Friends of Itamar

Leah’s Blog – Parashat Reeh 2026

Leah’s Blog – Parshat REEH- August 2026 –

I know this place. How I feel here is me then and now. I release the past events of tens of years, hundreds of years, thousands of years ago. Growing now into a new revival, I adjust in the wake of new restoration. I hope. I pray. 🙏 Not many have the gift of the front row in these bleachers facing the Blessing and the Curse. Gerizim and Eval, you mountains are everything that has happened and will happen. Events fold into each other in this place yet you prefer silence. You are ornamented on one side with rows and rows of crumbling grey stones. On the other, green with trees and greener with new vineyards. The sun sets behind you, looking shy like a friend resting on your shoulders. A place where grief is resolved, memory is stored here. The landscape is deeply felt, like a battery- my sixth sense is charged here. This was never a passive backdrop. Still thirsting for moral clarity, the guns given to an enemy in very heart of our land are still sounding at times from the Casbah, from the same place Dina was taken. The remnant of the massive stone wall where she was held hostage still stands. Yosef, a prince of Israel who knew it all, stumbled here searching for his brothers. But there is a flipside here as there is with everything only here is the embodiment of the balance scales. Parshat REEH means to see. Avraham came to this place FIRST. After constant movement he stood in this place and recited the shema. Avraham who bashed his father’s idols and proclaimed ONE G-d – it says of Shechem One Shechem on your brothers. Yosef received a double blessing here in this portion in the place he was sold. The blessings and the curses were recited here. Now is the time to proclaim we OWN it. We are commanded now to bash the idols, to shatter the illusions and abandon vain false fantasies that hold us hostage. We return to the living Land now- the true tikkun olam. Good replaces evil, blessing supersedes curse. Here we SEE, we WATCH and look to see the mountains speak.

Shabbat shalom dearest friends, BLESSINGS! Leah