These were Moshe’s instructions to the people in the book of Deuteronomy: “When your G-d brings you to the land, to possess it, you shall deliver the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.” Later in the Bible, Moshe is more specific. Six tribes were to ascend Mt. Gerizim, while another six tribes were to ascend Mt. Ebal.
The obvious question is: Why the need for two distinct mountains in order to proclaim the benefits of loyalty to the Torah ethic and the detriments resulting from abandoning the Torah? Why couldn’t the entire ceremony be performed on one mountain? Even if all the Jews could not fit on a single mountain, why were blessings directed toward one mountain, while curses were directed to another?
The answer seems to be uniquely relevant to our age. With the vivid visualization of two distinct mountains separated by a valley, one of blessings, the other of curses, the Torah is attempting to convey the message that life can and should be divided into two distinct pathways: one path as a source of blessing and growth, the other as a source of curse and devastation. A very real gulf separates the moral life from the immoral life, and it ought not to be obfuscated. With this clear designation of a mountain of blessings vs. a mountain of curses, the Bible is rejecting the notion that the true progressive personality is open to all kinds of people, all kinds of lifestyles, all ideologies, all choices. According to this modern-day ethos, the primary enemy is the person who cannot tolerate all forms of behavior, the individual who believes that some deeds are absolutely blessed, while others are absolutely cursed.
The University Failure
In the introduction to his book, The Closing of the American Mind, the late University of Chicago professor, Allan Bloom, argued that higher education in the U.S. has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students. The great virtue of the day, he wrote, became the unshakable belief that all truth is relative and that no one idea or moral value is truer than any other.
A student’s reaction to 9/11, expressed in the daily newspaper and in class the next day, pointed to the differences between our life circumstances and those of the perpetrators, suggesting that these differences had caused the previous day’s events. “Noticeably absent,” she wrote, “was a general outcry of indignation. These reactions, and similar ones on other campuses, have made it apparent that my generation is uncomfortable assessing, or even asking, whether a moral wrong has taken place. My generation may be culturally sensitive, but we hesitate to make moral judgments.” This is a tragedy raging on American campuses across the country. The fact that so many otherwise intelligent university students cannot recognize some actions as objectively evil, despite differences in cultural standards and values, is not only philosophically problematic, but it is practically dangerous and suicidal. If we cannot define anything as evil, we cannot stand up to it. We then ensure its victory.
Three thousand two hundred years ago, the Torah taught us that some acts constitute blessings, while others constitute curses. They ought never to be equated. They ought to be distinguished not only conceptually, but also physically. They could never be associated together in one domain. An absolute, though narrow, gulf separates the two. Distinguishing good from bad is not an act of arrogance, peasantry, or a display of closed-mindedness. It is the only way to purge our beautiful world of militants who slaughter people who do not adhere to their beliefs.
RABBI YY JACOBSON
