Deuteronomy Cycle Five Re'eh

Re’eh

Recently, to raise money for rabbinic school,  I accepted a job to write an interesting book:  One Hundred Ways to Say Thank You in the Social Media.  The pay was good, the subject interesting. The truth is though I walked into this blind:  I knew very little or nothing about the social media. I was the Facebook  insurgent, the Twitter  mutineer.

During this experience and the necessary research what I already suspected  was established…

Our technology has leaped way in front of our emotional, physical or spiritual human vessels to encompass it.  We are faced with lightning fast vision all over the world and simultaneously have the ability to flush into this communication the images of ourselves that we choose.  Our dirt. Our love. Our masks. Our truth. The seeming distance and relative anonymity of online communications seems…for many people… to  take the bite away from our human ugliness. Many of us feel so strange and foreign to this new  place that attention  to the painfully etched  advice of centuries of teachers…whether they be our Talmudic rabbis or  Eastern Lamahs…seems to be inappropriate or awkward.  No reason to follow  laws regarding intimate behavior when  the social media seems to defy intimacy. Therefore some people, especially those who are just lazy and don’t want to learn or who have the biggest horror of change,   designate all social media as unethical and destructive.

They certainly have their points. Cyber bullying is not a thing of the past. 

 Before we throw the baby out with the bathwater though…and become stiff necked and disagreeable….perhaps we should recognize the huge opportunities granted us through  online offerings.  And then adapt the many web-sites involved  to our already proven or disproven belief system.  Yes, maybe we should attempt to adapt our new cyber places of choosing  to our sacred scriptures, our prophets, our ethical code so that our offerings to the gods in others and the greater  light (beyond all computer screens) will  be pure.  Not that they aren’t pure now. They are just confused.

What I am writing here is Torah. It is about finding the place of God’s name and choice. It’s about a state of seeing beyond all seeing to get there.  Because it’s quite clear in this week’s parasha  Reeh (translated as the imperative of see) that we will not be able to know or see this place on our own…We will not have the straight bulls-eye..the absolute answer when it comes to place… until we reach the Promised Land.

 Until then we just need to go where God shows us.  And bring God to the place we know.

The question therefore become this: How do we  adapt this place..this site…that site…every site… to be a place of God’s choosing?  A place that God shows us?  How do we bring our ancient  spiritual, ethical and psychological roots to the blossoming places online?

Not to emphasize but recently, a local company asked me if I could do onsite freelancing. I didn’t know if  they meant  on their website or at their coorperate offices.  One is quickly becoming the other.

Yes,  our places are becoming our websites. And before  we  disregard this mighty fact and continue to  treat websites as  the top of Mt Ebal…where we  place our curse… and  transmit virus after virus…And yes before we  treat a web-site as something other than the holy place on which we stand ….we may want to tweak our perspective a bit and begin to use the sites to spread cookie after cookie. And  blessing after blessing.

Because whether we like the social media or not…it is like the earth… it’s  here to stay. And we need to decide what we want to offer when we are visiting it.

Of course, it can be argued that this is not the place of God’s choosing.  That the holy place described in Torah is natural and only comes from within our minds and hearts. . But as we see with the constant repetition of that one line….go to the place of God’s choosing…there is a strong direct eternal ray of light when it comes to our vision. It begins in our souls and reaches for the absolute holiness of Hashem. It is all one line of vision, It is beyond our eyes, our ability to touch, hear , taste or smell.  It carries us to other worlds in one second. It transmits messages in less than a second. It ‘s on a level way above our individual senses. If anything, this type of seeing has greater similarity to the notorious social media than it does to our present state of human consciousness.

 

Let’s look carefully at what the rabbis say: First, Rabbi Eliezer (Talmud) says that the line: And ye shall destroy their name means that we should destroy every trace of the Canaanite idols. How is this related to seeing? It’s the action of breaking down the barrier between the inner and the outer. It allows the flow of light to move deep into our hearts and beyond the masks of the eternal to the eternal itself. It enables heart-vision beyond our own personal facades.  The place of site here though is just at that place of idol-destruction.  The way to apply this place to the social media would be to honor each other with truth and authenticity.

Here’s more: In terms of servant and master relations the servant should be with the master. In other words, as a Baraita taught, if the master eats black bread, the servant eats black bread. If the  master sleeps on a bed, so does the servant.  The way to apply this to the social media would be to be sure that everyone has your same perks. You don’t get more than anyone else.

What’s  important is that these levels of seeing are places as well.  We end up with places within places within places, mirrors within mirrors. They reflect and build upon each other  and sooner or later will enable us to move through them without even the help of our computer  screen.

What does all of this lead to?

The Chasidim say that there will be a pre-curser to the Meshiach, some warning beforehand.  Perhaps this  sudden  approach of this new stranger…our social media…is exactly that.  The computer might be here to show us our own potential…who we can be…what we can become…and  train us to  create the site of God’s choosing  in the way of compassion, kindness, love and Torah. It could be.  We can’t know for sure now though. We will know (and we will say thank you) when we get there.