“See, this day I set before
you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Eternal
your God that I enjoin upon you this day;
and curse, if you do not obey
the commandments of the Eternal your God, but turn away from the path that I
enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not
experienced. When the Eternal God brings
you into the land that you are about to enter and possess, you shall pronounce
the blessing at Mount Gerizim and the curse at Mount Ebal.”
The Torah portion for this Shabbat, Re’eh,
begins with that passage. It doesn’t say
what the blessings and curses would be, but it does offer an illustration of
what blessing and curse might look like.
Mount Gerizim is just south of the modern
city of Nablus, while Mount Ebal stands to the north. Mount Gerizim has numerous springs at its
foot and is the more fertile and green of the two mountains. Mount Ebal is more desolate and devoid of
vegetation.
In the Torah, and even in our prayers,
blessing is a word that can mean “fertile” or even refer to “rain.” One of the daily prayers in the
T’filah/Amidah section of the service asks God to grant “rain and dew for
blessing” on the face of the earth. We
know well in Las Cruces how much rain is a blessing because it is so
infrequent. Many areas in the rest of
our nation are experiencing a severe drought this year, and daily news programs
have been reporting about the effect that
the lack of rain will have on food prices in the coming months.
As much as we do have a need for rain in a
literal sense, the image of “rain” also speaks to the intangible blessings that
we can bring to the world. In Isaiah
Chapter 45, the prophet Isaiah brought this message of hope to his people while
they were still in exile in Babylonia: “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let
the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open , that salvation may
spring up, and let it cause righteousness to spring up as well. For I, the
Eternal One, have created it!”
And while the rain comes from nature or, as
some would say, from God’s creation, the rain of blessing that we can offer the
world is in our hands to make real. In
Gates of Repentance, our High Holy Day prayerbook, we read these words during
the Rosh Hashanah evening service:
“Words there are and prayers, but justice there is not, nor yet
peace….Although we must wait for judgment, we must not wait for peace to fall
like rain upon us….Peace will remain a distant vision until we do the work of
peace ourselves. If peace is to be
brought into the world, we must bring it first to our families and
communities….Be not content to make peace only in your own household; go forth
and work for peace wherever men and women are struggling in its cause.”
The vision of a fertile mountain filled
with blessing in this week’s Torah reading signifies how we can make an impact
on the world. Goodness, kindness,
compassion, compromise, understanding, commitment, truth, fairness – these are
what can make the soil of human life fertile and the landscape of society lush
and green. Our choice to act with an
eye towards blessing can overcome the deeds of anyone who decides to bring the
world and society down to a level where the words “community” and even “love”
may have little or no meaning . In our
behavior towards each other and in our participation in community life, may all
that we choose to do rain down blessing upon the human family and upon all of
creation. And let us say Amen.
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