by Rick Gwynallen
Re’eh has long been my favorite parsha because it was in Re’eh that I learned to read Torah in a different light, perhaps to “see” in a different way.
In early 2013, I read an essay by Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh HaYeshiva of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, commenting on Parshat Mishpatim, Does the Torah Approve of Slavery?. He argued that not everything in Torah is an ideal. Rather, some of what we read in Torah is grounded in what was possible in the social formation of the time, but pointing toward an ideal which society must grow toward achieving.
“So slavery is not the ideal. Which means that there can be mitzvot in the Torah which represent not the endpoint of our religious and moral journey, but rather the first step towards it. . . If this is true, then, it puts upon us a weighty responsibility. When we find ourselves deeply challenged by the values or ethics that seem to be expressed in a given mitzvah, we need to strive to understand where the mitzvot are pointing us, we need to ask ourselves if the Torah’s ideal is embodied by this mitzvah, or lies beyond it. [The laws in Mishpatim] represent the human attempt to understand the meaning and values behind the mitzvot.”
Rabbi Linzer further elaborated on this concept in a 2015 essay entitled The Ideal and the Real, in which he applied the same frame of analysis to Shmita. Then again in a 2016 article, One Nation Under G-d, With Liberty and Justice For All, in which he applied the concept to social stratification as it appears in Torah.
After reading Rabbi Linzer’s 2013 essay, it was Re’eh where I applied the concept myself to passages I had previously seen as contradictory. In Parashat Re’eh, we have two seemingly contradictory statements; one that states there will be no more poor among you (15:4-5), and one that states since there will always be poor among you here is how you should treat them (15:11). Using Rabbi Linzer’s argument that Torah acknowledges the limitations of the social formation in the historic period of early Israel while pointing us toward an ideal, I came to understand these passages as meaning that if we build a society adhering to G-d’s laws we will create an environment in which there are no poor. But, since we are not likely to achieve that level of development any time soon, here is how we must act toward the poor. However, the ideal toward which we should strive is a world in which there is no poor.
Perhaps it was appropriate for me to first apply the idea to my study in Re’eh since the name of the parsha means “See . . .” As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, perhaps I could “see” Torah in a different light.
In just the last parsha, Eikev, we focused upon the superiority of “hearing” over “seeing” in understanding Divinity. In my early 20s I spent a year studying and practicing Zen Buddhism. In meditation, we closed our eyes and followed the flow of our breath, attempting to close out the noise of the material world, to remove distractions, to not let our sight sway us from our task. We heard the world around us, perhaps even more acutely than with our eyes open, and we concentrated further to not be distracted by sound as well. So, I understand the limitations of “seeing”, and the strength of ‘hearing” in perceiving something deeper than what is apparent through sight.
I have spent a great deal of time in forests, and what we “see” can be awe inspiring; dawn through the trees, a vista when you summit a particular hill and the horizon opens before you. But when I close my eyes the forest comes alive in a different way. I hear bird song, movement of branches, scurrying of forest creatures, and more sounds of life that I had missed with my eyes open. I feel warmth or wind more intensely. I detect scents carried on the breeze that I had ignored.
When I opened my eyes in my Zen sitting I saw the world in a different way. And when I open my eyes in the forest I can “see” the forest in a more complete way. In both cases I took more into consideration, became more aware of the complexity of the world I was “seeing”.
Ultimately we must open our eyes, but, perhaps, it is no coincidence that Eikev precedes Re’eh, teaching us to not rely just on “seeing”, but that by “hearing” first we can “see” better.
Shmita
In Re’eh Moses discusses Shmita, the sabbatical year, in which the land is allowed to remain fallow and in which a social reset occurs; debts are forgiven, indentured servants freed and given a new start.
In the Biblical era the shmita was a social institution and predictable. However, if it was fully welcomed by all there would be no need for the Biblical warnings against making loans because the shmita draws near.
”Beware lest you harbor the base thought, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is approaching,” so that you are mean to your needy kinsman and give him nothing. He will cry out to the LORD against you, and you will incur guilt.” (Re’eh 15:9)
Shmita seems designed to prevent intergenerational poverty and inequity, and that such is a communal responsibility. Even without the shmita today one can argue that that responsibility remains in effect. In Opening Our Hearts and Our Hands – Deuteronomy and the Poor, Rabbi Shai Held of Mechon Hadar wrote “The Torah’s simple but radical claim is that the plight of the poor is our responsibility.”
Yet, the shmita as a concept represents not just the release of debt or letting land lie fallow. It represents a relationship between the earth, humans, and other species. It is about restoration, and about the entire community of the earth.
Today, farmers rotate crops to allow certain fields to recover, but as a national system we have no institutional reset for the land and for the people.
When the public health crisis first started, my wife, Maraji, commented that since we as humans have been unwilling to do it, the earth is healing itself and creating an environment in which we might change. Indeed, today, the pandemic has forced us into a rest that allows the earth to rest from relentless exploitation of resources, consumption, and accumulation of material wealth.
In an early pandemic poem, Fr. Richard Hendrick, OFM, wrote of that rest and the hopeful nature of human response to the public health crisis:
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
In his op-ed, In the Ground of Our Unknowing, David Abram reflects that “The reports of abundant fish returning to the effluent-clogged canals of Venice may not be true—mostly, it seems, the usual murkiness of the canals is clearing due to the circumstance that ceaseless boat traffic is not churning up those waterways, and so it’s become possible, for the first time in ages, to glimpse schools of fish who’ve always been there swimming through the suddenly pellucid waters.”
The apartment complex where we live circles a park. Maraji and I have both noted that this spring and summer we see more types of birds than ever. Are we really seeing more species of birds or did we just not hear them before?
While the earth may get some respite from slowing down human activity, there is no lasting reset for economic injustices. Perhaps, though, this rest can refocus our attention on the ideals toward which we should be directed, so that we create that reset.
Poetic expressions about the pandemic have not been restricted to the recovery of the earth, but also to what may emerge from it.
In part of a longer poem, Scottish Gaelic poet, Donald Meeks wrote:
San t-saoghal ùr bhios againn,
‘s an galar air dol sìos,
gun tig ùr-thuigs’ air thalamh
le carthannas is ciall!In the new world we will have,
when the disease has gone down,
may a new understanding come to Earth,
with compassion and reason!Gun ghleus à tromp na gaisge
ga seinn le deachdair’ faoin,
ach fonn a’ ghaoil ‘s a’ mhaitheis
a’ sgapadh am measg dhaoin’!Without the blare of the trumpet
Or shallow song of a dictator,
but the tune of love and goodness
spreading among the people!San t-saoghal bheag a th’ againn,
thug an galar rabhadh mòr,
is thoireamaid feairt gach lath’ air
gus slàinte thoirt dar seòrs’!In our small world,
the disease made a great warning,
and together we heed it every day
Until salvation is brought to our kind!
In Rabbi Linzer’s concluding paragraph of The Idea and The Real, “The Torah holds out a vision of a more perfect world and demands that we begin to realize it in our own lives. It is a communal responsibility, one of religious leaders and laypersons alike, to continue in this path, understanding that work is needed to bring this vision to reality. We must start by seeing beyond the details to the larger ideal.”
Even if we had not “heard” the cries of injustice before, they ring clear today with a rising tide of resistance to exploitation of oppressed communities and the poor. Now we need to “see” the reality of those injustices and assume the communal responsibility for creating a just society.
Stumbling Toward Torah 