Reeh; United We Stand

When teaching Hebrew, it is very useful to speak in a southern dialect, because it helps us understand and appreciate the Hebrew much more. In northern dialect, ‘you’ in plural and ‘you’ in singular sound an awful lot alike, as in ‘you people,’ and as in ‘you’re the greatest.’ But here in Memphis, we can distinguish between ata and atem, you, singular, and "all y’all" which is plural.

Anyway, this is all very important in order to understand the first pasuk in our parasha, because there is a huge grammatical problem right there in the first verse. Re’eh, listen here, you singular, anochi noten lifneichem, I’m place before all y’all a blessing and a curse. So we have a serious exegetical problem, is Moshe talking to all of us or to each one of us singularly??

As a matter of fact, this problem is not unique to this first verse in our parasha. This is an issue throughout the torah and particularly in Devarim, in Deuteronomy and throughout our whole parasha it switches back and forth, between singular and plural.

The answer given by the Tzror Hamor, Rabbi Avraham Sebag of Spain, the Spanish exile, is that the torah intentionally mixes it up. He says this reflects a major principle in the torah, in our faith, and in the nature of our community. He says that even though we as Jews may be plural, we may be many, we are actually one.

We say that a lot, that we are one, but what does this mean? The Tzror Hamor says we the many are actually one for three reasons. 1. In terms of our being under one ‘patron,’ one father in heaven, one G-d, who is with us, when we are with him, and since He is one, and He is with us, we are one, and secondly, it is also true in terms of our souls that they stem from one root, our souls come from G-d, and in that sense are of one cloth. Thirdly, we are one, because we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. What does that mean? In a very novel twist, the Tzror Hamor says that it means that we should recognize that our neighbors and we are all one, Kamocha, just like you, he practically is me. United as one entity; we can be referred to as one or as many. We are many but we are actually one.

In this world of individualism, in which self fulfillment is the supreme value, Judaism preaches that you are part of something much larger than yourself. Why do I do things Jewish? Because we need to; not I, but we need to. We are part of a ‘we.’ We can’t see them all, but the proverbial ‘we’ is ever present, the shadow of Jewish history and the collective hope of the Jewish future, it’s always on our mind.