Re'eh: See Hear Now
“See, I present before you today a blessing and a curse.”
In the past two parshios we had the first two paragraphs of the “Shema.”
Shema Yisroel – “Hear O Israel...” and Vehaya im shamoah - “It will be, that if you hearken….” I.e., hear and understand who God is. And understand that there truly are consequences to our actions – if we listen to God we are rewarded, and if not, we are punished.
Re’eh begins not with hearing, but seeing: “See, I have placed before you….” Why does the Torah use different expressions for what seems to be a similar idea?
What’s the difference between seeing and hearing?
Hearing means applying what we know in our heads to our hearts, in others words we can put ideas into action.
As we quote in the aleynu prayer – “And you shall know this day, and you shall settle it into your heart, that God is the Power, in the heavens above, and on the earth below, there is none other.”
In other words, “hearing” is the work of becoming emotionally real with what we believe intellectually.
The Shema teaches us to “place these words upon your heart.…” With Tefillin, Mezuzah, Torah study, when we lie down and when we arise, and to teach them diligently to our children!!
We literally surround ourselves with the mitzvah of loving God with all of our heart, soul and means.
In this way we concretise with action this very ephemeral concept that Almighty God wants us to be in Love with Him.
Hearing is an avodah she’belev or "service of the heart.”
The Sages teach us that Tefila is the primary method of working the avoda she’belev. Tefila, properly approached, develops our psychological core. Tefila isn’t just about asking for things. Tefila is a dialogue between, one the one hand, our perceptions of reality, including our perception of God; and from the other side, God’s communication back however we find it.
In order to re-affirm in our minds the intellectual understanding that God is everything, literally, as well as the centrality of God in our daily lives, we say “ Shema” before the Shemona Essray during the morning and evening prayers.
We also need to know that our actions matter, that there are real consequences for everything we do, for the good or bad. Without this belief there is no way we can care about our Tefila. We therefore say the second paragraph of Shema before Tefila.
We also say the blessings of Shema to re-affirm the love God has for creation in general, the Jewish people as the People of the Book, and our faith in the final redemption.
We are at this point ready for Tefila. The Shemonah Essray realigns our attention from our daily struggles back to a focus on our core values. Those values, expressed as our legitimate needs, we ask of God, in a spirit of Love and beseeching. Not as expectations or rewards, as certainly not as whiners.
This is all the work of “hearing.”
Seeing is perception – something we do at every given moment. Our perception is the result of our emotional and psychological state. In this sense then, “seeing” is the result of “hearing.” Sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of our noses – when we don’t want to. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. And sometimes we see the bad in everyone and everything, because we’re really focused on the bad inside of ourselves.
Re’eh. Notice that the verse begins in the singular, “ Re’eh” and not “Re-u.” It then becomes pluralized with “lifnaichem.” Why the switch in tenses?
Perception must be singular. As the Sages say about judgment: “a Judge only has what his eyes see.” No one else can see for you, as Hillel says: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
Lifneichem – before you, refers to the opportunities for spiritual growth (the only real currency) that God lays out, which are equally available to all. Each person is unique in their abilities and challenges. But God is open to all, equally. The lowliest to the most refined. Exactly the same. The distance between us and God is only the narrowness of our perspective.
Re’eh as a word is related to Yireh – fear. We know there is a positive idea in Jewish thought to fear sin. Is this type of fear related to the idea of “seeing” the blessing and the curse?
Most people feel comfortable with the idea of Loving God, but have a difficult time with the idea of fear, either of fearing God or fearing sin. In truth, fear of God is a very sublime concept. In essence it is the experience we feel when our perception is overwhelmed by the awesomeness of God’s substance and power.
I believe the fear which feels negative to people is really the fear of punishment, the fear of the consequence of sin. We feel this fear when we live under the painful assumption that we deserve punishment. Even when things are good, we wait “for the other shoe to drop,” expecting the bad.
At times this fear can be so extreme it becomes pathological, and the person becomes incapable of happiness. Their self-judgment is so strongly negative, that they reject any thought of self-love or self-respect with all the force of their (very powerful) religious convictions. I know. I've done it.
Because this fear is so debilitating, some self help books eschew fear and focus solely on love. And yet should we listen to the psychobabble that tells us to do away with fear? Should we not censor our poor behavior? Should we ignore the negative realities we find in the world outside? That doesn’t seem reasonable or desirable. On the contrary, it is only reasonable that we should fear the consequences of our bad choices, and that we should as well recognize and avoid negative influences, especially for our children who are unable (at times) to process the good from the bad.
We can boil our essential question down into these two parts:
How can we understand a positive role for fear?
