Re-eh: The Joy Of His Belly

Vulnerability, and the Four Figures at Our Table

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In Anton Chekhov's story, Gooseberries, a man spends his whole life saving for a dream, a small estate of his own with a garden and gooseberry bushes. He finally gets it. In the story's final scene, his brother watches him sit down and eat those homegrown gooseberries with a look of complete self-absorbed satisfaction. The brother can barely stand to watch, and he reflects that there ought to be a man with a hammer standing behind the door of every contented person, knocking, to remind them that somewhere someone else is hungry. Last week, Pashat Akev warned about exactly this danger, the forgetfulness that comes with abundance. This week, the Torah returns to the subject, but from a very different angle. And again last week the parsha opened with, Vahya ekef tishmi'un. If you listen to the laws, God will keep his covenant. Now the Torah calls on us to see. This week's parsha is named Re'e, see. We think of seeing as the strongest form of knowing. After all, we say seeing is believing. But not every act of seeing is the same. We can see without really noticing. The Torah's command, Ree, demands a different kind of seeing, one that doesn't end with observation, but leads to moral response. The Talmud, when turning an idea over in open debate, says, Tashmah, come hear this. Hearing is for what is still open to argument. But the Zohar, pointing to a truth so direct you can't deny it, says, Tahazi, come see. So what is it that the Torah wants us to see so directly that we can no longer deny, ignore, or argue our way around it? It begins with that opening declaration, see a blessing and a curse. But the parsha doesn't leave those ideas in the abstract. It gives them human faces. At least three times the Torah names the same four categories of people in the context of celebrating our blessings through eating and rejoicing. When discussing the third year tithe, it says, Then the Levite and the stranger and the orphan and the widow shall come and eat and be satisfied. But the verse doesn't end there. It continues, so that the Lord your God will bless you in all the work of your hands. The blessing isn't presented as a reward that comes afterward. It's bound up with the meal itself, with whether the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow are sitting at that meal. Later, regarding the festival of Shava'ot, the Torah says, You shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and the Levite and the stranger and the orphan and the widow. Again and again, these four figures appear not on the margins of the celebration, not as individuals we send a donation to, but directly within our celebrations. Why? What is it about these four categories that compels us to bring them to our table? The Levite has no farmland. The stranger has no family name to protect them. The orphan lost the safety net a child assumes will always be there. And the widow built a life around a future that isn't coming. Immediately after commanding us to rejoice with these very people, the Torah adds one more instruction, and you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. The Torah has made this move before. Again and again it tells us to remember what it felt like to be vulnerable ourselves, not because God wants us to dwell on the past, but because the vulnerabilities we forget in ourselves are often the ones we fail to see in other people. Perhaps that's why these four figures keep appearing at our table. They remind us of parts of the human condition that we would rather not see. We all know something of the orphan, that anxious part of ourselves that wonders whether anyone will be there if things fall apart. We all know something of the stranger, the part that feels unanchored, out of place, imposter-like. We all carry losses that help us understand the widow. And the Levite, the Levite is the ultimate challenge to our illusion of self-sufficiency. He's the scholar, the teacher, the one devoted to sacred work. His very existence reminds us that a life of purpose doesn't necessarily bring financial security. Now we don't like to see our own fragilities, so we find subtle ways to look away, to avoid seeing anything or anyone that reminds us of these fears. We eat. We eat to fill an emptiness that has nothing to do with food. It's the oldest reflex there is. Something is wrong, so we eat, not because we're hungry, but because for the moment eating feels like control. And so just as we sit down to eat, to buffer ourselves against our own fears, the Torah steps in and places these four figures before our eyes. It insists that when we celebrate the festivals, we celebrate with them, with the stranger, the orphan, the widow, together with the other poor. And Maimonides reflects on this. He says, One who locks the doors of his courtyard and eats and drinks with his family without feeding the poor and the brokenhearted, this is not the joy of a mitzvah, but the joy of his belly. What is the joy of his belly? It's the feast, the wine, the fullness of the stomach, food consumed to feel safe, to numb us to the uncomfortable parts of our own inner lives, to make us not have to see the vulnerable people around us. Think about that irritation familiar to most of us. You just sat down to eat after a long day, maybe the one quiet meal you get, and the doorbell rings. It's the last thing you want now, to have your meal interrupted by a stranger at the door. It's annoying and it makes sense. Eating is private, it's the one part of the day we especially like to have to ourselves. But Ravhuna, the Talmudic sage, turned that instinct on its head. The Talmud records that he kept a standing practice. Before he sat down to eat, he opened the doors of his house and announced the same words we say at the beginning of every Passover Seder. Whoever is in need, let them come and eat. Ravuna wasn't giving charity at a remove. It was a habit built into the meal, timed to the exact moment he was about to feed himself. He wouldn't allow his meal to become a closed door. We might think that the Levite belonged only to an ancient world, but the truth is that anyone who chooses sacred work, teaching, or service over financial security still carries something of the Levite today. And like the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, these people are still at our doorstep. The doorbell still rings. The instinct to say, not now, is still there. Chekhov imagines someone standing outside the door, hammer in hand, reminding us that somewhere someone else is suffering. But the Torah has another idea. It doesn't station someone behind the door, it tells us Re C. That's it for Torah in seven on Parshatra A. If you'd like to go deeper, there's more at Torah in seven dot substack.com. Thank you for listening. Shabbat Shalom.