Rabbi Freedman’s Shabbat Message

רְאֵה אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה
See – I have placed before you this day – blessing and curse.
(Deuteronomy 11:26)

This verse introduces Parashat Re’eh and focuses on the choice between good and evil, blessing and curse. In many ways this idea is replicated further on in Devarim when God says to the Children of Israel:

רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם אֶת-הַחַיִּים וְאֶת-הַטּוֹב, וְאֶת-הַמָּוֶת וְאֶת-הָרָע
See – I have placed before you this day – life and good, death and evil.
(Deuteronomy 30:15f)

This section ends with the stirring words – וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים Choose life, so that you and your children may live. With these words, the purpose of Judaism becomes clear: namely to be able to distinguish between good and bad, and live accordingly.

The entire corpus of Jewish Law is based on the premise that some actions are allowed and some prohibited. Jewish Law is filled with terminology, always in pairs, that reflects this instruction to choose a life of goodness, decency and morality. That is why in halakha an action is either מוּתָּר permitted or אָסוּר forbidden, food is either כָּשֵׁר kosher or טְרֵפָה treif, a time or place is considered קֹדֶשׁ holy or חוֹל profane, and a physical state may be טָהוֹר pure or טָמֵא impure.

Ovadiah Sforno (Italy 16th century) in his commentary on the opening verse of Parashat Re’eh elaborates on its meaning. He explains that for the people of Israel there is no such thing as דֶרֶךְ פְּשָׁרָה a middle way, i.e. seeking some form of compromise. Instead God demands of the Jewish people total commitment – for throughout our lives we will be called upon to choose between blessing and curse, good and evil, right and wrong. Said God to the Jewish people, אֵין דֶרֶךְ פְּשָׁרָה there is no middle way and therefore when faced with a choice between two extremes, two opposites – make the right choice.

I think of these words often when I am invited to someone’s home where I know in advance that food will be served.

I ask them, “Are you kosher, do you keep a kosher home, can I eat in your home?” Different answers are provided, but I always smile when they say to me – “Oh sure, we are pretty kosher, I would say 99%!” When I receive such an answer, I cannot help myself, I turn to one of them and say 99% – that’s pretty good – but can I ask you a question? If you said to your spouse – “Tell me darling, we have been married for 20 years – have you always been faithful in our marriage?” and your partner answered “Oh, pretty well – I would say 99%” then what would you say? So you see it is exactly as the Sforno was suggesting – a home that is 99% kosher is actually non-kosher, a marriage where one partner has only been faithful for 99% of the time is an adulterous marriage – this is what the Sforno meant when he wrote – אֵין דֶרֶךְ פְּשָׁרָה there is no middle way.

This idea of good and evil being the determining factors that elevate and depress human life and consequently control the fortunes of the Jewish people, if not all of mankind, is the reason behind the strange ritual recorded in the ensuing verses in Deuteronomy Chapter 11:

וְהָיָ֗ה כִּ֤י יְבִֽיאֲךָ֙ ה’ אֱלֹקֶיךָ אֶל־הָאָ֕רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־אַתָּ֥ה בָא־שָׁ֖מָּה לְרִשְׁתָּ֑הּ וְנָֽתַתָּ֤ה אֶת־הַבְּרָכָה֙ עַל־הַ֣ר גְּרִזִּ֔ים וְאֶת־הַקְּלָלָ֖ה עַל־הַ֥ר עֵיבָֽל:

When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mt Gerizim the blessings, and on Mt Ebal the curses. (Deut. 11:29)

It is easy to picture the scene since it is described in detail in the Book of Joshua (8: 30-35). Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal are two mountains, adjacent to each other in the tribal area of Ephraim, an area today known as Shomron (Samaria). Between the two was the ancient city of Shechem mentioned originally in connection with the Patriarchs. Although the city of Shechem is long gone, the town of Nablus now exists on the same site. The Biblical text in Joshua describes the building of an altar on Mt Ebal, the offering of sacrifices, the writing of the Torah, and the division of the nation onto both mountains, while the Levites, located in the valley between them, recited the blessings and curses.

Some years ago, Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal (1936-2015), on discovering the ruins of an altar on the summit of Mt Ebal, declared this to be none other than the ancient shrine built by Joshua all those years ago for this covenant ceremony. While this was disputed by other archaeologists, it remains a fascinating discovery and whatever its origin it was almost certainly linked to Israelite history since all the animal remains found on site were from animals permitted for Jewish consumption, i.e. kosher animals as listed by the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (See the photo of this altar at the end of this article.)

