanded blessing, life eternal.”
The Maharam highlights that this passage in Re’ei is one in which our ancestors pronounced blessing and curse as they assembled at the mountains. And if you look at the beginning of the Psalm you will find the famous text Hinei ma tov uma na’im shevet achim gam yachad—the one we sing so often at every Jewish event, “How good and lovely it is for us to be together.”
You know, “we are family,” and we must join together right now… in unity. That begins the Psalm, and then a sentence later it adds, “Ki sham tziva Adonai et habracha, because there God commanded blessing, life eternal,” echoing Re’ei. It means that when family and community come together, when shevet achim gam-yachad… sham, in that very coming together there, that’s when God makes a gift of blessings to us.
In other words, the sharing of mitzvot together is the bracha, the blessing that Re’ei is promising. And that blessing of being together in community, in prayer, according to these texts and their commentaries, is life at its fullest. When we join together, we discover and enjoy brachot, blessings given by God.
So perhaps we already get these blessings by doing the work as a community to get ready for the chagim, by spending this coming month of Elul looking at our past year and seeking to find new ways to improve our lives, our temple and our community. By coming together to prepare for and celebrate the High Holy Days, to share joy, to remember that we are all anxious and humble together, that we all long to be blessed and inscribed together in the book of life, and that we are each vulnerable and each flawed, by doing this, Re’ei promises, we receive the blessing of life. It is this, in itself, that is a blessing we definitely can have just for the asking—or rather, just by showing up and being present and helping.
In this interpretation of Re’ei, being together in Jewish community means being inscribed fully in the good book of our own lives.
Just as we are commanded to return and prepare our Teshuvah, our return in this coming month of Elul, so we return to that first point of Re’ei: blessing is offered first, while curse is only there in reserve. It is a promise that God is predisposed to favor us, forgiveness and love are there for us in advance. We only need to look at our own lives and make a sincere, honest effort to find, and be, our best selves.
Perhaps this can be a model for our cheshbon hanefesh, the honest scrutiny required as we enter this holiest period of the year. When we look at our lives, the Torah suggests we have a much kinder friend in God than we can often be to ourselves. In fact, God’s advance affection for us is so practical that the Torah contains messages of forgiveness in advance, knowing that, being human, we will inevitably screw up and require more forgiveness.
Psalm 27 is traditionally said every day during Elul. It includes the beautiful passage: Horeini Adonai darkecha unecheini b’orach mishor
lulei he’emanti lirot betuv Adonai, b’eretz chayim
Teach me Your way, God, and lead me in a straight path
I believe that I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
On this Shabbat of Re’ei, and during the coming month of Elul, may we each make the choice to accept God’s offered blessings, in community—and may we also work, in goodness, to be worthy of them. And then we need not worry about curses; because we will be able through our own shared actions to bring blessing. Shabbat Shalom.