How can we avoid the negativity of fear as “paranoia" or even "anxiety."
To deal with this, realize a simple fact in Torah thought: Our perception becomes malignant with fear only when fear is not balanced by an equal or greater experience of love - and especially trust, in the Almighty.
It is impossible for fear to be healthy unless it is stabilized by love and trust. Love of God; trust in God’s goodness and in our own inherent goodness. Trusting that we are basically “ok” first, before we go about the process of self-judgment.
We do not have to justify our existence. God wills us to be – out of love – that is enough. The Torah always puts the blessing before the curse, as in our verse: “See, I place before you today a blessing and a curse….”
The reason is obvious. We cannot even know what the curse is unless we know the blessing.
Imagine I was scratching a piece of vinyl with a safety pin – no big deal right? Who says the vinyl is worth anything? But look closer, you’ll notice that this is an original copy of the Beatle’s White album, worth about $10,000 today. Now that scratch is something to curse about.
Unless we love life, we are hard pressed to fear losing it. There is no mitzvah to have fear that isn’t preceded by a strong base of love. It cannot be productive. It only leads to self-absorption and despair.
Many of us walk around with the emotional assumption that we are not ok. This burden is called shame. As opposed to guilt, which we might feel because of a specific act which falls beneath the standards we set for ourselves, shame is a generalized feeling that there is something essentially bad or wrong with us.
The feeling that we have to justify our essential existence by what we “do” is actually a usurpation of God as the only true Judge. In Jewish law a person is considered legally unfit to act as a Judge or witness for or against themselves. Their testimony is considered biased, inadmissible.
A struggle many encounter with Halachic observance is that there are so many details, it can be difficult to not to feel inadequate if we are not perfect in our observance. It is easy to become obsessed with those details at the expense of the basics of Torah observance, e.g. loving God, loving others, and loving your very life itself.
This obsession with perfection sometimes happens because of low self-esteem, when a person feels that they must do everything right or they fall into the black hole of shame.
Sometimes it simply happens when a person views spiritual growth as they would any acquisition, such as being a lawyer, doctor, or businessman. We desire success, and we desire it immediately, but in the process we forget that spiritual development is a lifelong process, and the only measure of success is hidden inside the heart, where only God Himself sees. But we may feel, and thereby know.
May we all be blessed with an open heart, and clear perception.
In the past two parshios we had the first two paragraphs of the “Shema.”
Shema Yisroel – “Hear O Israel...” and Vehaya im shamoah - “It will be, that if you hearken….” I.e., hear and understand who God is. And understand that there truly are consequences to our actions – if we listen to God we are rewarded, and if not, we are punished.
Re’eh begins not with hearing, but seeing: “See, I have placed before you….” Why does the Torah use different expressions for what seems to be a similar idea?
What’s the difference between seeing and hearing?
Hearing means applying what we know in our heads to our hearts, in others words we can put ideas into action.
As we quote in the aleynu prayer – “And you shall know this day, and you shall settle it into your heart, that God is the Power, in the heavens above, and on the earth below, there is none other.”
In other words, “hearing” is the work of becoming emotionally real with what we believe intellectually.
The Shema teaches us to “place these words upon your heart.…” With Tefillin, Mezuzah, Torah study, when we lie down and when we arise, and to teach them diligently to our children!!
We literally surround ourselves with the mitzvah of loving God with all of our heart, soul and means.
In this way we concretise with action this very ephemeral concept that Almighty God wants us to be in Love with Him.
Hearing is an avodah she’belev or "service of the heart.”
The Sages teach us that Tefila is the primary method of working the avoda she’belev. Tefila, properly approached, develops our psychological core. Tefila isn’t just about asking for things. Tefila is a dialogue between, one the one hand, our perceptions of reality, including our perception of God; and from the other side, God’s communication back however we find it.
In order to re-affirm in our minds the intellectual understanding that God is everything, literally, as well as the centrality of God in our daily lives, we say “ Shema” before the Shemona Essray during the morning and evening prayers.
We also need to know that our actions matter, that there are real consequences for everything we do, for the good or bad. Without this belief there is no way we can care about our Tefila. We therefore say the second paragraph of Shema before Tefila.
We also say the blessings of Shema to re-affirm the love God has for creation in general, the Jewish people as the People of the Book, and our faith in the final redemption.
We are at this point ready for Tefila. The Shemonah Essray realigns our attention from our daily struggles back to a focus on our core values. Those values, expressed as our legitimate needs, we ask of God, in a spirit of Love and beseeching. Not as expectations or rewards, as certainly not as whiners.
