Parashat Re’eh: Look at me (5782-2022)

Our Torah Portion begins by saying: “Look, I am setting before you today blessing and curse.” (Deut. 11:26). The Torah breaks with the belief of much of the ancient world which claimed that each person had an inexorable destiny. Moshe tells the people of Israel that it is up to each one of us to choose each day, through our actions, who we want to be. If we want to go the way of good and blessing or the way of evil and curse. And this choice, as Ibn Ezra emphasizes, is personal since Moshe does not say “look” (in plural) but “look” (in singular), each one of us must choose for himself, each day, his own path. This is how Sforno explains it: "You have the two options in front of you, all you have to do is make a decision"... and yet many times what we fear most in life is making a decision or rather making the wrong decision . About this the Torah itself reminds us in this verse that this decision is daily (“today”), the decisions of yesterday should not mark the decisions of tomorrow. Every day is unique, every day we have the possibility (or rather the obligation) to (re)choose which path we want to travel. We must always aspire to more, seek to improve every day.
The Ohr Hachaim gives us a beautiful interpretation of this verse. He reads the first two words “Re'eh Anochi” not as “Look, I am” but as “Look at me”. The Rambam explains (Hilchot Teshuvah 5) that each person has the potential to become like Moshe. Following this reading, the Ohr HaChaim teaches us that Moshe sets himself as an example so that the people can see that everything he achieved they can also do. So that the people take their own model so that they imitate it. From a man who did not know how to speak until he became a great orator, from a sheepherder to the leader of an entire nation, from a prince of Egypt who could have enjoyed the benefits of exploiting a people to siding with the victims and assisting in their liberation. Moshe chose the blessing and was blessed and before dying he tells the people: "Take a good look at me today, everything I have achieved you can also do."
This is how the Ohr HaChaim closes this idea: “ Whenever a person aspires to serve the Lord he is not to look at people who have been under-achievers compared to himself and to use such a comparison in order to pat himself on the back on his relative accomplishment, but he is to train his sights on those who have achieved more than he himself and use this as a challenge to set his spiritual sights ever higher.”
Shabbat shalom,
Rabb Uri