Re’eh: Other People’s Gods
In this week’s parsha (Torah portion), Moses addresses one particular threat to the people as they stand perched on the edge of the promised land. After forty years of wandering through the desert, mostly on their own, Moses asks the people to resist conforming to the new societies they are about to enter. For the Israelites and for us, the question remains: how do we stay true to our path without getting lost in comparative thinking? How do we remember who we are in the presence of others?
Moses sets up the problem at the start of the parsha:
26 See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.
He elaborates later:
“See, I set before you today life and the good, death and the bad This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life so you and your children after you may live. (Deut 30: 15, 19).
The choice seems obvious. Of course we choose blessings! Of course we want life! But the difficulty is in the details. The Vilna Gaon, an 18th Century Rabbi, parses the first verse of the parsha, unpacking where the difficulties lie. He begins by saying that the reason the word “re’eh, ” “see” is in the singular is “so that a person will not say: ‘What am I, that I should choose for myself a good path if most of the world is behaving wickedly’?” It is up to each to see what is before you; you do what you need to do and do not take notice of the world.”
The Vilna Gaon asks us not to rationalize our behavior or build our lives in relation to others. Moses sees this threat in several different contexts.
First in relation to other nations:
29 When the One, your God cuts off the nations to which you will come to drive them out from before you, and when you drive them out and dwell in their land,
30 beware, lest you be attracted after them, after they are exterminated from before you; and lest you inquire about their gods, saying, "How did these nations serve their gods? And I will do likewise."
Second, in relation to one’s own family:
7 If your brother, the son of your mother, tempts you in secret or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your embrace, or your friend, who is as your own soul saying, "Let us go and worship other gods, which neither you, nor your forefathers have known."
I. Comparative Mind
It is very tempting to use those around us as the barometers for our success and indicators for where we should go in life. Social media is particularly pernicious in this respect, feeding us an endless chain of smiling faces, success stories and life achievements of our family, friends and acquaintances, without much evidence of their failures, losses or disappointments. The Buddhist tradition labels this act of constantly pitting oneself against the other people in one’s life (or the world) as engaging “comparative mind.”
In my life, the comparative mind gains its power when I feel shaky about myself. When I am far away from my sense of rootedness and who I am, I cast around, looking left and right to see what others are doing. Am I as successful as Joey? Am I better looking than Rebecca? The problem with this method is that I inevitably end up feeling rudderless, lost in a sea of comparisons and self-recriminations, with an underlying feeling of never quite measuring up to others. Moshe is telling us to choose the path of blessings at these moments, letting go of the flimsy map of other people’s opinions and lives and reclaiming our own.
II. Finding the Path
Of course, this all assumes we know who we are, differentiated from our friends, neighbors and families. What if we aren’t sure? The Villna Gaon predicts this confusion. In examining the word that Moshe uses, “lifnechem,” “before you, ” he explains: “And if one would say: ‘how could I know which is the good path and which is the bad path, because everything is obscure and hidden?’ – so it is written “before you” – consider and examine, listen and see with a critical eye, the history of the people [what has transpired before you – in the past] and everything will become clear.”
Our path is only discoverable by living it. We practice meditation and mindfulness, opening up our eyes to our history and to our heart and trusting that clarity will emerge for us in exactly the way it needs to. As Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet,
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue…Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. ”
Of course we will stumble and get lost. We may notice one day that we are worshiping someone else’s God and someone else’s idea of success and fulfillment. The Vilna Gaon says that moments like this are when we have to focus on Moshe’s word “ha-yom, ” “today” “’Today’ – each day will be in your eyes as new and you can start from there, and a penitent is like a newborn baby” We can always start over We can always re-orient and find our way home.