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Dennis G. Shulman

Although our reading this week, at first glance, seems to lack a unifying subject matter, a more careful examination of our biblical text reveals a single and well-articulated theme. In this continuation of Moses' farewell address to his people who are about to enter the Promised Land, Moses repeatedly reminds his audience that their future is in their own hands. Moses argues forcefully that whether they will live in perpetuity in the lush land that God is giving them, or soon forfeit their territory and be subjected to humiliating enslavement, will be determined by the people's loyalty to their God. If they follow other gods, exile and subjugation will be their future. If they follow the Lord God, the Land of Israel will be their inheritance forever. The choice, Moses consistently argues in this week's text, is theirs, not God's, to make.

We see this theme of choice established even in the first verse of our reading. Moses lectures, "Consider (Re'eh)! I set before you a blessing and a curse: a blessing if you follow the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day; a curse if you fail to follow these commandments and turn away from His path, and follow other gods whom you never knew. ... For you are about to cross the Jordan River to enter and possess the land that the Lord has assigned to you. When you have settled in it, make sure to observe all the laws and statutes that I have set before you this day."

The statutes to be followed are then specified. First in importance, all other gods must be unequivocally and vehemently renounced. Moses asserts that this renunciation of other gods is so central to the future well-being of the Israelites that even violent force must be used. Moses implores his people, "Tear down their idolatrous altars. Smash their pillars. Put their sacred posts to the fire. Cut down the images of their gods so that their deities' names will be obliterated for all ages from the land." Later, extending this renunciation even to academic interest in other gods, Moses warns, "Beware of being lured into the idolaters' ways after they have been destroyed. Do not inquire about their gods, and ask, 'How did those nations worship their gods?'"

Even when a prophet of these other deities accurately predicts a future event--even when there is evidence of divine inspiration and knowledge in a prophet's words--Moses begs his people not to listen to this pagan advocate. "If there appears among you a prophet or a dream diviner who urges you to follow another god that you have not known, even if a sign or wonder he has spoken about has come true, do not heed the words of that man for the Lord your God is testing you to see whether you truly love the Lord alone with all your heart and soul." Execution is the punishment proposed for such a prophet. So worried is Moses about his people's willingness to follow other gods that he instructs them even to kill a brother, son or "friend of one's own soul" when it is one of them who leads an Israelite to idolatry.

A second major issue, discussed by Moses in our reading this week, which will also determine the Israelites' longevity in the Promised Land, involves the care of the poor. If the soon-to-be inhabitants of Canaan will take measures to equalize farm wealth by regulating loans, and give charitably to the needy among them, Moses suggests, then the land will be theirs for generations to come. "Every seventh year, you will practice remission of all debts, ... and therefore, there will be no needy among you. ... If you follow this commandment, ... you will extend loans to many nations, but require none for yourselves. You will dominate many nations, but none will dominate you." Moses continues to instruct his people on the benevolent care of the poor, "If there is a needy person among you, ... do not harden your heart and close your hand to him. Rather, you should open your hand widely to him and lend him whatever it is that he requires. ... Give to him readily and have no regrets."

In our week's reading, choice is not only a thematic issue for the Israelites, but also for God. Moses informs his audience that God has chosen the children of Israel to be His "treasured people," and that this divine choice carries with it a special set of demands. These demands involve a total rejection of pagan practices and the adoption of dietary restrictions that constitute the core of Kashrut, later to be expounded and interpreted by the rabbis. Moses says, "You are the children of God. You should not gash yourselves or shave the front of your heads because of the worship of the dead. ... The Lord your god chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be his treasured people. You shall not eat anything abhorrent. These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep and the goat, ... and any other animal that has true hooves which are cleft and who chew the cud. ... You may eat anything that has fins and scales. ... You may not boil a kid in its mother's milk."

It is also in this week's reading that God chooses to make most explicit the centralization of the temple cult. According to many historians of the Israelite monarchy, from the coronation of Saul, the first king of Israel in 1020 BCE, to the death of King Josiah four centuries later, for most of this period, there were regional temples to which Israelites could bring their sacrifices. With the Josianic reformations in the late seventh century BCE, mostly motivated by a need for political unification of Israel and a purification of temple ritual practices, a single and exclusive temple was considered desirable. Many modern biblical scholars assert that it was this need for one temple that shaped our Deuteronomic text and motivated God, as we see Him in this week's portion, to choose an unnamed future Jerusalem as the center of Israel's religious life.

