Parsha Re'eh – Jewish Teachings & Torah - Who Are You Becoming?

0:01 A woman walked up to an elderly man rocking in a chair on his porch. I couldn't help noticing how happy you look, she said. What's your secret for a long happy life? I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, he said. I also drink a case of whiskey a week, eat fatty foods and never exercise. That's amazing, the woman said. How old are you? thirty six, he replies. We're told right at the beginning of Pashabarashit that mankind was made but Selem Elokim in the image of Hashem. A fundamental part of this construct is that we're given free will, the ability to make choices.

0:42 So right at the beginning of the Torah, Adam and Havra are told they can eat from any tree in the garden except the eight Sadat. They have free choice as to whether to adhere to this or not. In the very next story, Kine is angry that Hashem has accepted Hell's offering but not his own. Hashem tells Kine, Surely if you improve yourself you will be forgiven, but if you do not improve yourself, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is towards you, yet you can conquer it. As Adam and Hava have free choice, so too Hashem tells Kine that he has free choice as to the direction that his life will take.

1:23 At the beginning of this week's Pasha, the choice is laid out before us. See, I present before you today a blessing and a curse, says Moshe. The word Hayom today is important, because every day of our lives we can choose between blessing and curse. Every day of our lives we make choices that don't just affect our day, but they shape who we are and who we become. Let's explore what that means for each of us in the context of this week's pasha. The Svatemet points out that Moshe says, See, I present before you today a blessing and a curse.

2:04 And he goes on to say, Ashetishmo, the blessing that you listen to the mitzvot of Hashem, and the curse Imlotismu if you do not listen to the mitzvot of Hashem. The Svatemet says that Klalishael as a nation accepted the Torah. Therefore, the good within the Jewish people is intrinsic. Consequently, the Pasuk says that you listen to the mitzvot. Having accepted the Torah, that is the natural state for a Jew. Sin on the other hand is only incidental. Therefore the Pasuk states if you do not listen to the mitzvot.

2:44 The Svatemet explains that this is why a good thought is joined to the deed, whereas an evil thought is not. The Svatemet is making an extraordinary claim. Not every thought we have, and not even every failure that we experience tells us who we really are. The question is at what point does a thought become something that defines us? The idea of a good thought being joined to the deed and an evil thought not comes from a Gomorrah in Kadushin in Forty Ahmed Aleph. The Gomorrah explains that Hashem links a good thought to an action.

3:23 So if a person intended to perform a mitzvah, but due to honest circumstances beyond his control, he did not perform it, he gets the credit as if he performed the mitzvah. However, Hashem does not link an evil thought to an action unless a person actually performs the action. The Mahashah explains this does not mean a person who has a sinful thought and refrains from their own fruition because this is self-evident. For example, if a person who really desires a cheeseburger and overcomes the temptation and doesn't have it, of course they're not punished.

4:01 In fact, you could even say it's virtuous that they had the willpower, the restraint not to partake. The Mahashah says the Gomorrah is referring to someone who refrains from sin only because of circumstances beyond their control. For example, they were driving to buy the non-kosher cheeseburger, and for some reason when they arrived at the restaurant it was closed, even though it was supposed to be open. Therefore, the only reason the person did not have the cheeseburger is that the restaurant was unexpectedly shut.

4:33 However, they're still not punished. The question is this. We understand that Hashem will give us the reward when we intended to do a mitzvah, but we were genuinely prevented from completing it due to circumstances beyond our control. Therefore, why won't in the same way Hashem punish us for an Aveira we would also have genuinely done, but were prevented through circumstances beyond our control? The Mahashah brings down from a Gomorrah and Bhava Batra 164 Ahmed Bet, which says there are three sins from which a person is not spared each day sinful thoughts, committing sins concerning deliberation in prayer, and malicious speech.

5:18 Here's the distinction. A thought does not always tell us who a person is. A person can experience anger without being an angry person. They can experience jealousy without being a jealous person. They can experience temptation without being defined by that temptation. A thought can simply be the battlefield. That is why Hashem does not ordinarily punish the thought of an Aveira. The temptation has appeared, but the person has not yet chosen to make it their own. A genuine intention to perform a mitzvah is different.

5:55 Klali Shrael stood at Hasina and accepted the Torah. The Svatemet's point is that the desire to perform the mitzvah expresses the deepest orientation of a Jew. If only honest circumstances beyond one's control prevents its fulfillment, Hashem treats that intention differently. So we begin with thought, and the Torah is telling us don't confuse every thought that enters your mind with who you are. But the Gomorrah makes an exception to this rule when a person can be punished for their thoughts alone.

