Choosing Blessing

'See, I set before you today a blessing or a curse'

Choosing Blessing                                            by Sara Lamm

A child is not born hating anyone. Watch a toddler in a sandbox, in any country, in any language, and you will see the same thing: curiosity, not contempt. Hatred has to be taught. It is passed down at dinner tables, absorbed from a parent’s tone, planted in the space between what a child is told and what a child sees.

Moses, standing at the edge of the Jordan with a generation that had never known Egyptian slavery, chose this exact moment to speak not about ritual or sacrifice, but about the choice between blessing and curse. If hatred is learned rather than inherited, how do we raise children who learn to choose blessing instead?

This week’s portion of the Torah, read on Shabbat is called Re’eh, meaning “see.” Not “hear,” not “know,” not “believe.” See. Moses opens this section of Deuteronomy with a command to look directly at the choice in front of the nation:

Deuteronomy 11:26-28

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse:

blessing, if you obey the commandments of Hashem your God that I enjoin upon you this day;  and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of Hashem your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.

This is not theology handed down to be memorized. It is set directly in front of the eyes of a nation, the way a parent sets a plate in front of a child. You will not be told what to think. You will see what is placed before you, and you will choose.

That single word, re’eh, is the model for raising children who do not hate. Hatred thrives when children see it modeled, normalized, or excused, and they absorb it as the default setting of the world. If we want our children to choose blessing, they must see blessing lived out, not merely hear it recited.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, writing on this portion, observed that Moses builds an entire vision of national life on individual moral responsibility, insisting that “the choice is yours; the responsibility is yours alone.” No nation before Israel had ever been told this. Every other ancient society located its fate in the hands of kings, priests, or the whims of capricious gods. Israel was told something radical: your destiny, and the character of your children after you, rests in the choices you make today. There is no blaming an enemy or a hostile world for the moral condition of your own household.

Judaism has a word for the alternative to hatred, and it is not tolerance. Tolerance is thin. The word is arevut, mutual responsibility, the conviction that kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, all of Israel is bound up one with another. A child raised on arevut does not see the stranger, the widow, or the orphan as a threat, but as a fellow image-bearer whose wellbeing is bound to his own. This is precisely what Moses commands throughout Deuteronomy: care for the poor, the landless Levite, the stranger in your gates, because you were once strangers yourselves.

Moses closes his address with words every parent should carry home:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Read that final phrase again. That you and your offspring may live. The choice a parent makes today does not end with that parent. It becomes the next generation’s inheritance.

Hatred is easy. It requires no discipline, no reflection, no daily diligence. Blessing requires all three. Moses did not ask Israel to feel a certain way. He commanded them to see, to choose, and to teach, every single day, until the choice for blessing becomes the only inheritance their children know.