Good Shabbos, Good Shabbos!

This weeks Torah Portion is Parshas Re’eh. This weeks Parsha is jam packed with ideas about Israel, Laws of Offerings, Jewish thought vs. Idolatrous thought, false profits, bad influences, The idea of the chosen People, Laws of Kosher eating, and much much more! Aside from simply encouraging you to read the parsha and all of the many facets that go into it, I want to draw attention to the first line in the Torah portion this week. “See, I present before you today a blessing and a curse.” The Torah goes on to describe that there are blessings for proper actions and mitzvot, and the opposite, for not-so-desired behavior. Beyond the idea of reward and punishment, The famous Polish Chassidic Rebbe, The Sfas Emes, (1847-1905) explains this verse by quoting his grandfather who recalls the idea that traditionally, one of the daily morning blessings recited thanks God for giving a rooster the ability to tell the difference between day and night. Now the obvious question is “What does a rooster have to do with me?!” I’m not a farmer, I don’t care about chickens! Maybe you’re even a post-modern-vegan, PETA card carrying hipster who will only use Roosters in metaphors if they are free range fed and given non-goose pillows at night. The sfas emes is telling us something very deep about our Torah portion through this blessing. When we thank God for a Roosters knowledge, on a deeper level we are saying, thank you God, for giving ME knowledge. “Night” kabbalistically is bad, evil, not-good and “day” spiritually speaking, is good, holy, and positive. The Sfas emes is saying that our blessing is actually saying thank you to God for giving us FREE WILL to choose between Good and Evil, ie, blessings and curses. Regardless of news media, billboard ads or our friends peer pressure, we always have a choice!

The first line in this weeks Torah portion isn’t simply saying there is a system of reward and punishment, implied in this verse is the idea of Free Will. We are able to make the right decisions. Oftentimes having free will is hard. It means making tough choices, sometimes against the grain of the popular opinion. We have the free choice to make our lives a blessing, so let’s take the power of this weeks Torah Portion to help us recognize our FREE CHOICE and to help us find inspiration for those tough choices that we know will bring more blessing into our lives!

Shabbat Shalom!!

Derek Gormin
Director of Education