By Marco Del Monte
Seeing the Vision
“SEE, I set before you today the blessing and the curse” (Deut 11:26)
In the first verse of our Parashah I believe many psycho-religious considerations are enclosed.
It would suffice to read just the title in its exhortatory form to make us understand that we ought to open our eyes: Re'eh! See! Going into more detail, we notice that the text tells us that "today", meaning every day, we are urged to activate a profound reflection on the vision of ourselves and consequently of the world. This consequently leads to different judgments and perceptions. That "Re'eh Anochi" can be read as: "See within your Self!" Depending on how your vision interprets the various dynamics that present themselves to you, you can define the exact same event as a blessing or a curse. Listening to a lecture by Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, the Rabbi spoke of people who always see a negative consequence even in a good gesture towards them: "You give them a sweet and they tell you: why do you want to cause me a cavity in my teeth? You offer them a job and they reply that because of you they will no longer be able to receive state benefits" and so on...
In the final part of the Parashah, the Shalosh Regalim are discussed, namely the three pilgrimage festivals, Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot, where people literally went on foot (Regalim) to the place of the Sanctuary. We find the term Shalosh Regalim, in a decidedly singular form, in the language used by Balaam's donkey when he tried to curse the people of Israel: "What have I done to you that you have struck me these Three Times-Shalosh Regalim?" (Num 22:29). The donkey uses the term "Regalim" as a synonym for "pe'amim-times". Rashi explains this linguistic peculiarity by saying that it was impossible for Balaam to strike and therefore curse a people that precisely celebrates these three festivals. It is no coincidence that on these festivals there is a Mitzvah to "see" and "be seen" by Hashem; indeed, the korban that was brought was called the "Korban Re'iyah", meaning "the sacrifice of seeing". This way of correcting our spiritual diopters, which allows us to have a clear vision of the world, is the exact opposite of the vision of Balaam, the man with a closed eye (Num 24:3, see Rashi's commentary).
Balak's problem when he turned to Balaam to have Israel cursed was that this people "Kissa et Ein Haaretz" (Num 22:5) had literally covered "the eye of the land", meaning they had changed the way of viewing the dynamics of the world. This is perhaps why one of Israel's enemies is a sorcerer blind in one eye. Monocular vision does not allow one to see things "in depth". Seeing only the negative part, with a single eye, makes us lose the meaning of the people of Israel, a people that cannot be cursed because it has, or at least should have, a "correct vision", which is found in particular in those three events that reinforce the vision-Re'iyah that everything comes from Hashem: since Hashem is good, everything that may appear, to the eyes of a blind observation, as negative, can and must necessarily be transformed into a deeper vision. Perhaps precisely for this reason, at a certain point Hashem "opened Balaam's eyes" (Num 22:32). If chas veShalom one were not to open both eyes, one would risk being like Balaam, a man bound to "Ayin Hara", meaning the defective, non-functioning eye, an Evil Eye.
But all this is nullified by remembering Re'eh, seeing well, and drawing close (Korban from the root Karov) to the right vision (Re'iyah) of Hashem. As Rabbi Nachman used to say to his students: "Did you raise your eyes to heaven this morning?" The same Rabbi who wrote in his magnum opus, Likutei Moharan, that today we see both good and evil, but when Mashiach comes we will manage to see only the good, even that which we thought was evil, and we will understand that just a little bit of "Light" was enough to see better!
Good Vision and Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.