There’s an old joke which says that heaven and the underworld are both great big dinner parties. Both feature people sitting around a table with a gorgeous spread of food, but elbows that won’t bend, and incredibly long forks. The difference is, in the underworld, each person only spears their own food with their own fork, and then can’t reach their mouth. Everyone goes hungry and is miserable. In heaven, on the other hand, each person spears some food and feeds it to someone across the table. In this way, everyone is fed, and they actually have fun with their incredibly long forks. It’s a silly image, and it doesn’t match the Jewish conception of the afterlife (that’s for another day), but I do think this story speaks to this week’s Torah portion.
Parsha R’eih opens with a declaration from God that rattles the bones:
Behold: this day I set before you blessing and curse. Blessing, if you listen to all the commandments of Adonai your God, and curse, if you do not listen and obey, and instead wander after other Gods.
In order to take this verse to heart and sleep at night, I needed a way to read this verse that doesn’t simply conclude that we’ll be rewarded if and only if we follow all Biblical commandments, and cursed if (or when) we can’t.
Fortunately, there’s a key to understanding God in this parasha differently, in the word mitzvah: a word most of us learned to translate as “commandment.” This word is also related to the Aramaic word tzavta, which means “to join” or “connect.” Mitzvah can be understood to mean not only commandment, but also connection.
When God sets before us blessing and curse, God really sets before us infinite opportunities to choose connection. See life before you, God asks, and act in a way that brings you closer. Closer to community, to those in need, to our Earth. Closer to ourselves. Simultaneously, God warns of the loneliness we’ll experience if we choose to seek fulfillment from a place that distracts us from our core sources of love and belonging.
Before we can leap into a New Year full of unknown potential, we engage in teshuvah – a
Hebrew word that often gets translated as “repentance,” but is closer to “sacred returning.”
We return to our deepest sources of connection and re-awaken to them with vigor – whether they are relationships with dear ones we’ve let grow routine, or relationships with the natural world that we’ve neglected. What connections are you most looking to revive, or begin anew, as we approach Elul and the New Year? How might we connect more deeply to each other as a vibrant Jewish community?