Consistent with this modern historical analysis, in our text, Moses instructs the people, "Look only to the site that the Lord your God will choose as His habitation. ... There you are to go and there you are to bring your burnt offerings and your other sacrifices, your tithes and your contributions. ... Take care not to sacrifice your burnt offerings in any place you like, but only in the place the Lord will choose in one of your tribal territories. ... You shall consecrate to the Lord your god all male firstborns that are born in your herd and your flock. ... You and your household shall eat this firstling annually in the presence of the Lord, only in the place that the Lord will choose."

It is the issue of choice--both the Israelites' choice to follow God and assure their longevity in their new land, and God's choice of the Israelites as His treasured people and Jerusalem as His beloved city--that is the pulsing rhythm of our biblical reading this week.

An idea is introduced in the first verse of our reading this week that is not fully developed until nineteen chapters later, also in the Book of Deuteronomy. Our reading begins, "Consider (re'eh in the original Hebrew)! I set before you a blessing and a curse: a blessing if you follow the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day; a curse if you fail to follow these commandments and turn away from His path, and follow other gods whom you never knew." A month from now, when Moses is finishing his farewell address that is this fifth book of the Bible, our biblical portion will complete this thought, using the same language we find in this week's reading. "I have set before you life and death, a blessing and a curse. Choose life that you and your children shall live."

As we have seen in the summary of this portion (above), choice plays a central thematic role in our reading. We hear Moses pleading with his people to choose to follow only God when they enter and possess their new land. We hear Moses beg his people to choose their prophets wisely, and avoid those who speak about divine forces that have been heretofore unknown to the Israelites. We hear Moses implore his children to choose to care for the poor and to establish financial structures that minimize inequity of land and of wealth. Moses argues that all of these choices will be critical in determining the people's longevity in the remarkable land that they are about to be given.

We have also seen choice as a factor in this week's reading involving God. God chooses, not only His Israel to be a treasured people, a unique nation among all nations on earth, but also God chooses an unspecified Jerusalem as His worldly abode. Significantly, the verb, "to choose" (bachar in the Hebrew) is used seventeen separate times in our reading this week.

The duel themes of consider and choose, re'eh and bachar, are central concepts of the season in which this biblical text is chanted in the synagogue. In the Jewish pentateuchal calendar, our portion is always recited in the Sabbath just before the new moon signals the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul. The medieval rabbis, not satisfied with the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as allowing adequate time to search one's soul in sufficient depth, proposed special religious practices to be instituted in the month of Elul. During this entire month immediately preceding Rosh Hashanah, special prayers and psalms are recited in the synagogue daily to remind the worshippers that the Day of Atonement quickly approaches. The ram's horn is blown to wake the sleepers from their spiritual slumber. The horn's daily blasts tell all listening to consider. This is Elul, the month of contemplation. This is Elul, the month to search one's soul. This is Elul, the month to ready oneself for the Day of Atonement. This is Elul, the month to look at oneself in the mirror, straight in the eye-and not blink.

With our reading this week and the month of Elul about to begin, we consider our choices. How can we choose blessing and life? How can we choose that our actions truly nourish ourselves and the people and world around us? How can we walk with the one real God by choosing to value the things that matter most more than the things that matter least?

Moses Maimonides, the outstanding twelfth century biblical and talmudic scholar and philosopher of his and many preceding and succeeding generations, offers us an answer. In his brilliant work, The Mishneh Torah, Maimonides identifies four stages of repentance. Each of these stages is required for significant personal change to occur. The first of these stages, that of awareness, will be enthusiastically endorsed and expanded upon seven centuries later by Sigmund Freud as well. In this first stage, referred to by Maimonides as, hakaret ha'chet, that is, awareness of how one has missed the mark, the individual searches his psyche--like the observant Jew looking into the smallest corners of his darkest closet for tiny bread crumbs the night before Passover--to discern in which ways he has fallen short.

Although looking inward is endorsed by the rabbis, and valued by God during all seasons, it is this Maimonidian stage of teshuvah that is introduced by our reading this week and constitutes the central concern of the Jew in Elul. It is only after this month of serious consideration and contemplation that we can advance to Maimonides' second and third stages of personal change. Confession to God and man and resolution to be different characterize the worshipper's overarching psycho-spiritual preoccupation during the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The fourth Maimonidian stage in which the individual attempts to make restitution to those he has hurt, that is, in which he tries to repair the damage he has done, is what characterizes the "spiritual calendar" from Yom Kippur to the next Elul.

