Of Curses and Thrills

Abuse of mind-altering drugs; probably the most extreme
example of seeking a novel, thrilling experience without
regard for the consequences.

This week’s Torah portion begins with a simple equation.  Look here!  I place before you today a blessing and a curse.  The look here – re’eh in Hebrew – is the classic attention-getter.  Likewise, the binary choice, which is then explained.  The blessing [will come] if you obey the commandments that I place before you today.  The curse [will come] if you do not follow the commandments of the Lord your G-d, and you go astray from the path that I am prescribing for you today.

This is a theme that permeates the Book of Devarim, or Deuteronomy; in seminary the professor called it ‘the Deuteronomistic theology’ because it first finds its full expression in this, the fifth book of the Torah.  Follow G-d’s law, and you will be blessed; don’t follow it, and you will be cursed.  The premise of the equation, is that because Israel has been chosen as G-d’s vessel for propagating His message and law to humanity, the good that happens to them is not accidental.  Rather, it is by G-d’s design.  BUT…if Israel falls away from G-d’s design, then curse will follow.  Bad consequences.  And exactly what does G-d have in mind as the symptom of ‘going astray’ that would trigger the threatened curse?  The third verse continues to spell it out precisely:  following other gods which you have not known.  One translation illuminatingly translates which you have not known – asher lo yedatem – as ‘in order to have a novel spiritual experience.’

Many of us spend our lives searching out novel experiences, in order to spice up our lives.  I know that I do.  Earlier this summer, I went for a week’s cruise aboard a sailing yacht as a way of searching out a new and pleasant experience.  People travel to places they’ve never been – the more ‘exotic’ the better.  Or they try new thrills, such as bungie-jumping or whitewater rafting. (Done the latter, not interested in the former…)  For some, their thrill-seeking of choice involves introducing mind-altering chemical substances into their bodies and brains.  All these experiences can be described, on some level, as ‘spiritual’; they induce a heightened sense of one’s self that makes the experience something greater, more transformative than one would expect.  But are these the kind of experiences that the Torah is warning us against?

Perhaps the last in the list:  the use of mind-altering drugs.  We tend to associate such practice with the decade of the 1960’s when the practice of taking illegal and dangerous drugs first became widespread enough as to characterize, in many people’s minds, a generation.  But in truth, the use of such drugs predates the 1960’s by a few thousand years.  They were part and parcel of the sacred practices of a number of pagan cults in antiquity, cults that the Torah with its prescriptions and proscriptions must be seen as a complaint against.

If I’m correct about this, G-d is not here telling us that we must live boring, predictable lives free of excitement.  Rather, He is saying that we must not enshrine the sensory overload associated with thrills, to the level of a spiritual purpose for living.  Specifically, it can be seen as a caution against the kind of sense-heightening that comes from mind-altering substances and experiences.  But why should such practice be singled out among all others?

In short, such thrills feed the soul’s desire for more and more, imprisoning the individual to continue seeking such thrills to the point of not tending to the ‘mundane’ details of life.  And if the Torah has a message for us, it is that we must remain grounded and always tend to exactly those sorts of things.  Both in the realm of the physical – taking care of ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.  And the spiritual – offering regular sacrifices (now, the ‘sacrifice’ of prayer) to G-d and studying the Torah in order to discern what our duties are.  

Descending into the mind-prison of drug abuse, is probably the ultimate antithesis of living the Torah.  And perhaps, the current explosion in use and abuse of mind-altering drugs, is a symptom of how far away from G-d's Law we have descended.  We have definitely brought on whatever bad consequences - 'curses' in the Torah's language - that beset us.