Rabbi's Message

This week’s Torah portion, Re’eh, begins with the injunction: 

Re’eh, anohi notein leefnahem hayom, beracha u’kla-la See (re’eh), I set before you this day blessing and curse.
(Deuteronomy 11:26)

Why does the Torah use the word re’eh here?  It could have easily been omitted.  I set before you blessing and curse.  Why, instead, does it say: “re’eh--see, I set before you blessing and curse”?  Medieval Spanish commentator, Ibn Ezra sees this move from the singular to the plural as way to teach that “a person must repair himself first before he can repair a larger community.”

I would like to take this interpretation a step further by reading it alongside one of the concluding verses of the parashah in which the word re’eh is repeated: 

Shalosh p’ameem ba-shana yeiraeh
Three times per year, on Pesah, Shavuot, and Sukkot, you shall appear (yei-ra-eh) before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose.
(Deuteronomy 16:16)

We begin the parashah by seeing ourselves and our community, and we conclude the parashah by being seen by God.  Before we can be seen by God, we must first do the work of seeing.  This seems to be the message of the two occurrences of the word reach at the beginning and end of this week’s parashah, and it is certainly the work of the month Elul, which we will begin next week. Elul is the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah.  Our tradition teaches that during Elul especially, we stand before God both to celebrate our moments of triumph and goodness and to account for the moments when we fell short, asking for forgiveness and a new chance to strive to better ourselves in the coming year. 

The month of Elul is a time for soul searching, or in Hebrew, Heshbon HaNefesh, a time for introspection, looking back, and looking forward. Re’eh - a time for seeing. This kind of seeing prepares us to be seen by God at the end of the month, to appear before God, and to say, “I’m ready.  I’m ready to own that which I am not proud to admit, and I am ready to be an instrument of sacred action and fierce compassion in the world.”  I see me, I see those around me, I see what I need to do to grow and to help others grow as well.  I see me, and I know you see me as well. And so, as we prepare to enter into Shabbat and, in a few days, into the month of Elul, may we each ask: what do we see? What do we hope to see tomorrow? What will God see at the end of Elul? How will God see us?

Shabbat Shalom.