R’eih. See.
That single word — a command, really — opens this week’s parashah. Not “hear,” not “consider,” not “reflect upon.” See or, as I like to say, Looky here!” Moses is not asking the Israelites to passively receive information. He is demanding that they open their eyes, engage their minds, and look clearly at the world set before them.
So let us do exactly that on this Kabblat Shabbat. Let us see.
When we look at this parashah literally, we discover something striking. The Israelites are told that upon entering the land, they will pronounce the blessing from Mount Gerizim and the curse from Mount Ebal. When you find these two mountains on a map, you see something almost too perfect to be accidental: two peaks standing side by side, a valley running between them.
Can you picture it? You are standing in that valley. To your left, one mountain. To your right, another. The path you choose — the direction you turn — determines everything that follows. It is not a subtle image. It is the starkest possible visual representation of moral choice. God does not whisper the stakes. God sculpts them into the landscape.
But there is something even more powerful here when we step back from the literal and look figuratively. Moses is not really describing geology or geography. He is describing a Jewish understanding of the human condition.
Remember, he is speaking to a generation of Jews who were not at Sinai. They didn’t hear the thunder. They didn’t see the lightning. They were not there when the covenant was first given. And yet Moses says to them — and through them, to us: this is your choice to make. You do not get to inherit faith passively. You must choose it. Every generation must choose it. Every person must choose it. And today, everyone of us is a Jew by Choice, not simply by birth. And each of us chooses how to express that Jewishness.
I don’t know if there is free will or not. Even great philosophers and scientists debate it. Nature versus nurture. Movement built into the fabric of space and time. Who knows? But I choose to believe that despite the philosophical difficulties, free will exists and it is a notion anchored deeply into Jewish thought.
The Reform Movement has always honored it as central to who we are — not as an excuse to abandon obligation, but as the very mechanism by which obligation becomes meaningful. A commandment followed out of fear is compliance. A commandment chosen with intention is covenant.
So the real question Moses is placing before us is not simply whether to keep this law or that one. The deeper question is: Are you engaged? Are your eyes open? Are you choosing — or are you drifting?
This has always been the danger. In ancient times, the Israelites were tempted to follow the ways of the peoples around them, not out of malice, but because assimilation is easier. It is always easier to go along. It takes no effort to be swept downstream. Swimming against the current — that requires a decision, and it requires you to make that decision again, every single day.
We face the same temptation. Not necessarily the temptation of idol worship, but the temptation of indifference. Of letting others make the choices. Of telling ourselves that our voice doesn’t matter, that one person cannot change anything, that the problems are simply too large and too complex for any of us to address.
That is not free will. That is its abdication.
This parashah also calls us, in its later passages, to care for those in need — the stranger, the widow, the poor at our gate. Our tradition has always understood that worship is not confined to the sanctuary. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel understood this when he marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and said afterward that he felt as though his legs were praying. We “pray with our feet.”
And today, there is no shortage of ways to do exactly that.
Many in our community are engaged in work for social and environmental justice — advocating for those wrongly convicted, working to ensure that our synagogues are places of sanctuary, supporting women’s rights, fighting human trafficking. These are not distractions from Jewish life. They are Jewish life. They are the blessing path made visible. They are what it looks like when a community climbs Mount Gerizim together.
We may debate the particulars of Jewish practice. We may differ on questions of kashrut, of liturgy, of observance. The Reform Movement makes room for that honest diversity. But there is one thing we cannot be diverse about, and that is the ethical core of our tradition. We cannot stand idle while others suffer. The Torah says it plainly: do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor. That is not a suggestion. That is a command, as clear as any in the Torah.
So, as we begin this new week, I want to leave you with the image of those two mountains.
You are in the valley. Both paths are open. No one is forcing your feet in either direction. That is the gift — and the weight — of free will.
The blessing path is not always the easier one. It asks something of you. It asks that you see the world clearly, that you refuse the comfort of willful ignorance, that you engage with the covenant your ancestors made — and choose, with intention, to make it your own.
Will you choose the blessing? And once you have chosen it, will you be a blessing — to your family, to your community, to the stranger who needs you?
R’eih. See.
The mountains are right in front of you.
Shabbat Shalom.
