By Scott Taryle, August 23, 2025
Since I was young, I was fascinated by the Jews. What little I knew about Judaism intrigued and appealed to me so much that as a young adult, I announced to my mother, “I want to convert to Judaism.” My mother was flabbergasted. “You cannot convert to Judaism,” she said. “Why?” I asked. “Because,” she said, pointing to the menorah in the cabinet and the Fiddler on the Roof album on the stereo, “you’re already Jewish. I’m Jewish, your father is Jewish, all your grandparents are Jewish, your great-grandparents fled Russia because they were Jewish.”
I already knew all that. But still it didn’t seem to me like I was completely Jewish. We did do some Jewish things at home. We had the menorah and the Fiddler on the Roof album. My mother did her best, more than she grew up with, to give us a Jewish identity and a love of Israel. But we didn’t practice Judaism much, we didn’t belong to a synagogue, didn’t keep any semblance of kosher or have Shabbat dinners, didn’t know the prayers, and didn’t know what a Sukkah was. But I did have a briss and I do have a Hebrew name, ….. Shalom Simchah ben Avraham v’Sarah. Because of that name, when I am called up for an aliyah to the Torah, some people assume I’m a Jew by Choice, a convert. I’m flattered. Being a Jew by Choice is immensely admirable. I wanted to be one! But the truth is that my mother’s Hebrew name just happens to be Sarah, and my father’s Hebrew name—as far as I could tell from finding my briss certificate to prove I was Jewish so I could get married—is apparently Avraham. So I didn’t convert to Judaism. I was born this way.
But in a way, I am a Jew by choice, as are all of us here. None of us have to be here today. As a purely practical matter, in 21st Century America, none of have to observe to the extent that we do, or to participate in Jewish life in any way. We are People Who Live As Jews … By Choice. That was not necessarily true of most of the generations before us, or currently in other parts of the world, but here, right now, we in this room, whether we were born as Jews, converted, or in that process are People Who Choose to Live as Jews.
That choice we made is highlighted in the the first three psukim of this week’s parashah, Re’eh (Deut. 11:26-28). Moses instructs the Israelites,
רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃
אֶֽת־הַבְּרָכָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּֽוֹם׃
וְהַקְּלָלָ֗ה אִם־לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם…
Translated literally: “See, I give in front of you today blessing and curse. The blessing that you hear (תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ) the mitzvot of Hashem your God. The curse, if you don’t hear the mitzvot …..”
The grammar in those lines is interesting. The verb רְאֵ֗ה (see) is in the imperative – command form. The Israelites are being commanded to see. What can that mean to be commanded to see something? It would seem more logical to command someone to “look” (in the Hebrew of the Torah, “הבית” or in later Hebrew “תסתכל”). To look is a deliberate act. But seeing is more of an automatic function of your eyes. Light waves hit your retina and transmit a signal to the brain. If your eyes are open, and the lighting is sufficient, and something has been placed right in front of you (“לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם”), you can’t help but “see it.”
Or can you? Too many times, we fail to see what’s right in front of our own eyes. Perhaps the implication of stating “ראה” in the command form is that to truly “see” something requires more than passivity—we must make an active, deliberate effort—we must choose– to see, to recognize, the blessing and the curse that God has placed right in front of us. And the further implication is that many of us do not.
This past Erev Shavuot, Temple Beth Am had a terrific speaker, author Sarah Hurwitz, who was interviewed by Tom Fields-Meyer. Hurwitz was a speech writer for First Lady Michelle Obama, and the author of a book, “Here All Along: finding meaning, spirituality and a deeper connection to life in Judaism After Finally Choosing to Look There.” Hurwitz had grown up a Jew without much connection to Judaism, a very familiar American story. Almost by happenstance, she took an Introduction to Judaism class, which led her to a retreat, and more classes, until she gradually discovered, to her astonishment, that a beautiful, intellectual, and spiritually meaningful treasure had been right in front of her eyes all along. But as the subtitle of her book suggests, she first had to “choose to look there.” “ראה.”
In contrast to the first line of the parashah commanding the Israelites to “see,” the next pair of psukim refer to a different sense, לישמוע, to hear. Again,
אֶֽת־הַבְּרָכָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם ׃
וְהַקְּלָלָ֗ה אִם־לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙…
The blessing is “that you hear” God’s mitzvot, and the curse is if you don’t hear. Similarly to “ראה”, the verb in the command form, literally, is “hear” rather than “listen” (which in later Hebrew would be “תקשיבו”). We often think of hearing as a passive occurrence—if your ears are properly functioning and there’s an audible sound nearby, you’ll surely “hear” it. But the use of the command form of the verb again implies a more active, deliberate effort to listen and thereby truly “hear.” The verb, לישמוע, is very frequently used in the Torah in this way. In the most familiar passage in our liturgy, we are commanded “ישראל שמע” “Hear, Israel.”
