What is the Torah coming to teach us here? HaRav Yaakov Weinberg zt”l (Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel) always would encourage his students to first and foremost look for the p’shat in the Torah verse at hand: What is the plain, straight-forward meaning of the Torah’s words, “See, I present before you today a blessing a curse”?

See [= look and understand], there is good in the world and there is bad in the world; there is blessing and there is curse; there are good choices and there are bad choices. The Torah is telling us to look at the reality of our lives and the situation presented to us at any given moment in our lives – and to make good choices [see Deuteronomy 30:19 – “I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse – choose life!”]. How do we know if they are good choices? Good choices are those based on Torah values, as the chapter in our parshah (quoted above) concludes:  “You shall be careful to perform all the decrees and the ordinances that I present before you today” [Deuteronomy 11:32].

Sforno zt”l writes that Moshe Rabbeinu is pointing out to the Jews that we are not like other nations: The blessings promised to us are so extraordinary as to be miraculous – but so are the ordeals if we fail in our spiritual calling and make poor choices. Thus, the choice is literally between a blessing and a curse.

Most people are satisfied with mediocrity, quite content to move along at a mundane pace – not expending the effort to be great, while making sure not to be evil either. Moshe thus urged the Jewish people to think otherwise:  We must strive for great heights and should feel that the alternative is nothing less than a curse [commentary to the Stone Chumash, Artscroll].

The Torah uses graphic imagery to portray the difference between the blessing and the curse, by instructing Moshe to “deliver the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Eival”. Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival are located on either side of the Arab city of Shechem, and it is not recommended that you travel there during these days of violence directed at our people by the local Arab population. However, back in 1969 (during my ‘Junior Year Abroad’, just after the ’67 war), one of the ‘tiyullim’ we took with our Ulpan was to see these two mountains, side-by-side. To this day, I remember the strong impression this landscape made on me: one mountain relatively lush and covered with green; and the other mountain mostly bare rock, with hardly any growth there at all.

Using this imagery, the Torah tells us that making good life choices is equivalent to growth, the definition of  ‘blessing’; however, making bad choices is equivalent to stagnation and inertia, the definition of ‘curse’. In Judaism, this is the worst scenario imaginable: a life without growth, a life of inertia. We are put on this in order to toil and work towards a goal of greater good and completion. Each person’s task is unique.

Just as every plant grows from one stage to the next, hopefully producing fruit over the course of its lifetime, so too must we concentrate on making the proper efforts so that we will have ‘grown’ throughout the course of our life, producing the desired fruit. We are not Epicureans (“eat, drink and be merry” – letting life just ‘pass us by’); Judaism believes in becoming a greater being through spiritual growth. And, just as a plant grows, passing through stages, so too does each effort produce the necessary base for launching the next: “One mitzvah leads to another mitzvah; one aveirah leads to another aveirah” [Pirkei Avos 4:2]. This is the greatest good; this is the essence of life – choosing that which is good and receiving the ultimate blessing for it in return [For more imagery of blessings related to plants and growth, see Psalm 92, “A Psalm for the Sabbath Day”, which we recite every Shabbos during the Shacharis service as part of psukei d’zimrah].