Deuteronomy Blessing as a Way of Seeing: Shoftim and the Doorway to Elul

Parashat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9)

With the new Jewish month of Elul this Thursday night and Friday, we begin our high holiday season of introspection, return, and renewal.

This year, in addition to the traditional Jewish rituals that reliably guide this process, I find myself turning to an unlikely source of inspiration for renewal: the story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s meeting.

The two first encountered each other when John Lennon attended a London art exhibit in 1966 featuring Yoko Ono’s work. One of the pieces that caught Lennon’s eye was an interactive installation with a ladder leading to a painting on the ceiling that had a magnifying glass attached to it. When he climbed up the ladder and looked through the glass, Lennon saw that the painting was not simply a black painted canvas. It had printed on it, in tiny letters, the word “Yes.” Lennon described reading this as a great relief. In the midst of the sea of darkness, it was a positive and life-affirming message; and it was vital to what drew him to Ono.

Jewish tradition understands existence to be animated by a pulsating sense of “Yes.” Our mystics describe creation as an ongoing process premised upon God’s desire for relationship with us. Our prayer liturgy imagines our world lit up by God’s compassion: each element of creation is needed and valued. To see, feel, and channel for others this sense of “Yes” is core to the invitation and expectation of Jewish tradition.

But as Yoko Ono’s art demonstrates, this is not an easy responsibility to fulfill. It requires effort, help, and insight. The opening verse of this week’s parasha, Shoftim, addresses this challenge:

שֹׁפְטִים וְשֹׁטְרִים תִּתֶּן־לְךָ בְּכָל־שְׁעָרֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לְךָ לִשְׁבָטֶיךָ וְשָׁפְטוּ אֶת־הָעָם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶדֶק׃

You shall place magistrates and officials in all the gates that God gave for your tribes, and they shall judge the people justly.
Deuteronomy 16:18

Contextually, this verse instructs us in establishing a civil judicial and governmental system. Jewish tradition has additionally read it as guidance for internal processes. Rabbi Isaiah HaLevi Horowitz in his 17th-century work Shenei Luchot HaBerit associates the gates of the town with the “seven gateways to the soul,” or our senses of perception. This verse is an instruction to “guard these openings with extreme care.”

Building on this idea, the Baal Shem Tov, the 18th century mystic who inspired the Chasidic movement, teaches that this verse instructs us to put “love and awe [of God] in all our gates, in all our thoughts.”

If we want to reliably experience and live responsively to God’s loving presence, we must be mindful that our senses of perception are the primary means by which we encounter God in ourselves, each other and the world. We must cultivate habits of mind and heart to do so well and with intention.

This year, I find myself captivated by an extraordinarily practical and effective means Jewish tradition offers for internalizing this way of seeing and responding to the world: blessings.

Consider the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26):

יְבָרֶכְךָ הה וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ
May God bless you and protect you

יָאֵר הה  פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ
May God shine God’s face on you and be gracious to you

יִשָּׂא הה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם
May God lift God’s face towards you and grant you peace

This paradigmatic blessing does not ask for safety, abundance, or health, as one might expect. As my colleague and teacher Rabbi Nehemia Polen points out, “Essentially what it promises is divine grace, the gift of God’s loving appreciation and beaming gaze. When I sense that God is smiling at me, what else needs to be said?” (A New Hasidism: Branches, “Touches of Intimacy,” pgs. 50-51).

The priestly blessing is about the power of being seen by God – this Divine recognition is what we try to emulate and channel when we make or give a blessing. As Rabbi Polen writes, “to bless another person is to acknowledge that individual’s essential worthiness, to affirm one’s personhood, to offer a gesture of salutation.”

There is an echo of this idea in the Talmud’s teaching that to benefit from the world without making a blessing is tantamount to the misuse and desecration of a consecrated object (Talmud Bavli, Berachot 35a). The world is filled with sacredness. Through the act of blessing we honor and make it manifest in our lives and the world.

Jewish tradition instructs us to make at least 100 blessings a day. The number is descriptive of a life in service of seeing and bringing out blessing, and prescriptive for how to embody this in our lives. Shabbat Shoftim is the doorway to Elul and the high holiday season, and with it comes the invitation and challenge to more fully live a life of blessing, making this holy way of perceiving and responding to the world our way of being in the world.

Rabbi Daniel Klein `10, MJEd`10 is Dean of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. He previously served as Dean of Students and Director of Admissions at the College.

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