Why is it that the Israelites are commanded to “see” the blessing and the curse that were set before them, but then are instructed that they must “hear” the mitzvot in order to have that blessing?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory wrote a 2018 commentary on parashat Reeh entitled “Seeing and Hearing,” in which he focused on the words “ראה” (see) and “תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ” (hear). Regarding the opening word, “Re’eh,” Rabbi Sacks notes,
“On the face of it, Moses is making an appeal to the eye. Not the ear. However, if we examine the role of sight in Judaism we discover something strange. Often, when the Torah seems to be using a verb or metaphor for sight it is actually referring to something not seen at all, but rather, heard.”
(rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/reeh/seeing-and-hearing). Indeed, Rabbi Sacks notes, the very things that Moses instructs us to “see” are actually auditory, a blessing and a curse—words. Rabbi Sacks’ takeaway is that Judaism is fundamentally not a religion of seeing, but rather of hearing. We prohibit visual images of God and do not worship the beautiful tree or mountain, or the beauty of the human form, but rather we venerate words—Torah, t’filah, mitzvot. According to Rabbi Sacks, we should therefore read “ראה” as actually meaning “שמע”, wherever that word is used metaphorically in the Tanach.
I would suggest a slightly different reading in which “ראה” and “תישמו,” are not merely synonymous. They represent two separate, necessary steps toward realizing the blessing referred to in the parashah. Seeing is essential and powerful. Seeing with our own eyes is the way we verify facts, confirm and accept them as truth. Seeing is believing. It is also the way we imagine, we visualize. But seeing is surface level, and preliminary. Sound penetrates and reverberates deeply. Hearing connotes a profound understanding, heeding, and harkening. As the Israelites said at Mount Sinai, “ונשמע נעשה” –literally, “We will do and we will hear,” but read to mean “We will do and we will understand.” Hearing is the way we internalize, perceive beyond the surface of that which our eyes have shown us. It is that metaphoric “voice in our heads” that guides us off of the wrong path and onto the right one if we only listen to it.
Moses first sees the burning bush- a visual spectacle that catches his attention. But importantly, he then hears God’s voice, hearkens to it, heeds it. On Chanukah, the central commandment is to “see” the lights—we are forbidden to use them but are only to “see them” (לראותם בלבד אלא), and thus to remember the miracle. But on one of the highest Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah, the most well-known commandment is to “hear” the shofar, the trembling and awesome sound from Sinai which will stir and awaken us to return to mitzvot and God. In a familiar part of our liturgy we recite every day, we are commanded–to see the tzitzit (“אותו וראיתם”), a visual cue to remind us of the mitzvot. But of course we recite that commandment during the part of the prayer book that we call the “שמע” –Hear, Israel.
So in those opening psukim, Moses is instructing us to do two different things: To see the blessing and the curse, and to hear the mitzvot in order to achieve that blessing. That first command, “” is a modest one. An easy ask. Just “See!” Just open up your eyes and recognize what has been set right in front of your face “לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם.” Recognize and acknolwedge that you have been given all the tools for good and life and the free choice to accept or reject them. As Hurwitz said, just “finally choose to look there.”
But the second instruction tells us that to actually receive, experience the blessing we must take the further, very active step of “hearing” the mitzvot. Not merely, passively receiving audio waves in our ears, but understanding and actively internalizing them, hearing them as a voice in our heads and making them guiding principles in our lives.
Another linguistic point: In the sentence:
“את הברכה אשר תישמעו אל מצות, which is usually translated as “the blessing if you listen, the word translated as “if” is “אשר”… which generally means “that”… rather than “אם”, the usual word for “if.” It is not merely a “blessing IF you listen to, understand and heed the mitzvot”, it is a “blessing THAT you listen, understand and heed the mitzvot.” The blessing is not a reward for choosing to “hear” or harken to the mitzvot: the blessing is the very act of choosing and following the mitzvot. It is a blessing to choose to be connected with a set of principles and values, to be able to intertwine our everyday lives with centuries-old rituals that connect us to God, and to be part of a community that does likewise, with whom to share the simchas and the sadnesses, the holidays and the fasts.
n her book, Hurwitz sadly reports, “But these days, all American Jews are Jews by choice–and many of us are choosing to opt out.” Yet she adds, “At a time when all Jews are Jews by choice, we have to believe that Judaism is worth choosing. I wrote this book in the hope of showing you that it is.” Like Hurwitz, I am not what anyone would call an extremely observant Jew—I ought to be more—but just to the extent that I have chosen to live more as a Jew, my life has been a blessing in so many ways. And by the way, as of this past April, I’m one of few Jews who can say that they have been to their 84-year-old mother’s bat mitzvah.
As we approach the coming new year, may each of us continue to make the active choice: “ראה” — see — the blessing that has been set right in front of our eyes, and “תשמעו–truly, deeply hear.