There is a guard at my synagogue on Shabbat morning. We say thank you on the way in, and most weeks that is the whole of it. But every so often I notice how strange it is that going to pray now requires a volunteer to stand outside wearing a stab-proof vest.
This week we read Parshat Re’eh, and it opens with a single imperative. “See,” says Moses, “I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks heard that verse answered, near the end of the Torah, by another verse that begins with the same word: “See, I have set before you life and death.” Now, says Moses, choose the blessing of life.
Rabbi Sacks heard in these verses a choice between living as the objects of history and the masters of our own destiny. When we look back, we ask who did this to us, and we are objects, acted upon by forces beyond us. When we look forward, we ask what we shall now do, and we become subjects—free moral agents. Rabbi Sacks learned this lesson from Holocaust survivors who had every reason to call themselves victims and refused. His instruction was blunt: never define yourself as a victim.
The same is true of antisemitism. To let what is done to us define us is to let Jew-hatred define our Judaism—to build an identity around our fear. To choose life is to be defined from within, by what we do, what we love, and what we hold sacred.
This is why Re’eh also tells us that we are children of God and therefore must not gash our flesh as a rite for the dead. We mourn, but we set limits on our mourning. There is a difference between carrying a memory and being carried by it.
But Jewish life cannot be built only around what we resist. The true counterpoint to antisemitism is not the fight against antisemitism. It is simcha, joy.
Indeed, the word joy runs through this parsha. It appears seven times in Re’eh, and never alone. Every instance gathers others into it: your sons and daughters, your servants, the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, the widow. Joy reaches its fullest expression when it is shared.
The joy Re’eh describes is of a nation that gathers to welcome the stranger, share what it has, and bring a little light into the world.
That is the choice Re’eh sets before us: two ways of being Jewish in a hard time, when we need a guard outside synagogue. One lets us be defined by those who would destroy us. The other defines us by what we build, share, and celebrate together.
See, says Moses. The blessing and the curse are both before you. The answer to those who want us gone has never been merely to outlast them. It has been to live, together, with joy.
Rabbi Matt Marks is Executive Head of Tribe UK, the youth arm of the United Synagogue, and a PhD researcher specialising in the thought of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. He lives in Brighton & Hove with his wife and their four daughters, where he also serves as a Strategic Adviser for Jewish Life and works with the UK Jewish Chaplaincy team.
This essay was written as part of our collaboration with The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Sacks Scholars.
