See!

                    (Deuteronomy 11:26)

Av 26, 5777/August 18, 2017

"See! I set before you today a blessing and a curse." (Deuteronomy 11:26)

This week's Torah reading, Re'eh! opens with the commandment to "See!"Many times Torah instructs us to listen or to hearken, (Shema!) as a way of performing a commandment or internalizing a message, but this use of the word re'eh - see - is relatively rare.

The Torah understanding of the act of hearing or listening is that it is a process of internalizing intellectually and developing an understanding of what you have heard. "Shema Yisrael" is a commandment to ponder G-d's absolute One-ness and His absolute presence and being-ness in our world. We pronounce these words and contemplate their meaning twice daily, and live our lives accordingly. To listen is to hear, to scrutinize, to study, and ultimately, to live by our conclusions. This discipline of hearing/studying is ever-present in the oral Torah, as well, and in the literature of our sages, whose discourses and debates are often introduced with the words, "Come, listen!"

The Torah understands the sense of sight and the act of seeing differently. To see something is to be there, to be in the moment, to be in the picture. If hearing is contemplative in its essence, seeing is simply being - experiencing - no holds barred!

If Torah had declared, Hear! "I set before you today a blessing and a curse," the intention would have been to ponder, to weigh, to consider the subject of blessings and curses, in order to be able to deal properly to these challenges when they arise in life. But "See! I set before you today a blessing and a curse"is telling us to see ourselves immediately (today) confronted with these challenges and to deal properly with them in real time, on an instinctual level, based on our knowing that we "are children of HaShem, your G-d." (ibid 14:1) Blessings and curses, real life choices and decisions arise all the time, and we must be able to meet them knowing that G-d is with us and we are with G-d.

It is no coincidence that in the very parasha which begins with the word "Re'eh -See!" Moshe introduces Israel to the knowledge of "the place which HaShem your G-d shall choose from all your tribes, to set His Name there," (ibid 12:5) that is, the Holy Temple. The place where G-d will choose to set His name, the place of the Holy Temple, whose location is hidden to the children of Israel at this time, was, of course, already seen by our forefathers Avraham, Yitzchakand Yaakov. As we recall, G-d showed the place to Avraham, as Avraham "lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar," and that, ultimately, "Avraham named that place, HaShem will see, as it is said to this day: On the mountain, HaShem will be seen." (Genesis 22:4,14) And it was in this place that Yitzchak "went forth to pray in the field towards evening, and he lifted his eyes and saw"his new bride, Rivka, and Rivka, likewise, "lifted her eyes, and saw Yitzchak,"her new husband. (ibid 24:63,64) A place of vision, of seeing and being seen! And it was here, of course, that Yaakov lay down to sleep and beheld "a ladder set up on the ground and its top reached to heaven; and behold, angels of G-d were ascending and descending upon it," woke up and declared, "Indeed, HaShem is in this place, and I did not know!" (ibid 28:12,16)

This place - the place of the Holy Temple - is the place where experiencing a truth overtakes intellectually understanding the truth, where literally being in the moment and in the place preempts thinking about it, where "being" in real time - in G-d's time and space - is the entirety of the experience and the entirety of the commandment.

Parashat Re'eh draws to a conclusion with this directive: "Three times in the year, every one of your males shall be seen before HaShem, your G-d, in the place He will choose: on the Festival of Matzot and on the Festival of Weeks, and on the Festival of Sukkot, and he shall not be seen before HaShem empty-handed." (ibid 16:16) The Holy Temple is the place on earth where G-d's presence dwells unfiltered by our own mitigating and circumscribed reality, where it can be experienced in its fullness, a complete and holistic physical/spiritual/body/mind experience. It is a place where where G-d's infinite eternalness and limitless spaciality is open to and embracing of our own finiteness in time and space.

When Adam felt that he had distanced himself irrevocably from G-d, he hid, not wanting to see or be seen. He heard G-d's voice, and G-d heard his voice, but the irresistible intimacy which had preceded Adam's sin was gone.

Re'eh - the art of being in G-d's moment, in G-d's place - is the reality of the Holy Temple, and it is G-d's invitation to restore the intimacy that was ours before we, (man), lost ourselves in our own act of hiding, only to be glimpsed momentarily by our fathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. Three times a year we are invited to join G-d in a celebration of seeing and being seen by one another, an invitation that we dare not arrive at empty-handed, nor do we leave from empty hearted, "because haShem, your G-d, will bless you in all your produce, and in all the work of your hands, and you will only be happy!"(Deuteronomy 16:15)

-The Temple Institute