6:30 The case the Gomorrah brings is of idolatry. Why should idolatry be different? Because here the thought is not merely temptation towards an action. The thought itself is the allegiance. Idolatry is in essence a denial of the entire Torah. Think of the first commandment. I am Hashem your God who has taken you out of the land of Egypt from the house of slavery. Most Aveirot involve doing something forbidden. A person wants to eat something forbidden, steal something that isn't theirs, violate Shabbat or lash out in anger.

7:07 The desire is not yet the Aveira. But idolatry is fundamentally difference. Its very essence is allegiance. To accept another power as divine is already a portrayal of our fundamental relationship with Hashem. This is why idolatry is the exception. Ordinarily thought is not yet identity, but there are certain thoughts that are themselves commitments. In idolatry, the eternal allegiance is itself substantive. In the Gomorrah, Ulah explains all this by quoting Ravhuna that when a person sins and then repeats the sin, it is permitted to him.

7:52 The Gomorrah asks, Can it enter your mind that the sin is permitted to him because he sinned twice? The Gomorrah answers, of course it's not permitted to him. It's that it becomes as if it were permitted to him. Something extraordinary has happened. The Aveira hasn't changed. The person has. The first time there was resistance, the second time perhaps less. Eventually what once troubled the person begins to feel normal. The thought became an action, the action was repeated, repetition became habit, and habit began to shape identity.

8:30 For example, someone may eat non-kosher for the first time and feel terrible. The second time they may feel a little less guilt. After a few times they don't even think about it anymore. The food hasn't become kosher. The Avera hasn't become committed, permitted. The person's relationship to the Aveira has changed. And now we can put the Gomorrah and Kadushin together. Thought, action, repetition, identity. A passing thought may be temptation. An action means I have acted upon that temptation. Repetition begins to normalize the action, and what I repeatedly normalize can eventually become part of the person I'm becoming.

9:16 Idolatry is different because it bypasses that progression. The allegiance of the mind is itself already the betrayal. And now we can understand the Svatemet much more deeply. The Torah doesn't say if you listen and if you don't listen, it says Asher Tishmu, that you listen, and Imlor Tishmu if you do not listen. Because the starting point of a Jew is the covenant accepted at Sinai. The blessing expresses what we fundamentally aspire towards. Sin can be a failure without becoming our identity. But the warning of the Gomorrah is that repeated choices matter, because what begins as something we do can eventually begin to shape who we become.

10:07 As it says in Kohelet, for there's no righteous person on earth who does good and does not sin. The Torah does not demand that we never fail. Even a Sadik falls. The question is what happens after we fall? Do I resist it? Do I regret it? Do I get back up? Or do I repeat it until what once bothered me becomes normal? And that is why Moshe says, See, I present before you Hayom today, a blessing and a curse. Because identity isn't normally created by one dramatic moment. It is built by what we repeatedly choose today and tomorrow and the day after that.

10:48 We imagine that the great question of life is what sort of person am I? Rae asks a slightly different question. What sort of person are my choices turning me into? The Svatemet therefore emphasizes the choice that is in front of us every single day of our lives. He uses an analogy of a person who lives at the crossroads of two paths. One path begins smoothly but ends in a thicket. The other begins in a thicket but ends smoothly. So often the easy path is tempting. To abandon the mitzvot and do whatever we feel like, it looks attractive, but in the end it will lead to the thicket, to no good.

11:34 Conversely, a religious life of learning, prayer, and adherence to the mitzvot looks hard. The path starts in a thicket. However, with perseverance and dedication to the end result, is a life filled with meaning and purpose and therefore fulfillment. The Gomorrah in Sukot in 52 Ahmed Alif explains this. Says at the end of Jays, Hashem will slaughter the Yet Sahara, the evil inclination, in the presence of the righteous and the wicked. For the righteous the Yet Sahara will appear as high as a mountain.

12:09 For the wicked it will appear as a mere strand of hair, and both will weep. The Tsadiqim will weep and say, How we be able to overcome so high a mountain? And the wicked will weep and say, How we were unable to become this strand of hair. The fact is there is always only a hair breadth, but the righteous, as they overcome each hair breadth, go on to encounter another. They keep doing so for their whole lives until they accumulate so many it seems like a mountain. But the wicked who stand still are always facing the same hair breadth.

12:47 Nobody becomes a mountain overnight. Mountains are built one hairbreadth at a time, and character is built exactly the same way, one choice at a time. People imagine that greatness requires giant decisions, but it rarely does. Greatness lives in the thousands of tiny decisions that we make every single day. The decision to give another small donation of sadaka, to visit someone who is ill, to choose to do the right thing in a business dispute, to go to Shu for Doverning even when you're tired. This is why the righteous have no rest in the world.