The themes of consideration and choice, re'eh and bachar, from our biblical reading, are the identical themes one finds in the medieval rabbinic proposals concerning the month of Elul and in Maimonides' theory of how people change. It is in these three sources, separated by more than two and a half millennia of Jewish history, that we ascertain that Elul leads to Yom Kippur and Re'eh leads to bachar. We learn in this week's reading and season that it is only honest, introspective consideration that makes genuine choice a possibility.

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2. Clinical Psychoanalysis as Midrash

This is a brief excerpt from a journal article that will be published next year. In it, Shulman argues that the way that the psychoanalyst listens to his/her patient, and the way that the rabbi scrutinizes the biblical text is essentially identical.

To read this article, Click Here

FYI: Calendar of Dennis Shulman's Upcoming Media Appearances, Book Signings and Public Lectures

Tuesday, 9-16-03: Listen to a WNYC Radio Interview

Dennis Shulman will be interviewed about The Genius of Genesis; "The Brian Lehrer Show," WNYC AM-820 and FM-93.9 (the flagship NPR stations in NYC); 11:05-11:30 A.M. and rebroadcast in the wee hours of the morning, at 2:05 A.M. on 9-17-03. For those who live outside of the New York area, WNYC also broadcasts its programming on the Web at www.WNYC.Org. After 9-17-03, Shulman's interview will be digitally archived at the WebPage for "The Brian Lehrer Show" at www.WNYC.Org. You can also find the first chapter of The Genius of Genesis there.

Wednesday, 10-15-03: All Invited; Free NYC Public Lecture and Book Signing

Where: The National Institute for the Psychotherapies, 330 west 58^th Street (between Eighth and Ninth Avenues), NYC, Suite 204; 7:30 P.M.; for information and reservations, E-mail OfficeManager@DennisShulman.com.

Three Wednesday Evenings Beginning 10-22-03: All Invited; NJ Synagogue Seminar

"Freud, Moses and Job: Three Geniuses and What They Teach Us;" Temple Sinai, 1 Engle Street, Tenafly, NJ; 7:30-9:30 P.M.; for information and reservations, telephone Sara Kaplan (201) 568-3075.

Monday, 11-10-03: All Invited; Jacksonville, Florida Public Lecture and Book Signing

The Jewish Book Month Meet the Author Series; The Jewish Community Alliance, 8505 San Jose Boulevard, Jacksonville FL; 8:00 P.M.; free for members, $5 admission for nonmembers; for information and reservations, telephone Selma Nied, (904) 730-2100 x. 227.

Sunday, 11-16-03: All Invited; Free Kansas City, Missouri Public Lecture and Book Signing

The Kansas City Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Time and place of lecture to be announced; for information and reservations, telephone Dr. Richard Abloff (816) 444-7800.

Monday, 12-8-03: All Invited; Long Island, NY Public Lecture

The Psychoanalysis of the Akedah (Abraham's binding of Isaac); Institute for Adult Jewish Studies, Woodbury Jewish Center, 200 South Woods Road, Woodbury, NY; 7:30 P.M.; free for members, $5 admission for nonmembers; for additional information, call (516 496-9100).

Thursday, 1-29-04: All Invited; NJ Public Lecture and Book Signing

The Jewish Community Center on the Palisades, 411 East Clinton Avenue, Tenafly, NJ; 7:30 P.M. for reservations and information, telephone Dr. Vivian Kanig (201) 569-7900 x. 253.

Five Thursday Evenings Beginning 2-5-04; All Invited; NYC HUC Kollel Seminar

"Freud, Moses and Job: Three Geniuses and What They Teach Us;" The Kollel Program, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1 West 4^th Street, NYC; 6:30-8:30 P.M.; for information and reservations, E-mail RGais@HUC.edu.

Each Shabbat Morning: All Invited

Dennis Shulman leads the Shabbat Morning Minyan and discusses the weekly Torah portion at Chavurah Beth Shalom in Alpine, NJ, Saturday mornings at 9:30 A.M. For information about the Minyan, E-mail Shabbat@DennisShulman.com.

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