Reʻeh Drash
by Fran Margulies
Seeing is believing! SEE!, not the usual
Shmah, “Listen! Hear! ”“Shmah Yisrael!” is our
more familiar imperative because God in our
tradition is often described as only a voice,
heard, FELT, but never seen.
Moses too wanted to see. He needed it!
Remember when a younger Moses begged
God show himself? And God accommodated by
whirling past in while Moses hunkered down
behind a rock? Moses then could indeed hear
the words, but he SAW only God’s back,
Now Moses is old; his work and his journey are
almost complete. They have all arrived on the
Eastern shore of the Jordan River. He -and
they – look across to the Promised Land, and
there they see two mountains, Gerazim and
Ebal: Gerazim, a short green mountain,
covered with ripe trees, full of fruit, watered by
the moisture from the western Mediterranean
side. Near it, across a valley, a mile away, is
Ebal, a taller but barren, very dry mountain that
is blocked by the terrain from receiving rain.
AHA!, Moses must have thought, “a visible,
teaching moment!” He COULD use the sight of
these mountains in a communal ceremony
showing God’s Blessings and Curses. And,
indeed, the spectacle might have been a
familiar custom of the time and place. I have
read that visible foundation ceremonies were
indeed used in the middle east.
And,,by the way, these ARE REAL mountains!
You too can still see them.
In out parsha today we are not shown the
dramatic ceremony at Mts Gerazim and Ebal
but later, in Ki Tavo (27:11), also in the prophet
Joshua (8:30-35,) and even more in Talmud
(Sotah 37)we get MORE details. so let’s take a
look:
(Online from R. Dovid Rosenthal) The
Levites stood between the two mountains,
carrying the ARk of the Covenant, Six tribes
stood on the lower slopes of Ebal while six
tribes stood across on Gerazim. On Ebal were
Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulon, Dan and
Naphtali. On Gerazim were Simeon, Levi,
Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.
The Levites spoke (declaimed? shouted?, and
for each CURSE, they would first turn their gaze
to the six so- called “good” tribes standing on
Gerazim and utter a negative blessing. “Blessed
is he who does NOT move back the border of
his neighbor!” They would then turn to face Mt
Ebal and repeat, shout, the same statement as
a curse. Then they would repeat both acts with
a blessing.
After each blessing and curse, both set of
tribes would say “Amen!”
The visible drama AND the participation
of the whole community -perhaps this truly
happened? – surely reinforced the reality of the
curses and blessings and strengthened their
joint sense of One People under God.
Now, as we live through our own days, it
might be fun to consider how we too might
have benefited from the dramatic clarity that our
ancestors saw and felt between God’s
blessings and curses.
SHabbat SHalom!
