Friday, August 14, 2009

See: thoughts on re'eh

Rabbi Yaakov Luban asks why the mountains of Grizim and Eval were chosen for the macrocosmic blessing and the curse of the Jewish people. His original is that it has to do with their close proximity to Eilonei Mamrei/Shechem. It was in this area that Avraham took in guests after having his Brit Milah and was visited with G-d, and the seeds of the Jewish Nation were sowed. It was also in this vicinity that brothers sold a brother out, a mistake which would hurt the Jewish People in immeasurable ways for myriad years. These two mountains that represent the choice of blessing or curse remind us of the choices made by Avraham and The Brothers in the surrounding area. These were choices that may have seemed small at the start but that had enormous, long term consequences.
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It's really great to receive organic Torah emails from friends, as I did today:
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"I heard a vort on the parsha at a meeting I was in yesterday and I thought of you: The first passuk in the parsha says that Hashem gives us bracha u'klala. The next psukim then delineate the bracha and the klala. So why the first passuk? This man at the meeting said that often things we see are both a bracha and a klala and it's up to us to determine what they'll be. There are so many examples like that. They're all lifneichem and it's up to us to see and actualize the bracha."

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