This is the first time a complete Israelite cultic center, including an altar for burnt offerings, has been available for study. Thanks to King Josiah’s and King Hezekiah’s activities in breaking up the בָּמוֹת bamot or high places, only two small altars for burnt offerings had previously been discovered in Israel, one in Arad and the other, no longer intact, in Beer-Sheba: both dated relatively late. The altar on Mt Ebal is not only the most ancient and complete altar, but also the prototype of the Israelite burnt offering altar of the First and Second Temple periods.

The dating of the altar to the period of the Israelites’ entry into the land, the similarity between the structure excavated and the altar described in the Torah, and the fact that only kosher animal bones were found at the site led the researchers to conclude that there was an Israelite/Jewish presence in the land of Israel at least one thousand years before the birth of Christianity and sixteen hundred years before the advent of Islam.

Notwithstanding such evidence, the Palestinian Authority continues to deny the Jewish connection with the land and attempts to re-write history by substituting Arabs for Jews at every opportunity. Even worse, a few years ago the PA began paving a road that passes near the site of Joshua’s altar and according to a group known as Shomrim al Hanetzch (Preserving the Eternal) found that the PA had carried out heavy works at the site, causing significant damage. Bearing in mind that the original Israelite ceremony was to convey to the Bnei Yisrael the themes of good and evil, blessing and curse, truth and falsehood – yet again we find the Jewish people’s relationship with the Land of Israel being undermined by fabrication, misrepresentation and downright dishonesty.

This is but one example of an overall strategy intended to de-Judaize Israel. It was Melanie Phillips who explained that the current anti-Zionist propaganda that has spread like wildfire across the Western World is an attempt to create a new worldview to replace what many now see as the historically bankrupt Judeo-Christian values of the West. Good and evil have been inverted; the Palestinian cause based upon Nazi ideology learnt originally in Berlin during WW2 by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, is considered blameless and righteous, while the Jewish people defending themselves against the most barbaric death cult the world knows today, are described as genocidal fascists. The world has gone mad – the blessed have been cursed, and the damned – sanctified.

Churches are attracting less and less people – Sunday Mass has been converted into Sunday Mass-Demonstration as thousands gather in the streets of our major cities to protest against the State of Israel and the right of Jews to defend themselves. The weekly Pro-Palestinian marches are the new weekly church-services of the West. Their calls for the death of Jews goes unpunished, while the police, either complicit or afraid of taking on the mob, arrest individual Jews who dare to sing ‘Zionist’ songs or unfurl Israeli flags. As Phillips says, a new moral order has been invented whose purpose is to subvert age-old Biblical teachings, and since the Jews were the harbingers of this moral code, they are first in the firing line.

Diane Abbott MP in London is celebrated when she claims racism cannot be applied to Jews or other white minorities facing prejudice because they can appear in public without being recognized. This is utter lunacy as the history of the Third Reich proves. Elements of science that appear to support Judeo-Christianity are also ridiculed – boundaries that stand in the way of extreme individualism are removed, ideas that formed the bedrock of our society since the days of Moses, such as the difference between men and women are threatened with dissolution.

To be sure, European colonialism brought about great tragedy and suffering, but it also brought about progress, modernity, the rule of law and higher living standards to the furthest corners of the globe. In some cases the violence perpetrated by the invaders replaced a culture that was even more sadistic and cruel. To criticize colonialism is utterly reasonable, but to ignore any advantages it brought to the indigenous population is to be disingenuous. The tragedy is that through no fault of their own, Jews have been caught up in this debate. For the wokeists, Israel and the Jews are top of the tree for colonialism. For them, Israel is the embodiment of everything they oppose and they want to see destroyed. They hardly want their own countries to survive – little wonder they claim Israel has no right to exist – for this is what they mean as they chant ‘From the River to the Sea.’

As Jews we cannot comprehend the accusation that we have colonized a country which we inhabited from the time of Joshua – and have the evidence to prove it. For others to claim we do not belong in Israel, a place from which we were forcibly removed, first by the Romans and later by the Muslims, is taken by us as just the latest form of anti-Semitism. First we were told that we were not entitled to our faith; when that failed to terminate the Jews, million were informed that they could not have their lives; and now the survivors of the Shoah – our generation of Jews are told that they cannot have a home. There is no end to the hatred.
See – I have placed before you this day – blessing and curse.
See – I have placed before you this day – life and good, death and evil.

