Though Rabbi Wein ztz'l may no longer be with us, we are still privileged to benefit from his words of wisdom. All the divrei Torah that we post between now and Simchat Torah were sent to us for publication by the Destiny Foundation before he died. We are grateful for the opportunity to reproduce them here.
In this week’s parsha the Torah continues with the theme that runs through the previous parshiyot of Devarim: we are always faced with the stark choice between blessings and curses, good and evil. The words of the Torah seemingly offer little scope for any middle ground on these basic matters of belief and behavior. Yet we know that life’s events are rarely ‘all or nothing’, 100% blessing or curse. In fact, Jewish tradition and teachings instruct us that, hidden in tragedy, there is always a glimmer of hope and goodness, and that all joy and happiness contains within it the taste of the bitter.
Jewish philosophy and theology teach us that evil somehow
has a place in God’s good and benign world. We face the problem of why the
Torah addresses these matters without nuance, in such a harsh way which
seemingly brooks no compromise, without a hint of a middle ground. After all,
the Torah is not a debating society where one is forced to take an extreme
uncompromising stand in order to focus the issue being discussed more sharply
and definitively.
Far be it from me to reject the opinion of these great
scholars of Israel. However, I wish to interject a slightly different perspective
into this matter. This parsha begins with the word re’eh – “see”.
We know that there are stages in life that we can see well only with the aid of
corrective lenses, especially when reading small print. Without that
correction, we can easily make grave mistakes in seeking to size up what
appears before us. Well, this situation is not limited to the physical world:
it applies equally to our spiritual world of Torah observance and personal
morality.
Many times we think we are behaving righteously when we are
in fact behaving badly because we fail to see the matter correctly. We are not
wearing our corrective lenses,. But, with the benefit of halacha, history, good
common sense and a Jewish value system that should govern our lives, we see
things so much more clearly. Without this advantage, we see blessings and
curses, good and evil, in a manner that is blurred, their edges lacking
definition.
The Torah wishes us to see clearly, so that we will be
instinctively able to recognize what is the blessing in our life and what is
not. The Torah has been kind enough to provide us with the necessary corrective
lenses. These lenses consist of observance of Torah and its commandments and
loyalty to Jewish values and traditions.
For "Comfort from the Calendar", Rabbi Wein's devar Torah on this parashah for last year, click here.
