Re’eh: When Turning to Monotheism Requires Violence.

I have covered all of the Torah portions for the month of August except for Re’eh (Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17), which was the parshah for yesterday the 12th of August, 2023.  It contains discussions of idolatry, the inheritance of the land, what counts as kosher animals, the prohibition against eating blood, the sabbatical years, and a list of festivals and their observance.  As one reads, it becomes clear that the main concern of the parshah is threefold: observance; idolatry; and place.  Re’eh is more or less an argument for monotheism, one that acknowledges the existence of other gods, institutes a series of rewards and punishments to convince people to join in, and resorts to violence when people are unconvinced.  What does that mean for feminism?  We will see.

Contextually, this parshah belongs to the reforms of King Josiah, who reigned from roughly 640 to 610 BCE (before the common era).  Before and during at least part of the reign of King Josiah, there was room within Israelite worship and its worldview to not only allow for the existence of multiple deities but also their worship.  Even in the temple in Jerusalem, there were vessels for Ba’al and Asherah (2 Kings 23:4) as well as an image of Asherah (2 Kings 23:6).  Throughout the land, there was regular worship of various deities  including the sun, the moon, the stars, and the hosts of heaven (2 Kings 23:5). 

To change from this polytheistic mindset to monotheism, it seems the people needed to be convinced (Note 1). Thus, eighteen years into King Josiah’s reign, a book is “found” in the temple (2 Kings 22:8).  Most scholars believe this book to be a scroll, most likely Deutoronomy or something very similar to it, and probably written by Josiah’s scribes, placed within the temple to be “found,” in order to support his reforms (Note 2).  After reading the scroll, King Josiah “learns” what the deity wants: singular worship of Him alone and His unified worship in Jerusalem.  So, he sends people to clean out the temple (2 Kings 23:4), kick out the priests of various deities, and defile their houses of worship, including where women have been  weaving for Asherah (2 Kings 23:7).  

Returning to Re’eh, this parshah is a good example of the type of reforms King Josiah wants.  The argument is not just the worship of one specific deity but that that deity can be worshiped in only one place: Jerusalem.  In the parshah, the worship of other deities in mentioned eleven times (chapter 11 verse 28, chapter 12 verses 2, 3, 30 (2x), and 31 (2x), and chapter 13 verses 3, 7, 8, and 14), whereas worshiping the deity in the correct place is mentioned 16 times (in chapter 12 verses 5, 11, 14, 18, 21, and 26, chapter 14 verses 23, 24 and 25, chapter 15 verse 20, and chapter 16 verse 2, 6, 7, 11, 15 and 16).  In addition, the argument requires the individual to choose well or curses come.  In fact, the first line of Re’eh reads, “I set before you today a blessing and a curse.”   The choice is between worship of one deity in Jerusalem and blessings or suffer the consequences by continuing to be polytheistic and/or worship the deity outside of Jerusalem.  

Re’eh is also a good example of the argument made by Rita Gross in Feminism and Religion: An Introduction.  She contends that male monotheism ended the worship of the divine feminine as the god that remains is thoroughly male (172).  On top of this blow to the divine feminine, “male monotheism is one of the last, but most pervasive and powerful results of an emerging patriarchy and one of its most potent tools for sustaining its power,” (176).

But in Re’eh, this male monotheism doesn’t seem very powerful.  In fact, monotheism and centralized worship doesn’t yet exist. Rather, King Josiah is doing his darndest to make it happen. 

However, we can see exercises of patriarchy in the parshah. bell hooks defines patriarchy in her article entitled “Understanding Patriarchy” as, “…a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence,” (Note 3).  In Re’eh, “And you shall tear down their altars, smash their monuments, burn their asherim with fire, cut down the graven images of their gods, and destroy their name from that place,” (12:3).  Through the use of violence combined with an understanding of the divine that supports this violence (jealous, powerful, rule-loving, vengeful and male), Josiah roots out other deities, destroys their temples, gets rid of their priests, and ends their worship.  How disturbing that to be convinced of monotheism, Josiah has to resort to violence.

So, what does this mean for the modern feminist Jew reading a Torah portion like Re’eh today?  For one, Re’eh is an argument for monotheism within a context that was thoroughly not.  Second, according to scholars, this argument for exclusive worship of one deity in one specific place only comes about through the reforms of King Josiah (note 4).  And, these reforms required violence to be implemented.  I question the holiness of such a move.   Finally, Re’eh illustrates that there existed a time not too long ago where the divine feminine was honored along with other deities (note 5).  It was only wrapped up in discussions of idolatry because of reformers like Josiah.  Without him, who knows just how we would understand and know about what divinity means today.

NOTES:

1: Nowadays, any discussion of the divine even as She often raises people hackles and belies calls of idolatry.  

2: From John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books, 2nd edition, 2014, page 174.

3: For the article, see here.

4. King Hezekiah attempted something similar about 100 years before and was quite unsuccessful (Collins, 167-168).

5. For an interesting look at other practices of divine feminine from within the Tanakh and outside of it, see the Queen of Heaven text study on Sefaria and this article by Rabbi Jill Hammer, another contributor to this blog.