Sermon: Re’eh – seeing our worth

Written by Rabbi Hannah Kingston — 29 August 2025

The majority of people can think of one person who influenced the course of their lives, who sent them in a direction previously unthought of onto a completely different trajectory.

It could have been a teacher, who saw past the struggling grades to the potential within, and set your career rolling down an unchartered road.

It could have been a madrich or madricha, who saw your homesickness on camp and took you under their wing, helping you to feel part of a community that you are still part of sixty years later.

It could have been a boss or a manager, who invested in your development, helping you to progress up a ladder to heights previously unreached.

For me, it was Rabbi Rachel Van Thyn, who spoke  to me when I was on summer camp about being a female rabbi, and when I told her that there weren’t rabbis like me in the UK, told me to be the one to change it. I’m not sure she knows that she’s the reason I am standing here today.

Because so often, these people, who made such a huge impact on us, do not know it. We may go the rest of our lives without crossing paths again, and what they built unknowingly goes on to flourish and grow into something with unbounded potential. Their lives remain unchanged, and yet ours is unrecognisably different.

It only takes one person to see in us what we are often unable to see in ourselves, what we are blind to, our strengths and our worth.

Interestingly our Torah portion this week begins with a command for us to do just that. ‘Re’eh’ we are commanded, ‘see’, ‘behold’.

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse:

Ibn Ezra, a commentator famous for his use of Hebrew grammar when explaining the peshat meaning of a verse, observes that this verse offers something interesting grammatically. He notices that the verb re’eh is in the singular, whilst the rest of the verse is in the plural.

From this he concludes that this change in subject, from singular to plural, suggests that Moses is addressing each individual, calling them to the task, before reminding them that they are also part of the collective community.

This personal address is incredibly powerful. For as we know, we are often reliant on that one person noticing us, to be able to truly reach our potential. By addressing each Israelite in the singular, Moses is showing them that they have all made their mark, they are all an integral part of the collective.

In the Kli Yakar, a commentary written by Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim ben Aaron Luntschitz and originally published in 1602, this idea is taken further to examine how our feeling of individual worth impacts on the wider community. It writes:

A person must always view things as if the entire world is half righteous and half wicked. If they perform a single mitzvah they tip themselves and the entire world to the side of merit. Therefore Moses spoke to every individual, “See” that they should see in their thought that every single action affects all of them.

By placing a huge amount of emphasis on the importance of the individual within the collective this commentary recognises the power of each individual to make an impact on the community as a whole. In short it is teaching us that we are all important, and we all have our own role to play.

Our personal autonomy, and the actions we take, may feel like they only affect us as the individual, but the reality is that each of our actions will have an impact on the collective whole.

Despite this, so often in community we can become reliant on others to make a difference, rather than seeing our own worth and our own ability to impact change. We do not feel the need to turn up or volunteer, knowing that others will easily slip into the spaces that are left vacant. We may believe we have nothing more to add, feeling someone can do a job better than us or with more ease.

The command ‘re’eh’ at the beginning of the parasha encourages to see the merit in ourselves, and not to rely on others to find it for us. And the ending of the verse in the plural urges us to think about how we can best bring ourselves to the collective.

First we must find and believe in our worth, and then we must apply it.

Tomorrow evening we enter the month of Elul, a time of deep personal reflection. With this period of time comes a great opportunity to reflect on how we have acted in the past year. Although many of us tend to wear a more critical lens, this year may we see how we have truly mattered and the effects we have made, before we dwell on the places where we could have done more.

For none of us truly know the impact we are going to have on someone. How the one comment we make might shape their whole future. How our belief in someone else, can tip the scales of their lives when they are unable to see their true potential.

And none of us can rely on others to ‘see’ that within us, we must find our own worth, knowing that each of us is an integral part of our community.

As we gear up for this High Holy Day season, may we embrace a year of ‘seeing’. May we see the potential in ourselves to make a difference. May we see the spark in others, and encourage them to reach to new heights. And may we see the potential spaces in our community, the places we can step in, so that we can strengthen one another over the year ahead.