Parshas Re'eh: Blessings and Life, A Winning Combination

Our Torah portion this week, Re'eh: Devarim (Deuteronomy) 11:26 - 16:17, begins with an eloquent lesson of spiritual cause and effect, the blessing and the curse. We receive blessings when we follow God's commandments as given in Torah. We receive curses when we do not follow God's commandments as given in Torah. Moses explains to the Jews how to apply this axiom very specifically in the Holy Land as the people go about their daily routine and interact with each other.

Re'eh means 'see' so the first order of the day is to identify idolatry and the profiteers who promote evil, and eradicate them from the neighborhood. Then, establish places of worship and civic organizations that honor God and holiness. Moses delineates rules for temple management, religious rituals and animal sacrifice, dietary guidelines and restrictions, tithing, charity, loans, debt forgiveness, and festival observance.

Moses points out many different aspects of idolatry, adamant that it must not infect the populace in any form.  Absolutely no trace of it is allowed, no people, no physical structures, no symbols, no child sacrifice.

Strong prohibitions against consuming animal blood appear in this portion, based on the explanation that blood is the life of the animal and so the blood must be respected. Jews are forbidden to eat a fertile chicken egg with a blood spot, which shows evidence of life, and all of our meat must be koshered to remove the blood from the flesh.

Blood is life applies to the baby in the womb, who at 21 days gestation has a beating heart and a functional circulatory system. This fact discredits claims that the entity in the womb is not alive until it's born. Every abortion stops a beating heart, an organ that circulates blood around the body, so according to Torah, every abortion kills a living human being. 

Our Haftorah this week continues with Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 54:11 - 55:5, as he pivots from dire prognostications to sharing God's vision of a redeemed Israel and ushers in the messianic era. 

Today, many people lack spiritual sensibility. The bombardment of lies that we see and hear all around us make us numb to the presence of God. We literally cannot 'see' nor can we 'hear' the truth. We’ve let the worship of things other than the Almighty grow into a powerful element in society that confuses people morally, especially the most intelligent and even the good hearted.

Can we be sure we haven’t absorbed ideas and beliefs that seem to us acceptable, pragmatic departures from the clear moral principles in the 10 Commandments? 

We can identify errant beliefs by running them through the filter of wisdom as taught to us by King Solomon in his book of Proverbs, as in Chapter 3:5-6. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

King Solomon tells us to renounce ideas no matter how fashionable or authoritative that stray from the Almighty’s ideas. When we do this and receive the peace of mind and soul that follows, we surely think and act accordingly. Regarding abortion, the first truth is that the target of death is a child, not a choice or a blob of tissue or an inconvenient mistake.

When thinking about the right to life of babies in the womb, we apply Genesis 9:6 “He who spills the blood of man within man shall have his blood spilt, for in the image of God made He man. And you, be fruitful, and multiply; fill the earth, and multiply therein.”

This verse includes no conditions of gestational age so we know that human beings begin their lives at conception and we defend their right to life as we would protect a toddler’s right to life.  

When weighing the benefits and liabilities of abortion, we apply Jeremiah 22:3. This is what Adonai says: “Do what is right and just; rescue the wronged from their oppressors; do nothing wrong or violent to the stranger, orphan or widow; don’t shed innocent blood in this place.

We know that abortion is the deliberate violent destruction of an unborn baby. We know that doing this hurts mothers and fathers in many ways. Accordingly, we provide moral and practical support that saves the baby and parents from harm as we would help parents of a toddler find life saving solutions to their living problems.

We take solace in the understanding that God's ways are not our ways, and God's timing is not our timing. As we fill our days with efforts to educate, save, heal and redeem we must leave the results to Heaven, and rest at night in the knowledge that our Heavenly Father will provide a pathway to restoration in His time and in His ways.

As the psalmist sings, “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14

Please share this post on your social media to amplify our message in this troubled world. Thank you.

Cecily Routman 

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and good life upon us and upon all Israel. Amen.

Cecily Routman is the founder and president of the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation. She opposes abortion homicide in general and among Jews in particular and laments secular policy making in Israel that results in loss of Jewish life and delays the messianic redemption. She envisions a Torah based holy Land of Israel and a world that respects the life of every human being from conception.