OzTorah

The sidra opens with God promising us a blessing if we obey His commands.

Our first thought is that “blessing” means becoming rich, enjoying the pleasures of material prosperity, living a luxurious life surrounded by servants and banquets, possessing property, power and plenty.

That is one way of looking at it, and if that’s how your life pans out, good luck to you – please enjoy your money, mansions and possessions, and whilst enjoying them remember to think of others at all times and be generous to them in appreciation of what you yourself possess.

However, I suspect that is not what the verse really means at all. It thinks of visions and values, not chariots and cheques.

The greatest blessing is not material at all. It is to have a dream to pursue, a vision to implement, values to work for, spiritual realms to inhabit, ideas to savour, ideals to cherish, aspirations to exhilarate and inspire you, a better world to create, a heaven to bring down to earth, an earth to bring up to heaven.

That’s the real blessing that the Almighty is offering His earthly creatures, and what makes it all the more valuable is when you harness it to bring blessing to others.

Re’eh, the first word in the parashah, is in the singular.

Three words later the verse becomes plural: “See (singular), I place before you (plural) this day blessing and curse” (Deut. 11:26). This verse is the basic Biblical source for the doctrine of free will.

Why does it first address each of us as an individual and then as a community?

The Kotzker Rebbe deals with the question in this way: every individual is challenged to apply his or her free will as an individual, not merely as a member of the group. No-one is a carbon copy of anyone else. What the other person decides has to be right for them but it is not necessarily right for me.

Certainly, there are times when the issue involves my group identity – for example, when I have to respond as a Jew to something which integrally affects my Jewishness, but even then I do not have to be a clone of any other Jew.

The sort of Jew I choose to be will be influenced by my upbringing, environment and commitments, but even if I decide to be similar to people of a similar type I am still a separate, unique person who might have my own nuance and idiom to contribute.

Q. I am a married woman with children. My parents are still alive but are elderly and unwell. I also have an unmarried brother who has health problems. Where does my duty lie?

A. The Torah insists that we be responsive to and supportive of those who are in need – especially the widow, orphan and stranger.

The prophet Isaiah (58:7) spells out the duty one has towards them: to feed the hungry, provide a home for the homeless, supply clothing for those who need it, etc.

Maimonides’ famous Eight Rungs of Charity say that the greatest thing one can do for others is to provide them with opportunity and hope (the Chinese say that better than a fish is a fishing rod).

Where does all this begin?

Isaiah says, “Do not hide yourself from your own flesh” (58:7), which establishes the rule, according to the sages, that your first duty is towards your family, who are “your own flesh” (Ketubot 52b, 86a).

You know this, or else you would not have told me so much about your family situation.

Within the family there are always tensions and competing claims; maybe this is what is causing you distress.

It is the wisdom and diplomacy of the woman on which more or less everything tends to depend: “Every wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her own hands” (Prov. 14:1).

What the Codes of Jewish Law (e.g. Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 251) add is that there is an order of priorities: one’s spouse (whose well-being is at all times a married person’s first responsibility), parents (both father and mother), then children, siblings, and other family members – followed by your immediate neighbours, your fellow citizens in general, and the needy of other places.

The old saying, “Charity begins at home”, is the Jewish principle… but we would extend the saying in these terms, “Charity begins at home – but it doesn’t end there”.

Isaiah 57:19 says, “Peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him that is near”.

It’s not enough to limit your support to those who are near – or even those who are further off.

The sidra warns Israel to remember what God has done for them (Deut. 8:18).

The alternative is that people will begin to think that whatever they have in their hands is the result of their own efforts.

Another verse in the sidra says, one should never boast that kochi v’otzem yadi asah li et hachayil hazeh, “My own strength and power got me all this might” (Deut. 8:17).

This boast is both a defiance of God and a threat to push Him out of the world.

The 20th century should have warned human beings that without God no-one can be controlled or disciplined.

The people who built the Tower of Babel thought they could manage without God and though the tower might not have physically crashed and crushed them, morally it is a grave warning that without God nothing and no-one is safe.

Once you begin to think you’re a self-made person you are a danger to yourself and to everyone around you.

In his final speech to the people of Israel, Moses tells them it is God’s wish that they enter the Promised Land and prolong their days upon it (Deut. 11:9).

Rav Kook, echoing the Talmud, points out that there are two ways in which Israel will inherit the land – suddenly or gradually.

The gradual way is a step-by-step redemption like the coming of dawn.

There is a parable about a person who has lived his entire life in darkness but now we have a miraculous possibility of introducing him to light.

First we enable him to see a little amount of light so that he can get used to it, and only gradually do we let him see the whole of the light of the Heavenly Gates.

From a spiritual point of view we can liken this experience to a person’s discovery of God.

He sees God’s works little by little until finally he is ready for the wondrous manifestation of the entire Creation and its Maker.