Dvar Torah for Parashat Re’eh

Parashat Re’eh begins with one of the most direct and personal declarations in the Torah: “See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse” (Deuteronomy 11:26). Moshe has spent much of Devarim asking Israel to listen, remember, teach, and obey. Here, however, he asks us to see. The Hebrew word re’eh is singular, addressed as though Moshe were speaking directly to each individual standing before him, while the remainder of the verse speaks to Israel collectively. There is something profound in that movement from the individual to the community. Every Jew must learn to see clearly for himself or herself, yet none of our choices remain entirely private. The way we live affects our families, our communities, and ultimately the character of the Jewish people. Torah therefore places responsibility before each of us personally while reminding us that we live our covenant together.

The blessing and the curse described by Moshe should not be understood merely as mysterious rewards and punishments descending upon us without connection to the lives we choose to build. Torah teaches that obedience and disobedience have consequences. A society shaped by justice, honesty, restraint, compassion, reverence for God, and concern for the vulnerable will become very different from one shaped by greed, idolatry, exploitation, cruelty, and indifference. Torah does not promise that every righteous person will experience an easy life or that every wicked person will immediately suffer. Human experience is plainly more complicated than that. Yet Torah insists that there is a moral structure to covenantal life. The commandments form Israel into a particular kind of people. To choose Torah is therefore to choose the path of blessing, even when walking that path requires sacrifice.

Much of Re’eh concerns the proper worship of God. Israel is commanded to destroy the places of idolatrous worship in the land and not to imitate the religious practices of the nations surrounding them. Instead, offerings are to be brought “to the place that YHWH your God will choose from among all your tribes to place His Name there” (Deuteronomy 12:5). In Jewish history, this command ultimately finds its center in Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash. The Temple was not simply a convenient gathering place. It represented the unity of Israel’s worship and the truth that Israel worships one God according to the covenant He gave us. We were not free to construct our own sacrificial systems wherever and however we pleased.

We live in a very different circumstance today. The Temple does not stand, and the sacrificial service cannot simply be recreated according to personal preference. Yet the spiritual demand of the passage remains powerful. God must remain at the center of Jewish worship. We must continually examine the altars we construct within our own lives—the things that quietly begin to demand the devotion that belongs to God alone. Wealth can become such an altar. Political power can become one. Status, pleasure, resentment, ideology, career, and even religious institutions can become objects of misplaced devotion. Re’eh asks us whether our worship is truly directed toward the God of Israel or whether something else has gradually taken His place.

It is within this discussion of worship that Torah gives another essential principle: “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it, nor subtract from it” (Deuteronomy 13:1; 12:32 in many English editions). Torah must be received with humility. We are not free to erase commandments simply because they become uncomfortable, unfashionable, or costly. At the same time, religious enthusiasm does not give us unlimited authority to transform every personal stringency, communal custom, or interpretation into a divine commandment.

Traditional Judaism recognizes the authority of both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah through which the commandments are interpreted and applied. It also possesses an enormous inheritance of commentary, custom, philosophy, and rabbinic wisdom. These are treasures of the Jewish people. Yet Re’eh reminds us that all religious authority ultimately exists in service to Torah rather than as permission to replace it. Our responsibility is therefore neither to strip Judaism down according to personal convenience nor to burden Jewish life unnecessarily. We seek faithful observance with reverence, wisdom, and humility.

This balance is especially important because religious people are sometimes tempted in opposite directions. We may subtract from Torah by ignoring difficult commandments, particularly those involving money, justice, personal discipline, or responsibility toward others. But we may also add burdens until Judaism becomes so intimidating that ordinary Jews come to believe Torah belongs only to specialists or to those capable of maintaining every possible stringency. Neither extreme serves the covenant well. A healthy Torah life should call us upward without teaching us to look downward upon those who are still learning, struggling, returning, or beginning.

Re’eh also warns Israel about false prophets. Torah presents a striking test: even when someone performs a sign or predicts something that appears to come true, that success does not prove that the person speaks for God. If the prophet urges Israel to abandon YHWH and follow other gods, Israel must refuse to listen. The message matters more than the spectacle. Torah does not teach us to surrender discernment merely because someone is charismatic, impressive, spiritually exciting, or apparently successful.

That warning remains relevant in every generation. We live surrounded by voices competing for our loyalty. Some are explicitly religious; others are political, commercial, ideological, or cultural. Some promise prosperity. Some promise secret knowledge. Some promise belonging if only we will hate the people they tell us to hate. Some tell us that morality is outdated, that power justifies itself, that human beings are valuable only when they are useful, or that happiness can be purchased through consumption. Religious voices can become equally dangerous when they encourage contempt, cruelty, exploitation, or the worship of personalities and institutions rather than God.

Torah gives us a standard by which such voices can be tested. Does this teaching draw us toward the God of Israel, toward mitzvot, justice, compassion, holiness, honesty, repentance, and humility? Or does it demand that we abandon what Torah has taught in order to follow a personality, an ideology, or a promise of worldly success? Re’eh teaches us that miraculous claims, eloquence, popularity, and power never override covenantal faithfulness.

