Re'eh: Seeing and Hearing

Devarim is an audiocentric book. Search through Devarim and you will find the verb שמע approximately 100 times, including the most famous passage of all: שמע ישראל ה' א-לקינו ה' אחד. On the other hand, the imperative to see, ראה, as spoken by Moses to the entire people, is found only three times in this book.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains that unlike other cultures in antiquity, Jewish culture is audio-centric; we are focused on words, not on objects, idols or icons. We hear, while others see. Ancient Greece was the paragon of visual culture, celebrating sculpture, the physique, architecture. For us, it was Torah, midrash, talmud.

There was a profound difference between the two civilizations of antiquity that between them shaped the culture of the West: ancient Greece and ancient Israel. The Greeks were the supreme masters of the visual arts: art, sculpture, architecture and the theatre.

Jews, as a matter of profound religious principle, were not. G-d, the sole object of worship, is invisible. He transcends nature. He created the universe and is therefore beyond the universe. He cannot be seen. He reveals Himself only in speech. Therefore the supreme religious act in Judaism is to listen. Ancient Greece was a culture of the eye; ancient Israel a culture of the ear. The Greeks worshipped what they saw; Israel worshipped what they heard.

Now we come upon the imperative look:

ראה אנכי נתן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה.

Look, I have placed before you this day a blessing and a curse. (Dt 11:26)

This verse is echoed towards the end of the book:

ראה נתתי לפניך היום את-החיים ואת-הטוב ואת-המות ואת-הרע.

Look, I have given you this day life and good, and death and evil. (30:15)

Why the difference? The ear has no way of its own to block out what it hears. True, we can stick our fingers in our ears or stuff them with cotton to block out sound, but the ear has no way of closing itself. But the eye does have an option. We can close our eyelids, we can avert our gaze. The eye allows for options, the ear does not. What is interesting about the verses above is that they speak about options, choices to be made. Once we have heard the lessons, it is up to us to make choices, to open our eyes and make them part of the reality of our lives, or to close our eyes to the ways in which they can enrich those lives.