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RE’EH 5784
A Time To Mourn, A Time To Dance
Rabbi Andrew Shaw Chief Executive, Mizrachi UK
I have nally arrived in Israel
From when I took off from Heathrow on Wednesday morning, it took 33 hours until I arrived in Tel Aviv! I had to y with my son via Larnaca (Cyprus) and then there were long delays – but we got here. That is a whole other story.
Israel is not the same country that it was and the scars of October 7th are everywhere. From the names of the hostages as you walk towards passport control in Ben Gurion, to the posters and signs all over the country, not to mention the thousands of people still displaced from the homes and the grieving of the families of the 1500 or so who have been murdered and killed by Hamas and Hezbollah
However, despite this, it is still Israel, the Jewish home, the greatest testament to the renaissance of the Jewish people in over 2000 years, as Rabbi Sacks said:
The messiah has not come. Israel is not yet at peace. The Temple has not been rebuilt. Our time is not yet redemption. Yet many, if not all, of the prayers of two thousand years have been answered.
Which is why this week’s parsha is dif cult to read.
Moshe Rabbenu, our greatest ever leader, the human being who in all of history was the closest to God, is giving his nal addresses to the Jewish people. And he says:
For you are crossing the Jordan, to come to possess the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, and you shall possess it and dwell init. And you shall keep to perform all the statutes and ordinances that I am setting before you today. Devarim 11:31-32
It is the climax of the Exodus from Egypt the journey to enter the land, to build a society in God’s image. An exodus followed by a journey led and spearheaded by Moshe under direction from God.
But he will not be going.
Moshe can simply see the land, but he can never enter. Yet, he encourages and instructs his nation to prepare for this new future in the promised land.
So, we must remind ourselves how blessed we are as a generation that not only can we visit Israel but that we have a Jewish state.
However, as I said earlier, that State is hurting.
Hopefully this week a process begins that can bring some comfort to the families of the fallen and therefore to the country as a whole
On Tuesday night at 7pm, in Yerushalayim, we will launch the Simchat Torah Project in the presence of the bereaved families. After an emotional ceremony, they will hand a Sefer Torah cover with the name of their loved one on the back, to a community who will take them back to their shuls all over the world and put them on a Torah to dance with on Simchat Torah.
We have spoken to many of the families this week, the majority of them not religious, and they have expressed how moved they are that this project is happening and how they want to meet their community, to hug them, to connect to them It really is a wonderful example of the Jewish global family.
The launch at the Southern Wall is the nal event in a two-day conference where 200 people are coming in from all over the globe representing over 100 communities from eight countries. The actual number of current registrations is almost 500 shuls from thirty countries. We still hope to grow that number in the few weeks remaining. If your shul has not signed up, please make sure that they do!
During the two days we will be going down south to visit the kibbutzim that were attacked on October 7th as well as holding a ceremony at Nova.
While there we will come face to face with the start of this week’s parsha
Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.
Rabbi Sacks once said:
“Unlike almost every other culture in ancient and modern times, Judaism is a religion of sound, not sight; of hearing rather than seeing; of the word as against the image.”
The God encountered by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by Moses in the burning bush, and by the Israelites as they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, came not as an appearance, a visible presence, but as a voice.
As Moshe taught the Jewish people:
Then Hashem spoke to you out of the re. You heard the sound of words, but saw no image; there was only a voice . . . Be very careful, since you did not see any image on the day that God spoke to you out of the re at Horeb.
The God of Israel, God at the heart of reality, cannot be seen. Hence the severity of the prohibition against making images.
Hence one of the key words of Devarim (which means "words") is Shema, meaning "Hear" or "Listen".
In one form or another, the verb shema appears no less than 92 times in the course of Devarim.
So why here are we being told to SEE not HEAR?
The answer is that it is not referring to a command to visually see something concrete but to conceptualise a world view based on Bracha and Klala – blessing and curse, life
and death That we de ne our world by Bracha – a closeness to the Divine Plan or Klala –a distance.
Therefore, many English translations of Re’eh actually translate it as ‘understand’ not ‘see’.
The actions at Nova, the brutal murder of hundreds, demonstrates the epitome of Klala, a cursed, evil and warped ideology versus the actions of the heroes of Israel who risked their lives to save others, representing the epitome of Bracha, a blessed, holy and lifeaf rming ideology.
Today there is such confusion, with many in the west praising the side of Klala and death and attacking the side of Bracha and life.
The Simchat Torah Project is here to remind us as a people who we are, what our values are and what is the lifeblood of our people, families and communities united by the Torah, Israel and the Jewish people.
It took me 33 hours to reach Israel.
It took Bnei Yisrael 40 years
This week we will begin a process to bring the blessing of Israel to countries and communities all over the world.
Hashem tells us:
Keep and hearken to all these words that I command you, that it may bene t you and your children after you, forever, when you do what is good and proper in the eyes of the Lord, your God. Devarim: 12:28
We will do this while remembering all that we have lost and committing ourselves collectively to strengthen the Jewish future
Join us on Tuesday night from 5pm UK time www.mizrachi.org/stplive
Shabbat Shalom
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