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PARASHAT RE'EH: See the Land, see the blessings, by Daniel Pinner

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TorahZionist:
Parashat Re’eh:

See the Land, see the blessings

 

“See: I present before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that you will listen to the mitzvot of Hashem your G-d, which I command you today. And the curse – if you do not listen to the mitzvot of Hashem your G-d, and you stray from the path which I command you today – is to go after other gods which you have not known.

 

It shall happen that when Hashem your G-d will bring you to the Land to which you are coming to inherit, then you will present the blessing on Mount Gerizim, and the curse on Mount Ebal; are they not on the other side of the Jordan, beyond the path of the sunset, in the land of the Canaanite who dwell in the plain, facing Gilgal, by Elon Moreh?” (Deuteronomy 11:26-30).

 

When Moshe commanded Israel to declaim the blessings on Mount Gerizim and the curses on Mount Ebal, he specified to them precisely where these two mountains are. Rashi’s comment (v.30) is very simple: “He placed a sign on them” – i.e., he made sure that when the Jews would reach the appropriate spot, a few weeks later, they would recognize it.

 

Intriguingly, none of the commentators addresses the question of why Moshe chose specifically these two mountains as the location. But surely he did not make this choice capriciously or randomly. And by studying the Land of Israel – more, by seeing Israel unfold in front of our eyes, physically and geographically and historically – we can see how natural and obvious a choice these two mountains are.

           

Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal are two mountains that encompass the ancient city of Shechem – Mount Gerizim to the south-west, Mount Ebal to the north-east. Mount Gerizim rises to 870 metres (2,855 feet) above sea level; Mount Ebal soars higher, reaching 940 metres (3,084 feet) above sea level. Shechem was the first city that Abraham our father settled in upon arriving in the Canaan: “Abram passed through the Land as far as the place of Shechem, as far as Elon Moreh – and the Canaanite was then in the Land” (Genesis 12:6). Shechem was the city to which Jacob repaired immediately upon returning to Israel with his hard-earned wealth and family (Genesis 33:18). Shechem was the first city in which the Children of Israel ever fought a national enemy – and defeated them (Genesis 34). So Shechem already had a long and well-known history before the Children of Israel returned home – and that history had taken place in the shadow of Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal.

           

Shechem was also a fitting place to begin national life in Israel upon returning from Egypt. 272 years earlier, the ten brothers had sold Joseph into slavery in Shechem (Genesis 37:12-28), which was the first event in the sequence that inexorably led to the Egyptian exile; and now, the fourth generation (Genesis 15:16) would return to the same place to close the circle.

           

Following directly on from this, “Joseph had adjured the Children of Israel saying: G-d assuredly will yet remember you, and you will bring my bones up from here” (Genesis 50:25), in order that his remains be buried in the plot in Shechem that his father Jacob had bought for 100 kesitah (Genesis 33:19); burying Joseph in Shechem was the brothers’ descendants’ compensation for their ancestors’ shabby treatment (Sotah 13b). Commensurate with this, when the Children of Israel were plundering Egypt in the last few hours before leaving, Moshe rescued Joseph’s bones from the River Nile in order to carry them through the desert and into Israel (Exodus 13:19; Sotah 13a, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Beshallach 1 s.v. va-yikach Moshe, Tanchuma Beshallach 2). In commanding the Children of Israel to proceed to Shechem immediately upon entering the Land, Moshe was ensuring that Joseph would be buried as soon as possible.

           

So much for the history of Shechem and its connotations for the nation of Israel. But there is more.

           

Moshe was instructing the nation that upon reaching Shechem, six tribes (Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin) would stand on Mount Gerizim; the other six (Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali) would stand on Mount Ebal; and the Kohanim and the elders of the Levites would stand in Shechem, in the valley between them, proclaiming the blessings and curses (see Deuteronomy 27). Looking towards Shechem today from Kfar Tapuach, or Yitzhar, or Itamar, or any other hilltop in that general vicinity, one sees how Shechem and the slopes and peaks of Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal constitute a natural amphitheatre; the acoustics there are phenomenal. It would have been a very natural place for the Levites to declaim these blessings and curses to the entire nation.

           

Shechem was also the first place where it was possible for the entire nation to gather. The nation entered Israel across the River Jordan, in the vicinity of Jericho, about 50 km/30 miles south-east of Shechem; the initial battles were the conquest of Jericho (Joshua 6) and Ai (ibid. 7-8), at the end of which the entire Jordan Valley were in Jewish hands. The route into the rest of Israel leads up through the wadi between the mountains – the route that today constitutes the road from Jericho to Petzael, turning left (westwards) past Ma’aleh Ephraim, and finally connecting to the Alon Road (Road 505) towards the Tapuach Junction. This is a narrow defile, through which the 3 million or so Jews would have walked in a column several miles long. The plain of Shechem, then, was the first place they reached where they could spread out to hear the words of admonition.

           

This gathering in Shechem was also the last time that klal Yisrael would be united as a single nation: from there, the various tribes would spread out to their respective territories – Benjamin, Judah, and Simeon would travel southwards along what is today Road 60 (the Tapuach-Jerusalem highway), Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali would head north, and so on. So Shechem, and the gathering there, was not only a central place geographically; it was also a critical juncture historically.

           

Thus, as the Tanach records, as soon as the battle for the Jordan Valley was over, “Joshua then built an altar to Hashem the G-d of Israel on Mount Ebal, as Moshe, the servant of Hashem, had commanded the Children of Israel, as is written in the Book of the Torah of Moshe – an altar of complete stones… And he wrote there on the stones a copy of the Torah of Moshe… And all Israel, its elders, its officers, and its judges, were standing on either side of the Ark, opposite the Kohanim and the Levites…half facing Mount Gerizim and half facing Mount Ebal – as Moshe, the servant of Hashem, had commanded – to first bless the nation of Israel. And following this, he read all the words of the Torah, the blessing and the curse” (Joshua 8:30-34).

           

This was the most appropriate welcome possible to the Land of Israel. This declamation on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, overlooking Shechem, brought the Torah, the nation and the Land of Israel together into a single focal point of time and geography. Now, more than ever, at the very end of the Egyptian exile and the very beginning of settling the Land, the warnings of what would lie ahead if Israel would forsake the Torah, and the promises of the rewards for keeping the Torah, were seared into the national collective consciousness.

           

Today, on Mount Ebal, the highest peak in the Samaria region, an IDF radar station is perched. This mountain of curses is barren, and has been for as long as records have been kept. Nothing has ever grown there; no one – not even Bedouin – ever lived there. But opposite it, on the peak of Mount Gerizim, the community of Har Brachah (“The Mountain of Blessings”) has been built. The slopes of the mountain are covered with trees and vegetation – as they have been through the millennia, even when the rest of the country was a desert. The blessings and the curses are visible for all to behold.

 

SHABBAT SHALOM

 

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