Unscrolled Re’eh: Befriending Reality

There is a tendency among the religious to divide the world into that which is good and that which is evil—turning one’s religious convictions into a sort of blunt object with which to club all that is deemed sinful and impure. This is called Manicheism, named for the ancient Parthian religion that saw all of life as a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

A parallel tendency exists among the so-called “spiritual-but-not-religious,” who may prefer the exalted states of the mystic to the mundane messiness of the human condition. This is called “spiritual bypass,” a term coined by psychologist John Welwood to describe those who use spirituality as a shield against all that is painful in life.

These approaches to life and to faith are dualistic, carving the world into two constituent parts—one good and one wicked—which, if not engaged in active battle, are separate and unrelated. Parashat Re’eh, however, offers us an alternative way of understanding reality.

“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse” (Deuteronomy 11:26). At first glance, this passage seems to endorse dualism, presenting us with a stark choice between light and dark, good and evil. The perception that such a choice exists, however, is a misreading of the text. Moses has set before the Israelites blessing and curse, not blessing or curse.

Moses goes on: “You shall pronounce the blessing at Mount Gerizim and the curse at Mount Ebal” (Ibid 11:29). Both mountains sit on the far side of the Jordan.

A Manichean, committed to battling darkness, would take it upon himself to pulverize Mount Ebal to the ground. A spiritual bypasser, meanwhile, would take refuge on the peak of Mount Gerizim, eschewing the rest of the world.

The Israelites, however, are commanded to visit both of these locations. In a later portion, we will learn the exact mechanics of the ritual they are to perform there, in which half the tribes will stand on the mount of blessing and half on the mount of curse, with the Levites, those who serve God’s sanctuary, standing in the valley between.

Blessing and curse are not portrayed as separate domains, but rather two aspects of God’s creation. They exist in some measure in all things, and within us as well. This is the reason that sparks of holiness can be found in any situation, no matter how grim. This is the reason that we can serve God with both our Yetzer Ha’Tov (the good impulse) and our Yetzer Ha’Ra (the wicked impulse).

Blessing and curse are not portrayed as separate domains, but rather two aspects of God’s creation. They exist in some measure in all things, and within us as well.

Like the Levites who stand between Gerezim and Ebal, holiness hovers between blessing and curse, possessed by neither. Our work as humans, then, is not to cower in the domain of blessing, nor to wage battle against the domain of curse, but to boldly move back and forth from blessing to curse, seeking holy sparks wherever we are.

In her book “Becoming Wise,” Krista Tippett, host of the podcast “On Being,” has described spiritual life as a way of sitting with what is—the good, the bad, and everything in between.

“Spiritual life is a reasonable, reality-based pursuit. It can have mystical entry points and destinations, to be sure. But it is in the end about befriending reality.”

This does not mean, however, that the distinction between good and evil is erased, or that we become insensate to wrongdoing and suffering. Rather, the Israelites are commanded in a paradox: to accept reality as it is, and also to transform it for the better.

We see this plainly in the second half of the portion when Moses instructs the Israelites in laws concerning the care and protection of society’s most vulnerable.

“There shall be no needy among you,” Moses exhorts (Deuteronomy 15:4). A few passages later, however, he says: “there will never cease to be needy ones in your land” (Ibid 15:11).

It is this very paradox that animates the whole of the Torah’s project for mankind. God is non-dual, presiding over both blessing and curse. The Jews, however, are to be people of blessing. God, we are told, “fashions light and creates darkness … makes peace and creates evil” (Isaiah 45:7). The Jews, however, are obligated in a Torah of goodness, light, and peace.

Neediness, privation, violence and suffering will always exist. This fact, however, does not exempt the Jews from the commandment to eradicate these blights from the world.

I don’t know how to resolve this paradox—how to both accept the imperfection of the world, indeed to love it, and also to strive for the good and to pray, as we do in the Aleinu prayer, that the world be perfected.

But I suppose that accepting this paradox is another aspect of what it means to befriend reality—to hold uncertainty and to know with the heart that which cannot be grasped with the mind as we walk from Gerizim to Ebal and back again.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.