Re'eh: the Capitol

The place that Hashem your Gd will choose.... This is a recurring theme in the parsha. 

It is the place to which the tithes are brought;  the animal sacrifices, the feasts, the poor, the Levites all come. 

It is the place of the great spectacles.  It is Oz, Washington, London, Rome, Shiloh, Jerusalem.

I know something of the strength of this dream for a capitol city.  Jerusalem is in the Amidah three times a day. It was there when almost no Jews had ever  been to Jerusalem for centuries, when Jerusalem was, indeed, the Yerushalaim shel Maalah, the dream Jerusalem  Now, my daughter lives there. 

The physical reality of a capitol is merely supportive of its dream quality, and that dream quality of the capitol is an easy approach to spirituality, to the flood of inexplicable emotion that feels somehow uplifting and can justify all kinds of actions...good and ill. 

Pay no attention to the little man