Recently, I was with a group of students on an early morning nature walk. I tried to create a moment that I was hoping would be a different kind of prayer experience. Rather than read or chant through the prayers, we tried to experience them with the benefit of Mother Nature.
It soon became clear that Mother Nature was more interesting than liturgy, and I had to recalibrate the experience quickly. While I had many prayers from which to choose, I focused instead on helping the students to pay attention to the things around them; to notice the creatures, the living things, the strange and the beautiful. What became evident was that, even walking in a beautiful natural setting, seeing things for what they are proved to be a difficult task for these skeptics and unskilled onlookers.
Perhaps that is what the Torah is trying to help us achieve and teach us in Parashat VaEt’chanan—being really good see-ers. While the rabbis have always maintained that when the Torah repeats a word or an idea, the repetition is for emphasis, multiple repetitions must make that idea, word or concept REALLY important. No less than 16 times, Parashat VaEt’chanan repeats the command to the Israelites to see, to look, to gaze, to pay attention, to heed, to watch, to show or to hear (as in pay attention). What’s with all the need to remind the Israelites to look, see, and notice?
On the one hand, Moses is trying to implore the Israelites to remember their history, to make a mental imprint of the moments, crises, successes, and failures of their journey from Sinai to the Holy Land and all the commands and behaviors they will be need to be successful. But on a different level, the commands to pay attention to the events around them and really see what has happened to them and what is happening to them are a pleading, a begging of sorts to make sure the Israelites walk by that which God needs them to see.
The problem, of course, is the Israelites of the generation who were ready to conquer the Land could not see, or worse did not want to see, that which Moses was imploring them to notice, because they were focused on the task at hand: namely getting into the Land. Any other issue, any other dynamic that may have been happening, was lost due to the desire to finish the journey. After all, they could “see” the Land from where they were perched. Sadly, we often imitate these Israelites while ignoring the commands Moses is truly intending to convey.
It’s difficult to notice the things around us when we are focused on our selves and the issues we face. It’s difficult to notice how beautiful things are when we feel so bad, are depressed, sad, or in pain. It is difficult to see the ugly things around us when we are so full of ourselves. But is precisely at those moments that we are commanded to use our God-given gifts of perception, of seeing, and of attention to praise, to glorify, and to heal those in need. We are taught to remember that we were slaves and therefore make sure that no one is treated like a slave. We can’t fulfill that directive if we aren’t willing to try. That’s what VaEt’chanan demands. Practice seeing. Make sure you notice. Pay attention. There are too many people in need, too many communities in peril, so much healing to do, so much beauty to appreciate, so many Godly gifts to amaze.
Rabbi Andrew Marc Paley is Senior Rabbi of Temple Shalom in Dallas, TX. He is the editor of two prayerbooks and author of numerous articles.