“See, this day I present before you a blessing and a curse. Blessing, that you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day and curse if you do not obey the commandments….” (Deut.11:26-28)

These words above are the opening words of the Torah portion that we read yesterday.  Taken on their own, these words are a powerful statement that was meant to urge the Israelites to take seriously the commandments that were presented to them.  But perhaps we should look a little closer….

The opening word, “see” jumps out glaringly.  In some ways its not the word we’ve come to expect from Moses’ admonitions to the Children of Israel.  We’re more used to having the exclamation “Hear! precede words of warning.  So why this “See”?  There have been a number of explanations but I think we are being challenged quite specifically here.  After all, Deuteronomy is a book where the entire experience of the Exodus and the wanderings in the desert are being summed up.  As the children of Israel proceed into the the promised land they will obviously have many choices they will have to make.  Lifestyle choices, occupation choices, dress, culture and more but one of the most important choices they are going to have to make is just exactly HOW they will SEE the experiences that have befallen them over these past years.  Will they choose to look back and see hardship and bitterness?  Will they choose to see all the negatives of the forty years or will they choose to see something else?  Could they possibly choose to see the spiritual and emotional growth that these desert years brought to the people?  What will they see?  It is their choice!  It is their main choice!

We too are given so many choices in our life.  How do we choose to see them?  Do we view the glass half-empty or half-full?  Or do we not even see the glass at all and let our pessimism and negativity carry the day.  When we look back over the lives that we’ve lived  do we dwell all on those things that give pain OR can we look back and see how we’ve grown - how we’ve tried to progress and how we can see the successes that have brought us to this present moment in our lives.  What we see of our lives is up to us.

There is another interesting point in a close analysis of the verse above.  The Sefat Emet - a preeminent teacher of Jewish tradition - points out the interesting choice of words in the sentence above.  When first mentioning “blessings” the text says “Blessings, THAT you obey.. ”  It is even more striking in the Hebrew where the word “asher” is used instead of the more expected “eem” which would translate the sentence “IF you obey blessings”.  In any event, the Sefat Emet points out that the choice of word is meant to indicate to us that our natural inclination in life IS to choose blessings.  That is how we as human beings are built.  We instinctively know right from wrong and want to choose ‘right’ .  But sometimes we make the wrong choice and when we do it is actually the more difficult choice to make!  The text comes to remind us that choosing blessings in life is the most natural position for us to take in life.

In preparing my thoughts for today I read a wonderful commentary by a Rabbi Paris in which she quotes Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan - one of the great Jewish minds of the 20th century.  He noted that in the english word “life” — where the middle two letters spell the word “if” — we can see why people who live in this world choose to live “if-istically”.  That is to say, they live their lives “IF only this, or IF only that”.  They have a sort of backward way of looking at life - always looking in the rear-view mirror to see where they have been and what has happened to them and blaming the past for the present.  On the other hand, says Rabbi Kaplan, the hebrew word for life is “Hayyim” and the middle two letters of the word hayyim are yud-yud which spell the word “God”.  Here, in this healthier view of life we are challenged not to look backward at what has befallen us but rather to look forward and so see how we can put the blessings of God into the center of our lives.  How do we make our lives more ‘God-centered’ - more appreciative of the blessings of our lives but also more pro-active to build a better world.  We understand our task from God to step forward to to see how we can improve the condition of this world and of the people who live around us.  How do we live up to this God-challenge and how to we insure that God is at the center of the world that we live in - recognizing that despite our circumstances we have been given the opportunity to create and do good; to bring some happiness and love into the world; and to live a life of deeds of quality and meaning.

Rabbi Paris relates a story that I’ll share in closing:   Two men went out one night to explore the world. One equipped himself with a lighted torch while the other went into the darkness without any light. When the 2nd one returned he said, “wherever I went I found nothing but darkness.” But the first one said “everywhere I went, I found light.”   We have a choice.

I pray that we be given the opportunity to choose light - to make choices within our lives of blessing and goodness - choices which reflect our view of a positive and good world with infinite possibility.