The Torah is a manual for human beings to explore, as best they can, the nature of their species and help them discover the right way to live, embracing blessing, life and good. When this is ignored, even worse inverted, we end up with a dissenting, non-conformist, godless society where, in the words of the Bible, every person does what seems right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).

Take for example, the grim spectacle of Western hypocrisy in response to atrocities in Syria. As Druze civilians were raped, murdered and abducted, European, Canadian and Australian leaders barely blinked – until Israel intervened to halt the bloodshed. Predictably, wrote the editor of the London Jewish Chronicle, that intervention drew more outrage than the massacre that made it necessary.

Then there is the war in Gaza where many on the Left accused Israel of heinous crimes before Israel had dropped a single bomb, at a moment in time when it was clear that Hamas had committed atrocities of a sort that one scarcely imagine possible in the modern world.

As acclaimed author Sam Harris wrote, the fact that millions of people can’t do the moral arithmetic here, or have confidently produced the wrong answer, is itself an enormous problem for open societies everywhere – because this should not have been confusing. Hamas took a sadistic pleasure in torturing and killing noncombatants that should have made it instantly clear to everyone, certainly everyone bright enough to attend a university, as a student or as an academic, that jihadist groups like Hamas are the permanent enemies of civilization. On this topic of moral inversion – Harris had more to say. Defining it as moral confusion Harris considered that some of what we have seen since October 7 has simply been a resurgence of old-fashioned anti-Semitism, but much, he is convinced is actual confusion.

Most people in the West still don’t understand the problem of jihadism. We often speak about “terrorism” and “violent extremism” generically. And we are told that any linkage between these evils and the doctrine of Islam is spurious, and nothing more than an expression of “Islamophobia.” Incidentally, the term “Islamophobia” was invented in the 1970s by Iranian theocrats, to do just this: prevent any criticism of Islam and to cast secularism itself as a form of bigotry. Islam is a system of ideas, subscribed to by people of every race and ethnicity. It’s just like Christianity in that regard. Unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam are both aggressively missionary faiths, and they win converts from everywhere.

People criticize the doctrines of Christianity all the time and worry about their political and social influences—but no one confuses this for bigotry against Christians as people, much less racism. There is no such thing as “Christophobia.” As someone once said, “Islamophobia is a term created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

In any case, fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews don’t tend to be confused about the problem of jihadism because they understand the power of religious beliefs, however secular people generally are. We imagine that people everywhere, at bottom, want the same things: They want to live safe and prosperous lives. They want clean drinking water and good schools for their kids. And we imagine that if whole groups of people start behaving in extraordinarily destructive ways – practicing suicidal terrorism against noncombatants, for instance – they must have been pushed into extremis by others. What could turn ordinary human beings into suicide bombers, and what could get vast numbers of their neighbors to celebrate them as martyrs, other than their entire society being oppressed and humiliated to the point of madness by some malign power? So, in the case of Israel, many people imagine that the ghoulish history of Palestinian terrorism simply indicates how profound the injustice has been on the Israeli side.

Now, there are many things to be said in criticism of Israel, but Israel’s behavior is not what explains the suicidal and genocidal inclinations of a group like Hamas. The Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad do. These are religious beliefs, sincerely held. They are beliefs about the moral structure of the universe. And they explain how normal people—even good ones—can commit horrific acts of violence against innocent civilians—on purpose, not as collateral damage—and still consider themselves good. When you believe that life in this world has no value, apart from deciding who goes to hell and who goes to Paradise, it becomes possible to feel perfectly at ease killing noncombatants, or even using your own women and children as human shields, because you know that any Muslims who get killed will go to Paradise for eternity.

This is the tragedy of modern times – we are witnessing an entire section of one of the world’s great religions ideologically opposed to everything that the Torah teaches. When Jews read each year that we must choose between good and evil, blessing and curse, we understand that we are not being given an option – we are being handed down from heaven a directive. Our mission is to promote and enhance life, to bring blessing to the world and to seek goodness for all mankind. For the first time since the Torah was given, however, we are facing an enemy which seeks to do precisely the opposite – commit evil, favor death over life, and in so doing bring a terrible curse upon the civilized world. This is bad enough, but when large numbers of people side with them, describe them as virtuous or even choose to look away, we know more than ever the importance of Jewish teaching in regard to the salvation of the world.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Freedman