Re'eh: the invisible hand

The parsha opens with רְאֵה: re'eh: see!  It then proceeds to instruct the reader to see a blessing and a curse that is laid before him.  It bids us to see something that is not visible. These pronouncements would be unintelligible to a machine, the machine would detect an error: one cannot see  blessings or curses ... or the future.

Clearly, this re'eh does not mean the usual eye-retina-optic tract-occipital cortex vision. Perhaps re'eh is better translated: imagine, generate the image. There is no object to be seen, only memories, ideas, dreams that can be synthesized into a vision.

One of my most vivid memories from medical school (a recollection that I can envision) is a lecture by the Nobel prize winning neuroscientist , Eric Kandel.  It was entitled: "Seeing is believing but touching is the real thing."  The lecture dealt with the complexity of the visual pathway in the brain.  The points of sensation of light in the retina are processed into lines and the lines are turned into faces.  Vision is always an amalgamation of what is there and what we think should be there. The nervous systems inputs into the process block most humans from perceiving reality as it “truly” is.  Walter Isaacson in his biography of  Leonardo Da Vinci says that Leonardo was able to represent the true fuzziness of edges, presumably how things really are -  devoid of the neuroprocessing that simplifies the world for most us.  That is why the Mona Lisa follows the viewer with her eyes.

The distortion of physical reality that constitutes vision (as we experience it) serves our daily lives very well, presumably better than a purer picture. The process implies that seeing prepares for the future. What we see opens possibilities and the neuroprocessing chooses, and thus narrows, the options. 

The future aspect of the parsha is emphasized by the phrase הַמָּק֞וֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַ֨ר , The place where Gd will establish to rest Gd's name.  It is introduced in this week's parsha.  It appears 12 times in the Torah, all in Deuteronomy,  seven of them in this week's parsha. It is a strange phrase, implying a future decision or revelation by Gd. Although Moses can name Grizim and Avel, mountains on the other side of the Jordan River (a place that Moses would never reach), he cannot designate Jerusalem, the city that we now commonly understand is The Place. Hundreds of years later, David made Jerusalem, in territory that bordered Benjamin and Judah, the great capital.  This was when the Hebrew people united in their great, but transient, ascendancy.

 The identity of the city was hidden from Moses and from us at this point in the story. The phrase is written in the future tense, The Place had not yet been chosen. Is this a challenge to Divine omniscience?  Had Gd not yet decided on the location of The Place, the locus of the  great ritualized feast, the pilgrimage, the Haj? 

I find it comforting that this decision was held in abeyance. Circumstances would be a component of the choice. Although it makes the story more complex, this approach gives human choice a hand in the final determination.  Putting the human - with its mixtures of motivations and political battles- into the mix allows us to question the outcome

I do not think this challenges omniscience severely. In the world that does not invoke the deity, I can understand the accuracy of a prediction depending upon the amount of data and the accuracy of the model. Some predictions are more reliable than others. Predictions for large groups over short times can be close to 100%. Predictions for individuals (prognoses) are almost always wrong for anything but the most determined outcomes (everyone dies). The nature of Divine prediction is mysterious. I do not require that it be measured differently. Gd knows all the important things that will happen. Perhaps Gd assures that they will happen.  The details are subject to alterations, they are fuzzy, they leave room for free will. 

Choices were made that led to the establishment and maintenance of the current State of Israel. The visions that went into its (re)birth were quite varied. What we have is the result of those varied dreams and their evolution.  Is this the hand of Gd?  Could this be the way the system works?