Yet one of the most beautiful features of this parashah is that its theology immediately becomes economic and social responsibility. Loyalty to God cannot be separated from the way we treat people. Chapter fifteen introduces the release of debts during the Shemitah cycle and commands Israel not to become hard-hearted toward those who are poor. “You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your needy brother. Rather, you shall surely open your hand to him” (Deuteronomy 15:7–8).

The imagery is physical because Torah knows how easily compassion can remain theoretical. A closed heart eventually becomes a closed hand. Torah therefore commands us to open both. We are not merely told to feel sympathy for someone who is struggling. We are told to act.

Re’eh contains a remarkable tension. Torah declares that “there shall be no needy among you” if Israel faithfully lives according to the covenant, yet only a few verses later Moshe tells us, “the needy will never cease from the land” (Deuteronomy 15:4, 11). The Torah is neither naïve nor cynical. It gives us an ideal toward which we must work while acknowledging the reality in which we actually live. Poverty may never disappear entirely, but indifference toward poverty must never become acceptable. We may not be capable of repairing every broken circumstance, but we can refuse to harden ourselves against the suffering directly before us.

This is one of the places where religious observance must become tangible. Tzedakah cannot remain something we do only when emotion happens to move us. Generosity should be built into Jewish life. Employers must think about fairness toward workers. Business owners must conduct themselves honestly. Those with abundance must remember those who have less. When a Hebrew servant leaves service, Torah explicitly commands that the person not be sent away empty-handed but provided for generously. Freedom without the means to begin again is incomplete. Torah repeatedly pushes us beyond minimal legality toward dignity.

The parashah also returns to questions of food, blood, and the sanctity of life. Israel is permitted to eat ordinary meat outside the sacrificial system, but the prohibition against consuming blood is repeatedly emphasized. “Only be strong not to eat the blood, for the blood is the life” (Deuteronomy 12:23). Kashrut teaches us that even something as ordinary as eating can become an act of discipline and holiness. Appetite is not evil, but appetite is not sovereign. Human beings are permitted to enjoy the material world while remembering that life ultimately belongs to God.

This is an important corrective to the idea that religious seriousness must mean rejecting pleasure. Re’eh ends not in severity but in joy. Moshe reviews the three pilgrimage festivals—Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot—and repeatedly commands Israel to rejoice before God. Torah does not merely permit joy; under the proper circumstances, it commands it.

But even here, Torah transforms our understanding of what joy means. Festival happiness cannot become a private luxury enjoyed only by those who can afford an abundant table. Moshe commands Israel to rejoice together with sons and daughters, servants, Levites, converts and strangers, orphans, and widows. Those most easily overlooked must be included. Biblical joy expands the table.

That teaching remains as important as ever. A beautiful Shabbat meal becomes more beautiful when someone who might otherwise be alone has a place at it. A synagogue becomes holier when the Jew who barely knows the prayers is welcomed rather than embarrassed. Jewish community becomes stronger when the widow, the convert, the newcomer, the struggling family, the elderly person, the Jew returning after decades away, and the Jew who does not yet know where they belong discover that there is room for them.

Traditional observance should never require contempt for those who are less observant. On the contrary, the more Torah we learn, the greater our obligation to demonstrate patience, generosity, humility, and kindness. We can believe deeply that mitzvot matter while recognizing that every Jew has dignity and a place among our people. We can encourage greater observance without humiliation. We can teach without condemning. We can disagree without hatred. Torah should open our hands and enlarge our hearts, not teach us to use religious knowledge as a weapon.

Perhaps this is why the parashah begins with the command to see. Before we can change our behavior, we must see honestly. We must notice the idols we have allowed into our lives. We must see the person whose need we have avoided. We must recognize when our religious certainty has become pride. We must see where we have relaxed obligations because they were inconvenient, and where we have turned personal preferences into demands upon others. We must notice who is missing from our table.

This becomes particularly meaningful when Parashat Re’eh approaches the month of Elul. Elul prepares us for the work of teshuvah, and teshuvah begins with honest sight. Before confession comes recognition. Before change comes the willingness to look at ourselves without excuses. Re’eh therefore offers an appropriate doorway into the season: See.

See your loyalties. See your habits. See your neighbor. See the condition of your heart. See whether your hand is open or closed. See whether your religious practice draws you closer to God and makes you more compassionate toward others. See whether your joy has room for someone else.

And then choose.

Moshe does not say that the choices before us are meaningless. He says that blessing and curse stand before us. Judaism asks us to live as though our decisions matter because they do. Every act of honesty strengthens honesty. Every act of generosity strengthens generosity. Every mitzvah performed faithfully strengthens the covenantal life of Israel. Every person welcomed strengthens the Jewish people.

Parashat Re’eh therefore calls us to a Judaism lived with open eyes, open hands, and an undivided heart. We worship the one God of Israel. We hold fast to Torah. We take the commandments seriously. We resist both the temptation to erase what God requires and the temptation to make Judaism heavier than God intended. We care for those in need. We discipline our appetites. We welcome others into our joy. And we remember that greater observance should make us more responsible for our fellow Jews, not less compassionate toward them.

“See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.”

The choice is renewed every day.

May the Holy One, blessed be He, grant us the wisdom to see clearly, the humility to choose faithfully, the courage to open our hands, and the generosity to widen our tables. May our Torah observance bring greater holiness into our own lives and greater kindness into the lives of those around us.

And may we choose blessing.

Shabbat shalom.