Re’eh
Moses sets before the people the choice of a blessing if they obey God or curse if they do not. Moses details many laws including those of Kashrut. Details of the tithe system are set out as well as the three pilgrim festival
Re'eh - Maureen Kendler
Maureen Is Head of Education at the London School of Jewish Studies and is currently completing an MA in Jewish Education. She is proud to have been involved with Limmud since the beginning.
Re'eh begins with a somewhat frustrated note on God's behalf: "Look, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse." (Deut. 11:26) The blessing comes if the people listen, the curse comes if they do not. On the one hand there are aspirational aims for the people to avoid idolatry and destroy everything to do with it, and at the same time an understanding that this is never going to be achieved. And poverty will be a consequence of this.
Chapter 15 begins by saying "surely" there won't be any poverty because "surely" the people will listen to the commandments. But in verse 7 of this chapter, instructions are given as to how to treat the "evyon may'achad achechah", the needy man, one of your brothers", and the next few verses state in the most emphatic language possible that we must not harden our hearts or try to wriggle out of helping our needy brothers and must not resent doing so. Rashi (11th century commentator) warns this will result in ourselves becoming needy. Verse 11 states this in the starkest fashion: "Ki lo yechdal evyon mikerev ha'araetz... the poor will never cease out of the land."
Presented as a bald fact, this must be one of the most distressing verses in the Torah - an everlasting curse, however idealistic we are, however boundless our philanthropy, poverty is here to stay.
And poverty follows the Jews along their journey, paralleled with exhortations to give charity to end that poverty.
I remember discussing a programme a few years ago for the "Make Poverty History" campaign with a colleague, she misquoted it as "Make History Poverty" - an error which made us laugh but could indeed sum up much of Jewish history. Shalom Aleichem's Tevye raises his fist to God to thunder forth - immortalised in Fiddler On The Roof - whether it would spoil some "vast eternal plan ... if he were a wealthy man?" Perhaps God's silent answer is: yes.
The Talmud sometimes attempts to dignify having no money and constantly warns of the dangers of being rich: "Poverty becomes a daughter of Jacob like a red ribbon on a white horse." (Chagiga 9a) Anzia Yezierska, a Jewish immigrant to America in the early twentieth century used "Red Ribbon On A White Horse" as the title of her autobiography, which bitterly chronicles her pious father's addiction to poverty, with his insistence on its nobility. Yezierska battles against poverty furiously yet when she does finally acquire wealth, somehow her fighting "Jewish" spirit dies with it.
Michael Gold, in his novel of the same period Jews Without Money, assumes all Jews everywhere are dirt-poor, and that his task in the world was to align himself forever with the poor and dispossessed, to fight for their cause.
Poverty is seen by the rabbinic commentators as a punishment for idolatry and disobedience. But its ubiquity must also facilitate our compassion. Rashi understands Chapter 15, verse 8, with its rather oddly phrased Hebrew "Ki potoach tiphtach et yadecha" - literally "opening you shall open your hand" that one has to help out the needy again and again. This problem is not going to go away, and it must act as a clarion call for our action.
Michael Gold writes in memory of his deeply religious mother: ‘Mother! I must remain faithful to the poor because I cannot be faithless to you. I believe in the poor because I have known you! The world must be made gracious for the poor. Momma! You taught me that!'
Another Voice - Nina Robinson
Nina read Physiology and Psychology as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford and completed her Masters in Medical Ethics and Law at King's College, London. She has studied in Pardes and Nishmat and is currently on the Susi Bradfield Women's Educator programme at the London School of Jewish Studies and is about to start working as both a Kodesh and secular primary school teacher.
Visual illusions have taught psychologists and physiologists much about human perception and the way that we process information entering through our senses. Take the Rubin vase/profile illusion. We can either see the faces or the central white candlestick. We have to consciously focus on one element or the other. Once we are able to see both we can much more readily alternate between the two different images.
The parasha of Re'eh opens with the words, "See (re'eh) I set before you a blessing and a curse."
Why do we need the opening word of re'eh? The way we see or perceive events and situations and the actions we take as a result of our perceptions, can alter the nature of an occurrence. If we view opportunities positively and use them well they will become blessings. Conversely, if we believe everyone is out to get us, and view situations as negative and a nuisance they will come to be curses. Although life is not as clear cut as a Rubin illusion and often events are not uniquely blessings or curses, we can train ourselves to seek out the blessing in situations and focus on these. Directing our attention to the positive with enough conviction can help to drown out our perceptions of the curse.
Why is it that re'eh is in the singular and "before you" in the plural? Each individual has their own responsibility to use their perceptions wisely. Each person is standing before their own Rubin's illusion. Life’s events are not always under our own control and can affect many people but we all have the ability to control our own attitudes, train ourselves to see the blessings and produce the most positive outcome.