This is all the work of “hearing.”
Seeing is perception – something we do at every given moment. Our perception is the result of our emotional and psychological state. In this sense then, “seeing” is the result of “hearing.” Sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of our noses – when we don’t want to. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. And sometimes we see the bad in everyone and everything, because we’re really focused on the bad inside of ourselves.
Re’eh. Notice that the verse begins in the singular, “ Re’eh” and not “Re-u.” It then becomes pluralized with “lifnaichem.” Why the switch in tenses?
Perception must be singular. As the Sages say about judgment: “a Judge only has what his eyes see.” No one else can see for you, as Hillel says: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
Lifneichem – before you, refers to the opportunities for spiritual growth (the only real currency) that God lays out, which are equally available to all. Each person is unique in their abilities and challenges. But God is open to all, equally. The lowliest to the most refined. Exactly the same. The distance between us and God is only the narrowness of our perspective.
Re’eh as a word is related to Yireh – fear. We know there is a positive idea in Jewish thought to fear sin. Is this type of fear related to the idea of “seeing” the blessing and the curse?
Most people feel comfortable with the idea of Loving God, but have a difficult time with the idea of fear, either of fearing God or fearing sin. In truth, fear of God is a very sublime concept. In essence it is the experience we feel when our perception is overwhelmed by the awesomeness of God’s substance and power.
I believe the fear which feels negative to people is really the fear of punishment, the fear of the consequence of sin. We feel this fear when we live under the painful assumption that we deserve punishment. Even when things are good, we wait “for the other shoe to drop,” expecting the bad.
At times this fear can be so extreme it becomes pathological, and the person becomes incapable of happiness. Their self-judgment is so strongly negative, that they reject any thought of self-love or self-respect with all the force of their (very powerful) religious convictions. I know. I've done it.
Because this fear is so debilitating, some self help books eschew fear and focus solely on love. And yet should we listen to the psychobabble that tells us to do away with fear? Should we not censor our poor behavior? Should we ignore the negative realities we find in the world outside? That doesn’t seem reasonable or desirable. On the contrary, it is only reasonable that we should fear the consequences of our bad choices, and that we should as well recognize and avoid negative influences, especially for our children who are unable (at times) to process the good from the bad.
We can boil our essential question down into these two parts:
How can we understand a positive role for fear?
How can we avoid the negativity of fear as “paranoia" or even "anxiety."
To deal with this, realize a simple fact in Torah thought: Our perception becomes malignant with fear only when fear is not balanced by an equal or greater experience of love - and especially trust, in the Almighty.
It is impossible for fear to be healthy unless it is stabilized by love and trust. Love of God; trust in God’s goodness and in our own inherent goodness. Trusting that we are basically “ok” first, before we go about the process of self-judgment.
We do not have to justify our existence. God wills us to be – out of love – that is enough. The Torah always puts the blessing before the curse, as in our verse: “See, I place before you today a blessing and a curse….”
The reason is obvious. We cannot even know what the curse is unless we know the blessing.
Imagine I was scratching a piece of vinyl with a safety pin – no big deal right? Who says the vinyl is worth anything? But look closer, you’ll notice that this is an original copy of the Beatle’s White album, worth about $10,000 today. Now that scratch is something to curse about.
Unless we love life, we are hard pressed to fear losing it. There is no mitzvah to have fear that isn’t preceded by a strong base of love. It cannot be productive. It only leads to self-absorption and despair.
Many of us walk around with the emotional assumption that we are not ok. This burden is called shame. As opposed to guilt, which we might feel because of a specific act which falls beneath the standards we set for ourselves, shame is a generalized feeling that there is something essentially bad or wrong with us.
The feeling that we have to justify our essential existence by what we “do” is actually a usurpation of God as the only true Judge. In Jewish law a person is considered legally unfit to act as a Judge or witness for or against themselves. Their testimony is considered biased, inadmissible.
A struggle many encounter with Halachic observance is that there are so many details, it can be difficult to not to feel inadequate if we are not perfect in our observance. It is easy to become obsessed with those details at the expense of the basics of Torah observance, e.g. loving God, loving others, and loving your very life itself.
This obsession with perfection sometimes happens because of low self-esteem, when a person feels that they must do everything right or they fall into the black hole of shame.
Sometimes it simply happens when a person views spiritual growth as they would any acquisition, such as being a lawyer, doctor, or businessman. We desire success, and we desire it immediately, but in the process we forget that spiritual development is a lifelong process, and the only measure of success is hidden inside the heart, where only God Himself sees. But we may feel, and thereby know.
May we all be blessed with an open heart, and clear perception.