Parashat Re'eh: Learning to See

"Re'eh anochi noten lifneichem hayom berachah u'kelalah." "See, this day I set before you a blessing and a curse." (Deuteronomy 11:26)

Our parashah opens with a single word that demands our attention: Re'eh. See.

It is not merely an invitation to look with our eyes, but to see with intention—to pause, to pay attention, to notice what habit, fear, or indifference has taught us to overlook.

It is no coincidence that our Sages return to this very verb in Pirkei Avot. Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai tells his disciples, "Tze'u u're'u"—"Go out and see"—before asking them to discern the best path a person should choose in life. Jewish ethics begins with vision. Before we can choose wisely, we must first learn how to see.

And so the question immediately confronts us:

What do we choose to see? And what have we chosen not to see?

Behind this imperative lies one of the Torah's deepest teachings: human freedom. Blessing and curse are not presented as unavoidable destinies, but as possibilities. The choice always remains ours.

Yet Re'eh speaks not only about seeing. A few verses later another verb appears: "Im shamoa tishme'u"—if you truly listen—and its opposite, if you do not listen.

First we see.

Then we listen.

Only then are we able to choose.

Perhaps that is the Torah's pedagogy.

For we can look without truly seeing. We can hear without genuinely listening. We can become so accustomed to suffering that it fades into the background, becoming just another part of the landscape.

We live in an age marked by war, violence, displacement, poverty, antisemitism, racism, and an ever-growing inability to hear those with whom we disagree. The constant flood of headlines and images can have the opposite effect from what it should. Instead of awakening compassion, it can numb it.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once reminded us, "Few are guilty, but all are responsible."

We are not responsible for everything that happens in the world. But we are responsible for how we respond.

Viktor Frankl expressed it beautifully:

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our freedom..."

And perhaps that sacred space is precisely where Re'eh invites us to stand.

Next week we welcome Elul, the final month of the Jewish year. It is the season of cheshbon hanefesh—an accounting of the soul—and the beginning of our journey of teshuvah.

Not a season of self-condemnation.

A season of honest self-examination.

A season of returning.

It also reminds me of an ancient custom that, at least in many Conservative communities, has become less common over the years: immersing in the mikveh before Rosh Hashanah, before Yom Kippur, or before both.

Too often we think of the mikveh simply as a ritual bath.

But perhaps it is something far deeper.

The mikveh does not erase the past. It is not a magical pool that washes away our failures. No one enters one person and emerges another.

The water does not change us.

We choose to change.

Our Sages taught that a mikveh is valid only when its waters remain connected to a living source. That image speaks powerfully to Elul.

Our souls, too, must remain connected to a living source and to the world around.

When resentment settles within us... when fear hardens us... when indifference stagnates inside us... something essential begins to lose its vitality.

Immersion, then, becomes less about washing and more about asking.

What has accumulated within me?

What must I release?

What still cries out for healing?

What do I long to let flow again?

Teshuvah is not merely about repentance.

It is about returning.

Returning to the person God calls us to become.

Whenever we choose indifference over compassion, dehumanization over dignity, hatred over understanding, antisemitism or racism over justice, we participate in building a world shaped by curse.

Whenever we choose compassion, justice, responsibility, and respect for the image of God in another human being, we add blessing to the world.

Perhaps blessings and curses are not only events that happen to us.

Perhaps they are worlds we help create.

Another phrase echoes throughout this week's parashah:

"Hamakom asher yivchar Adonai Elohekha"—"the place that Adonai your God will choose."

Traditionally, it points to the place where the Sanctuary would one day stand.

But perhaps it also points inward.

To that sacred place within ourselves from which we think, judge, choose, and act.

We all strive to live according to principles and values.

Yet our ideals do not guarantee that we will never lose our way.

That is why we must keep returning to that inner sanctuary—examining our convictions, acknowledging our failures, repairing what has been neglected, restoring what has lost its meaning.

That, too, is teshuvah.

This might be exactly what our people—and our world—need today:

To make room.

Room for those who need help but do not know how to ask.

Room for dialogue in an age of shouting.

Room for thoughtful disagreement in a culture of slogans.

Room for a Jewish identity confident enough to affirm itself without denying the humanity of others.

And we must also learn to recognize the blessings.

They are there.

Quietly.

Often unnoticed.

They live in the teacher who continues to teach.

The caregiver who refuses to give up.

The volunteer who feeds the hungry.

The physician who fights to save a life.

The person who dares to confront antisemitism—or any form of hatred—with moral courage.

They live in those who continue to study.

To create.

To hope.

To build bridges when it would be easier to build walls.

The Torah never promises us a world without pain. Perhaps the deepest blessing is something else altogether: The ability to choose how we will answer that pain.

We can harden our hearts. Or we can open our hands.

We can allow fear to imprison us. Or transform it into responsibility.

We can focus only on the curses. Or we can ask ourselves, each day: What blessing can I bring into the world today?

I am liking to think that is Re'eh's enduring message.

Not simply to choose between blessing and curse.

But to choose what we will see, what we will hear, and from what place within ourselves we will respond.

As the Sages teach in Pirkei Avot, we must first go out and see. Only those who truly learn to see can discover the right path to choose.

May this month of Elul grant us the courage to look inward without turning away from the world around us; the humility to repair what is broken; and the determination to add, each day, a little more blessing to God's world.

For blessing does not begin when curses disappear.

It begins the moment someone chooses not to pass them on.

Re'eh. See. Listen. Choose. Return. And then—build.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Gustavo Geier