Parashat Re’eh – Gainesville
In 1981, I was in my last year of college in Toronto and, out of the blue, appeared a 20 year-old who galvanized the entire country. His name was Terry Fox and he had developed an osteosarcoma in his leg with then needed to be amputated. Out of his experience he wanted to bring awareness to the various diseases of cancer and create a fundraising program that would help research and also bring awareness. So what did he do?
Incredibly, with one good leg and one prosthetic leg, he started running across Canada. He ran a day through Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. He ran through snow, rain, wind, heat, humidity. He stopped in more than 400 towns, schools and cities to talk about why he was running. He would start at 4:30am in the morning, and often did not finish his last mile until 7pm at night. Some days hundreds of people cheered him on; other days he was alone on the road. Every evening all of Canada would tune in to see his progress. It was truly awe-inspring. And when he died because of a recurrence of his cancer after 3339 miles half-way across the country, the entire country sat shiva.
Of course Canada considered him a hero and he still is considered one. Ask any Canadian who was there and they will tell you what an inspiration he was, and still is.
There are lots of stories written about Terry Fox and there is lots of primary source documentation about what he said. And yet one word I rarely heard was the word ‘victim.’ For him that word carried too much baggage and, yet, for so many today, it is way to be noticed.
Terry Fox did not want to be noticed for his amputated leg. He wanted us to notice the pain and suffering of the too many nameless and faceless people who suffer without the fame and notoriety. Terry Fox channeled his suffering into something constructive and raised millions. Too many people these days use their suffering to get clicks and sponsors to enrich themselves.
Jews can certainly relate to Terry Fox’s way of doing things. I have always been awestruck by the way Jews have dealt with victimhood throughout history leading up to this very day in Jewish history. Era after era, year after year, regime after regime, Jews have been victims in one way or the other. And yet, there is something in the Jewish neshama – the Jewish soul – that somehow refuses to wallow in victimhood.
After the shock of October 7 and after the grief and mourning, a new phrase arouse throughout Israel: Anachnu nirkod shuv – we will dance again. After the arson of the forests in Israel, hundreds of thousands of new trees were planted. And, after the Holocaust itself, where Jews were really victims of one of the worst crimes against humanity in all of history, there are so many who did not see themselves as victims. Untold numbers of them went to Israel, came to America, or resettled in Europe and with almost superhuman courage, looked forward, built a new life for themselves, supported one another emotionally, and then, many years later, told their story, not for the sake of revisiting the past but for the sake of educating today’s young people on the importance of taking responsibility for a more human and humane future.
It is really quite remarkable, isn’t it? Not just Jews, of course, but humans have a choice at every moment: we can look back or we can look forward. We can ask: “Why did this happen?” That is always the first reaction. But staying in that question mires us in the cement of immobility. Conversely, we can ask, “What then shall I do?” This involves looking forward, trying to work out some future destination given that this is our starting point.
You can see the huge difference between the two. None of us can change the past. But we can change the future. Put another way, we can see ourselves as an object acted on by forces largely beyond our control. Or, looking forward, we see ourselves as a subject, deciding which path to take from here to where I want eventually to be.
I think Jews experienced both ways of living and had to make a choice. Their choice was codified in this week’s parasha and its very famous passage: See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today;
The Torah knows what we have often learned the hard way: our futures can be determined by outside forces not matter what. That is inevitable. We are all surrounded by forces outside our control. But what this portion is telling us and Jewish history has borne this out again and again is that what matters is how we choose to respond to these malevolent forces outside our control. The Torah is clear: Choose the good and good things are bound to happen to you. Choose the bad, and eventually you will probably suffer. Bad choices create bad people who create bad societies, and in such societies, in the fullness of time, liberty is lost.
That is why I think this is one of the most important texts in the Torah. It is not theological nor does it give rise to debates about spirituality or elements of Jewish law. This passage is an invitation for reflection and a doorway to a reorientation. This passage is a commandment of choice to choose our higher selves or our lower, baser lesser selves.
When disaster came – the destruction of the Temple – the prophet Jeremiah said something profound that ought to still resonate in our Jewish heart. He did not see the Babylonian conquest as the defeat of Israel and its God. He saw it as the defeat of Israel by its God. It was in that thought that Jeremiah embraced life. God is still there, he was saying. Return to God and God will return to you. Don’t define yourself as a victim of the Babylonians. Define yourself as a free moral agent, capable of choosing a better future.
Put another way, Jeremiah taught us to ask ourselves, “What did we do wrong?” rather than “Who did this to us?” That may be the root of Jewish guilt, for sure, but it is also the path to Jewish healing and building a just society on respect and morality.
“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse.” That was Moses’ insistent message in the last month of his life. There is always a choice. Remember what Viktor Frankl said in his book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’: even in Auschwitz there was one freedom they could not take away from us: the freedom to choose how to respond.
There is enough pain in this world and we must never minimize another’s pain and victimhood. Not all victims can choose life. Not all victims have the inner strength or resources to look forward to a future. And not all victims can escape the pain and abuse from their past. But we are a people of inspiration and who better to inspire and lift up those whose suffering is real than those who have suffered and risen from the valley of the dry bones. There is enough pain in the world: our Torah portion offers a way forward not based on the belief of some pie in the sky promise that everything we will just fine, but rather on the truth that there is a possibility for a better future in the future and not in a constant reflection of the past.
