Shabbat Re’eh: Blessings and Curses – what can you see from here?

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃ 

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse (Deuteronomy 11.26)

Our parashat hashavua is the last before the month of Elul, in which we prepare spiritually for the High Holy Days. It starts as plainly and starkly as possible: Look. The word ראה re’eh in Hebrew means more than to physically see. It means pay attention, watch, and understand – and here it is in the imperative: look!

Our ancestors seem to see the blessings and curses of their lives and imaginations as a binary: one is unalloyed good, and one is just plain bad for you. But we know that the Torah’s ancient Hebrew uses opposites not as a binary, but rather a merism, a grammatical construct in which two opposites are invoked to indicate a totality. “Night and day” means all the time, as Frank Sinatra sang (and wrote) in 1962. 

This invites us to consider what might usefully be seen, not only in something that is partially a blessing – the silver lining, as we say – but, more painfully, something that is nearly completely a curse.

A bit more than a month from now we will be confronted with an incredibly difficult text, in which we are challenged to find the meaning in the Akedah, in which Abraham nearly murders his son Isaac in an intended ritual sacrifice aborted at the last moment. We are usually so distracted by the amorality of the story that we don’t notice the use of the word which is central to our parashah this week: ראה – see, look, behold:

וַיִּקְרָ֧א אַבְרָהָ֛ם שֵֽׁם־הַמָּק֥וֹם הַה֖וּא ה’  יִרְאֶ֑ה אֲשֶׁר֙ יֵאָמֵ֣ר הַיּ֔וֹם בְּהַ֥ר ה’ יֵרָאֶֽה

And Abraham named that site ‘ה-yireh, whence the present saying, “On the mount of ‘ה there is vision.” (Genesis 22.14)

Here is the idea that through the moments of our lives that are traumatizing – the moments we might call cursed – something can be seen that otherwise remains hidden from us.

It is much more comfortable to turn away from painful moments and painful memories in our lives – to shut away that which is cursed behind a door that we promise ourselves we’ll never open. But what might we deprive ourselves of seeing, and of understanding, when we do so?

Pay attention – study more Torah, with others similarly seeking spiritual growth from our ancient sources. Watch – don’t judge, just take it all in, even the hard parts. And then, perhaps, with the help of the community’s support and some sense of holiness that we can just barely begin to see – understand.