Two weeks ago, while travelling with my family, we spent our evenings playing a Cluedo-style board game. Every night began the same way. The board was set. The pieces were in place. Someone rolled the dice. And suddenly we were racing around the board, collecting clues and trying to solve the mystery.

As I prepared this sermon, I realised this week’s Torah portion feels a little like opening a box of Cluedo.

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Parashat Re’eh is full of laws that, at first glance, seem disconnected: idolatry, sacrifices, dietary laws, debt release, slavery, pilgrimage festivals... It is tempting to skim through them, wondering what they have to say to us today. But what if these commandments are not meant to be read as isolated rules? What if they are clues? What if, hidden among them, is a deeper lesson about who we are and why we choose to live as Progressive Jews?

The first clue

“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse.”

Before giving a single commandment, the Torah invites us: Re’eh. See. Look carefully. Pay attention.

And what are we invited to see? That we are given a choice: blessing or curse. Both are shaped by the choices we make. We are not passive players following a script. We are active participants, entrusted with responsibility. Every day we choose which path to follow and the kind of world we will help create.

The second clue

“Do not add to it or take away from it.”

If we believe in interpreting Torah for every generation, what do we do with a commandment that seems to forbid change?

This clue points somewhere else. It sends us back to Rabbi Lea’s sermon on Va’etchanan. So let me give you a little “bonus clue.” If you haven’t already, do read it on our Substack or listen to it on our podcast.

But for now, the short version is this: Progressive Judaism has never believed that Torah belongs in a museum. Every generation interprets it. The real question is not whether we interpret, but how. We interpret it through the values that run through it: justice, compassion, human dignity and the sanctity of life. We are not simply adding to Torah or subtracting from it. We are trying, in every generation, to hear it truthfully.

The third clue

“For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal your God.”

Whenever I read these words, I hear Tevye’s voice from Fiddler on the Roof: “Dear God, I know we are the chosen people. But once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”

It’s funny because it asks a serious question. What does it actually mean to be chosen?

Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz offers an answer that brings light to this question. Chosenness, she writes, is never about superiority. It is “relational, covenantal and conditional: it requires emotional investment, trust and a sense of self-criticism.” And, most importantly, “we choose to be chosen. We choose to place ourselves in a covenantal relationship of responsibility.”

Chosenness is not simply something that happened to our ancestors. Every generation chooses whether to remain part of that covenant. We choose to inherit this tradition. We choose to wrestle with it and continue telling its story. We choose to remain faithful to that covenant, even when it is difficult, even when we feel discouraged or uncertain.

The crucial clue

“There will never cease to be needy people in your land; therefore open your hand to the poor and the needy.”

The Torah does not imagine a perfect world. It imagines people who refuse to become indifferent. There will always be another person who needs compassion, another injustice that demands our attention, another opportunity to bring blessing.

Every time we reach our service’s concluding prayer, Aleinu, we remind ourselves of this calling: letaken olam—to repair the world—remembering our sages’ words:

“It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

This work does not end because we grow tired. We continue because it matters.

Then, almost as though the Torah wants to make absolutely certain we have understood, it repeats itself. Do not harden your heart. Open your hand. Give generously. Do not resent your generosity.

Where all the clues lead

And this is why I find the Affirmations of Liberal Judaism so powerful. They help us recognise what Torah has been teaching us all along.

They remind us that to be a Jew is to inherit a religious and cultural tradition; that to be a practising Jew is to accept with love and pride the duty to maintain and transmit it; and, finally, that to be a practising Liberal Jew today is to believe that tradition should be lived within the framework of modern thinking and morality, doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.

Re’eh reminds us that these affirmations are where all the clues have been leading.

Re’eh begins with a choice: blessing or curse. The rest of the parashah teaches us what choosing blessing looks like: taking responsibility for our actions, reading our tradition with reverence and moral courage, embracing covenant as responsibility, and opening our hands before we harden our hearts.

The clues in this week’s parashah are not there simply to solve a mystery. They help us recognise who we are called to be. Every generation discovers something new. Every conversation reveals another way of living Torah.

May we continue to choose to be chosen.

May we continue to choose blessing.

And may every choice we make help bring our world one step closer to the world we choose to build together.

Shabbat Shalom.

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