The Choice
The verse: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15), then “You shall choose life” (30:19).
The question: why must G-d tell us to choose life? Who would choose death?
The lesson’s answer: we all choose death, without realizing it, thinking we are choosing life.
We believe that to live is to be in this world and to die is to leave it. The lesson teaches the opposite: this world is death, the next world is life.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” (Deuteronomy 30:15)
“You shall choose life, so that you may live, you and your descendants.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
G-d tells us: “I have set before you life and death.” And then He adds: “You shall choose life.”
Why must G-d tell us to choose life? Who would choose death? It is obvious, is it not? Who would be foolish enough to choose death deliberately rather than life?
If the choice is so clear, why does G-d insist: “You shall choose life”?
Because we do not know what life really is, and we do not know what death really is. We think that:
to live = to be in this world, to have a body that works, to breathe, to eat, to enjoy; to die = to leave this world, the body stops.
But it is exactly the opposite. This lesson will reveal a truth that the eyes do not see:
When you want to “live in this world”, you are in fact choosing to remain in death. When you attach yourself to this world, when you want to possess everything in it, when you think it is here that you must succeed… you choose death while thinking you choose life.
That is why G-d must tell us explicitly: “You shall choose life”. Not what seems to be life, this material world, but what truly is life: the Torah, the mitzvot, giving, letting go of this world of death.
The rest of the lesson will show: 1. the proofs that we live in death; 2. how the texts have revealed it for 3000 years; 3. why G-d created this world this way; 4. how to truly choose life.
Did you follow the lesson?
Five questions on the first chapter.