This week we are reading Parashat Re’eh (Deut 11:26–16:17). Re’eh means “See!” For grammar fans, it’s the Qal masculine singular imperative form. ראה r-aleph-h is the standard verb in Biblical Hebrew, and in Modern Hebrew, for seeing something. And what is it that we are supposed to see?
Deut 11:26 See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: 27 blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I enjoin upon you this day; 28 and curse, if you do not … [NJPS]
Clearly, then you’re not “looking” at something that’s visible. This is “see” as we use it in colloquial English today to mean, “Think about what I’m going to tell you.” The reason that’s on my agenda this week is because of something Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth used to say. He was a fine writer, so good that the synagogue handouts here in Jerusalem reprint his old columns alongside those of living but less skilled writers — and thinkers.
Nonetheless, he had one particular bee in his bonnet that has always annoyed me. No doubt it came from his education. Many people still learn it — but it is wrong, as I’m going to demonstrate to you this week. Here it is:
And for those who may not be able to play the audio right now, a transcription:
Shema Yisrael — “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is one.” These words are the supreme testimony of Jewish faith. Each word is worthy of careful study, but it is the first — the verb Shema — that deserves special attention.
There was a profound difference between the two civilizations of antiquity that between them shaped the culture of the West: ancient Greece and ancient Israel. The Greeks were the supreme masters of the visual arts: art, sculpture, architecture and the theatre.
Jews, as a matter of profound religious principle, were not. G-d, the sole object of worship, is invisible. He transcends nature. He created the universe and is therefore beyond the universe. He cannot be seen. He reveals Himself only in speech. Therefore the supreme religious act in Judaism is to listen. Ancient Greece was a culture of the eye; ancient Israel a culture of the ear. The Greeks worshipped what they saw; Israel worshipped what they heard.
It sounds profound, yet in fact it misses the mark. This is an old idea in European civilization, this idea that the Greeks were visual and the Jews were oral. I don’t expect Rabbi Sacks ever read my dissertation; if he had he would have found out that (despite what he learned at Cambridge) there is no civilization that relies on the ear as opposed to the eye.
We’re all primates, and primates are totally visual. If you read the Bible you will see — that is, you will realize — that just as in English, the product of Greek civilization, “seeing” in the Bible means not only to encounter something with your eye but also to visualize it mentally, to have a mental concept of something. We saw precisely this at the beginning of this week’s parsha:
See, this day I set before you blessing and curse:
I don’t think anyone, least of all Jonathan Sacks, has ever imagined that God dumped something on the ground in front of the Israelites and they were looking at a blessing and at a curse. This was a visual metaphor, something they were supposed to think about.
The same use of “seeing” runs through the entire Hebrew Bible. Three examples from Genesis will be enough to make the point:
First, when Joseph become the Grand Vizier, Pharaoh says to him, “See [רְאֵה֙], I put you in charge of all the land of Egypt” (Gen 41:41).
Second, when Laban concludes a Memorandum of Understanding with Jacob at Gilead, he threatens, “If you ill-treat my daughters or take other wives besides my daughters—though no one else be about, remember [רְאֵ֕ה], God Himself will be witness between you and me” (Gen 31:50).
Finally, when Isaac blesses Jacob — mistakenly thinking he is blessing Esau — he says, “Ah [רְאֵה֙], the smell of my son is like the smell of the fields that the LORD has blessed” (Gen 27:27).
In none of these cases is anyone actually being asked to look at an object or a scene in the vicinity. Note that NJPS goes so far as to translate the second of these examples as “Remember” and the third, most strikingly, as “Ah.” Yet all three are the same word as the word that gives this week’s parashah its name, the command form of the verb “to see,” Re’eh.
We find the same thing seven more times in Deuteronomy; see my article “To See a Sound” for more on this subject. There are a couple of other times when God says this word to Moses where he is actually telling him to have a look at the land that he is not going to enter, but seven times besides our verse there is a re’eh that means “Get this mental concept … picture this” — just the way you would tell a classical Greek to do it, not by listening, but by looking.
The one I most want to highlight is in stark contrast to what Jonathan Sacks said about ancient Greece being a culture of the eye and ancient Israel a culture of the ear — “the Greeks worship what they saw; Israel worshipped what they heard.” It uses the same form of the verb that begins Parashat Re’eh, except in the plural rather than the singular. It is certainly true that Israel did not see God, but “seeing” is the relationship that they are supposed to have with the idea of God:
Deut 32:39
See [רְא֣וּ], then, that I, I am He;
There is no god beside Me.
I deal death and give life;
I wounded and I will heal:
None can deliver from My hand.
The Torah says sh’ma when it wants to get our attention, re’eh when it wants us to think about something. See what I mean?
I hear what you are saying, professor, and I am going to look into this over the weekend….
Sometimes we English speakers say “Look, …” and the speaker states something the listener is supposed to think about.