When I first started thinking about this week's parsha, I thought that everyone talks about the opening pasuk. I figured I’d try to dig into something less obvious, a corner that doesn’t get as much attention. The parsha is packed with mitzvos from eradicating idolatry, the laws of mourning, the blessings to the curses at Har Gerizim and Har Eival, and even which fish we’re allowed to eat. Yet, every detail seems to circle back and tie itself to that first pasuk:
ראה אנכי נתן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה
See, this day I set before you blessing and curse.
The Torah presents things in stark terms, blessing or curse, with the key word being Re’eh, to see. Our task is to see what is in front of us, to stay awake to what’s happening around us, and to recognize God’s message as it applies to us as individuals. Like a good teacher giving one lesson, each student takes away something different, and that’s how it’s meant to be.
A prophet is called a Chozeh, a seer, someone who can perceive what lies beyond the visible. Prophecy ended in 313 BCE, which makes it almost impossible to be a false prophet in the classic sense. The category should have closed. Yet every time I glance at the news, scroll through a blog, or listen in on public debates, I’m reminded that we’re swimming in false prophecy. Maybe there are genuine prophets out there, but what’s far easier to find are the pretenders, people who see a skewed reality. Some proclaim the imminent arrival of Mashiach and a sweeping renewal of society, while others predict the collapse of Judaism if a certain policy is enacted. One camp sings the praises of a trend, the other condemns it as a plague. I’ve met people convinced they’d usher in redemption, while others state with the same confidence that Israel is about to collapse. So far, both groups are wrong.
I think of these false prophets as fear-mongers. If you don’t know one, count yourself lucky. The false prophet is the one who convinces people he alone holds the truth, that the rest of us are too blind or uninformed to draw our own conclusions. Isn’t that the very definition of fearmongering?
Cambridge puts it this way: “the action of intentionally trying to make people afraid of something when this is not necessary or reasonable.”
I would be remiss not to mention the timely words of Rabbi Berel Wein zt’l, who passed away this past Shabbos. Space doesn’t allow for his full essay, but its essence is clear. He warned that the danger of the false prophet is as alive today as ever. Charisma, utopian promises, and even seeming proofs don’t make a message true. History is littered with dreamers of dreams like Marx, Stalin, Hitler, and countless others, all who promised a “new order” and dragged millions into blood and ruin.
Rabbi Wein stressed that the Torah gave us a simple test: if a prophet or ideology pulls us away from Torah values, it’s false, no matter how compelling it sounds. Jewish society, with its deep hunger for meaning, is especially vulnerable to false prophets, religious and secular alike. His bottom line was blunt: the Torah’s command to ignore them is not ancient history but a warning as urgent as ever.
We still meet people who build entire worldviews on anxiety, claiming the outside is too dangerous and life as we know it will crumble if we step beyond their lines. Others swing the other way and wave off every warning sign as hysteria. Both approaches distort the Torah’s message.
Much of our suffering takes place in our minds, through anticipation of the worst possible scenario. As one wise man quipped, “My life was filled with troubles—most of which never actually happened.” Fear drains our strength even before anything occurs. Strangely enough, when the dreaded event finally arrives, the fear often fades, because reality is never as terrifying as imagination. Fear grows in uncertainty and feeds on what hasn’t yet happened. Experience, though, teaches that most fears pass without harm.
The Ramchal writes that creation’s purpose is to bring good to humanity. Trust means believing that good will come, even if it doesn’t arrive in the form we imagined. Fear creeps in when we insist that God’s good has to look the way we expect. The task is to rise to the level of Nachum Ish Gamzu, who said gam zu l’tovah, this too is for the good, without needing to script how salvation would play out. That kind of faith unhooks us from the illusions that keep us from living fully.
The Nesivos Shalom teaches that Hashem’s communication is woven into the fabric of reality itself. Every event, personal or national, carries a message for anyone willing to look closely. We don’t need fearmongers to scare us into obedience, nor cynics to flatten everything into coincidence. What we do need is the courage to see things as they are, without panic and without denial.
Chazal tell us there’s a heavenly voice that rings out each day, even though no one hears it outright. We aren’t able to catch it with our ears, but we can sense it in the world around us. In those moments, if we’re honest and attentive, we begin to grasp what God is asking of us, each in our own way.
It’s easy to get pulled into endless debates about the pros and cons of society’s hot-button issues, speaking from experience. The cognitive dissonance can feel almost physical, impossible to ignore. What’s harder is looking the prophets of our day in the eye and naming them for what they are. You can’t stone them, but you can refuse to give them power. You can tune them out, strip them of relevance, and rise above the noise long enough to hear what God is actually saying to you. That’s how you live with clarity and intention.
When the Torah describes the punishment of the false prophet, it says he spoke dibbur soro. Rashi explains this means words that never existed and were never created, pure invention, something God never told him to say.
That’s the warning for us too. We need to guard our own clarity, to be sure our thoughts aren’t leading us down invented paths. We have to check that our perspective is grounded, that we’re not letting ourselves, or others, convince us that someone else is out to harm us when really we’re just spinning stories.
Brené Brown writes in Manifesto of the Brave and Brokenhearted:
“There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers than those of us who are willing to fall because we have learned how to rise. With skinned knees and bruised hearts; we choose owning our stories of struggle, over hiding, over hustling, over pretending. When we deny our stories, they define us. When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye. We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes. We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, compassion from shame, grace from disappointment, courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted. We are rising strong.”
That, in the end, is the path of faith. Derech emunah bacharti.
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