13:24 This is also the reason no one should become too proud for having ascended some rung of the ladder. For in that place too there will be two paths. This is how the righteous earn their bracha by constantly leaving the wicked path and choosing the good. This is their reward for the future. There is not one mountain, there are thousands of hairs. Life is an ongoing challenge. We are constantly standing between a blessing and a curse and need to choose the blessing, the bracha, every single day. Until now we've been talking about the question, what do my choices make of me?

14:03 But Ra'ai asks a much bigger question. What do our choices make of us? Because Judaism does not believe that choices remain private forever. A choice repeated becomes a habit. Habits create character, character shapes families, families create communities, communities create cultures, and cultures ultimately determine what kind of nation we become. That is why the choice between blessing and curse in Ra'A does not remain a private choice. Moshe explains that when Kalya Shrael enter Eritel, there will be a public display of this choice on Mount Gerizim and Mount Avil.

14:45 As it's stated in Parsha Kitavo, the whole nation shall stand on these two mountains, one half on Mount Gerizim and the other half on Mount Avel, with the Kohenim and Levium in the valley between the two mountains. The Levium shall pronounce the blessing and the curse, and the Levium's pronouncement shall become the nation's pronouncement by its responding amen. Thus the nation will present to itself and to all its future generations the choice between blessing and curse. Mount Garizim lies south of the valley of Shechem, and Mount Ava lies to the north.

15:22 Mount Garizim where the Brachot will be said has more springs, more cultivation, olive groves and agriculture, giving it a greener appearance. Mount Ava from where the curses will be uttered is rocky and more exposed, with much less vegetation. Accordingly, these two mountains standing near each other present a striking visualization of the choice between a blessing and a curse. Rav Shimsham Raphael Hirsch points out that both of these mountains rise from the same soil, both are watered by the same dew and rain, the same air passes over them, and the same pollen is blown over them.

16:00 Yet Main Ava remains barren, while Mount Garizim is covered with vegetation. In the same way, blessing and curse are not dependent on external circumstances, but on our own choices, our own decisions as to which path in life we choose to take. And here the Mishnah in Sota makes a remarkable connection to identify the plains of Moreh of our Pasha, where these declarations would take place on the mountains. The Mishnah quotes another Pasuk, the Pasuk describing Avraham's arrival in Eritrael. So we're told in Pasha Lechlacha, it was in the plains of More that Hashem appeared to Avraham and told him that his offspring would be given this land.

16:47 Therefore Avram built him his Baak, an altar to Ashem, who had appeared to him. Indeed, we read in Saifia Yeshua that Yeshua fulfilled this commandment. The people did go to this area of Eritrael and make the declarations. Avraham as the first Jew entered Eritrael and was told that his descendants would be given this land. Generations later, those descendants arrived at the very same place to accept the Brit and take possession of the land. The first place where Avra Avraham built a Mizbach after hearing Hashem promise, I will give this land to your descendants, became the first place where those descendants generations later arrived to accept the Brit and take possession of the land.

17:36 The promise made to one man became the covenantal inheritance of an entire nation. And how did one man become a nation? Through generations of choices. Avraham chooses, Yitzhak chooses, Yaakov chooses, their children choose, and eventually an entire nation stands where Avraham once stood alone. But Ra'ai also shows us the frightening reverse of this process. Just as generations of choices can build a nation, accumulated choices can corrupt a society. That is the extraordinary lesson of the Ihanidakat, the wayward city.

18:20 If the majority of a city become idolatrous, the city is destroyed. And although the Gomorrah in Sanhedrin, 71 Ahmad Alef says there was never a city like this, the Torah teaches a powerful lesson. It is not just the individual sin, cultural sin. Individuals can develop identities, so can societies. A culture is ultimately the accumulated choices of the people who create it. Because no choice remains isolated forever. Individual shape families, family-shaped communities, and communities ultimately shape nations.

18:57 And that is why Pasha Ra'ai starts with individual choice, moves to the wayward city and national responsibility, and ends with the Shalosh Regalim, a time when the nation comes together. This week's Pasha comes to teach us that the choice that faces us every day of our lives, whether to choose blessing or curse, this choice shapes our own lives, those of our families, our communities, and the whole of Klali Shwael. And that is why it's important we recognize our responsibility. Everything rests on the choice Moshe puts before us in this week's pasha.

19:36 What is interesting is that Moshe starts this with the word ra'ai, see. Why use the word see? How can we see the choice that we make that's intangible? Because we have the ability to see if we only look. To see that every ordinary Tuesday morning, every business meeting, every bracha, every conversation, every decision, every response to temptation is another today. Every morning Hashem recreates the choice between blessing and curse. Yesterday's failures are not today's identity. Yesterday's successes do not exempt today's choices.

20:18 So the question of Ra'A is not simply what kind of Jew are you. It is Ra'A. See the choices you are making today. Because those choices are determining who you will become tomorrow.