Blessing and Curse

It is said Moshe said to the people that Hashem said: “See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced” (Deut 11: 26-28).  A simple choice, or so it seems:  Follow the way of the Lord and be blessed; wander from the path of the Lord and the Lord will wander from you.  With this bit of recently received and freshly transmitted wisdom, Moshe lays out to the people a stark choice.  Regarding Hashem, he says, you’re either with me (us) or you’re against me (us).  There seems to be no in between.  And while the categorical nature of Moshe’s holy communique may be appropriate for the Israelite (past, present and future) on the cusp of crossing-over—geographically, spiritually, psychologically—to the multi-dimensional Holy Land ever-present before us, one wonders if the case is not perhaps slightly overstated.  Though far be it from me, a humble, confused, perpetually tired middle-aged father of two to question Moshe Rabbeinu and Moshe Rabbeinu’s articulation of Hashem’s Divine Word.  But is it not true that some of us, even when we walk in God’s ways, find ourselves somehow cursed?  And others, while wandering, bobbing and weaving into and out of the light of God somehow manage to seem or even be blessed?  Don’t we know from God’s own hand (that is to say, from creation itself) that most of us, in fact, live in the great gray expanse between Gan Eden and Gehinnom even when we obey?  Isn’t this what it means to be a creature created by God?  To strive, to fall, to strive again?  Never mind that doing the right thing is often wrong, and the wrong thing, done by the right person, at the right time, is often itself somehow right.  The ways of God are, after all, sometimes discontinuous, repetitive, redundant, contradictory.  In other words, not easily parsed by the inherently narrative tuning of the human mind.  Which is why Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai’s two-and-a-half-year long disagreement regarding if it would be better not to be created than created (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b) shines an interesting light on Moshe’s blessing and curse oration and its historical and real-world implications.  While the debate between Beits Hillel and Shammai may at first glance appear similar or even identical to William Shakespeare’s to be or not to be, I would like to suggest that this was not, in fact, the rabbi’s question.  The rabbis were not weighing the relative merits of existence or non-existence.  Rather, they were parsing a finer thread: to be a creation of God or not.  Which is to say, one may exist, but one may exist accidentally, randomly, purposelessly.  And if one exists accidentally, randomly, purposelessly one slips the knot of Moshe Rabbeinu’s blessing and curse noose, so to speak, free to live a human life of self-interest, pleasure-seeking and non-observance.  How did the rabbis settle this temptation of temptations?  Naturally, they took a vote!  (No bat kol here.  She was either barred entry, or, more likely, refused invitation.)  The majority agreed: It would have been better for a person had they not been created than to have been created.  A hysterical concurrence!  For two camps who rarely see eye-to-eye, it is utterly heartwarming to know they share a regret for having been created at all.  How human!  Not that that settles the matter.  Hardly.  Now that we are conscious of having been created, one school says let us examine our past actions while the other says let us examine our planned actions.  The debate continues.  “See,” Moshe Rabbeinu says, “this day I set before you blessing and curse.”