TORAH SPARKS

 

 

Parashat Eikev

August 20, 2022 | 23 Av 5782

Torah: Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25; Triennial 10:12-11:25

Haftarah: Isaiah 49:14-51:3

 

 

 

A Conduit of Blessing

Ilana Kurshan

 

In this week s parashah Moshe prepares the people for their entry into Israel, extolling the virtues of the land they are about to conquer successfully: For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains (8:7). Moshe assures the Israelites that so long as they keep God s commandments, the land will yield its bounty. The midrash, drawing upon Moshe s description of the people s destination and their destiny, offers a nuanced way of thinking about God s privileging of the Israelites above all nations and of Israel above all lands, suggesting a counterweight to this very particularist focus on the chosen people and the promised land.

 

Moshe describes the land of Israel to the people by comparing it to the land they lived in most recently, and which they grew to know very well: For the land you are about to enter and possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come (11:10). The midrash explains that the purpose of this analogy is to assure the people that the land of Israel is superior, because while preparing to leave Egypt


they kept saying, Perchance we are going to a land not as fine as this one. (Sifrei Deuteronomy 37). God assures them that even the most inferior part of the land of Israel Hebron, which the midrash describes as the refuse of the land of Israel is compared to Zoan, the royal residence in Egypt, based on the juxtaposition of the two cities in another biblical verse (Numbers 13:22). The people need not worry that they are leaving Egypt for an inferior land; every part of the land of Israel will be far better.

 

The comparison between Egypt and the land of Israel is based on the way in which each land is irrigated. Moshe tells the people that unlike Egypt, where the grain you sowed had to be watered by your own labors, Israel soaks up its water from the rains of heaven (11:11). These descriptions surely resonated for the Israelites, who worked as slaves in Egypt and thus had to do everything by dint of their own labor; then they spent forty years in the wilderness, where they never knew where they would find their next oasis. The notion of a land soaking up its water from the heavens must have seemed nothing short of heavenly to these former slaves turned desert wanderers.

 

The midrash (Sifrei Deuteronomy 37) expands upon the contrast between the source of water in Egypt and the land of Israel by way of a parable about a king who was once walking on his way when he noticed two young men in need of assistance. The first man was a stranger from a noble family, and the king provided him with a manservant to serve him. The second man was also from a noble family, but the king knew him and his parents, and so he declared, I will personally see to his needs and feed him. By the same token, all other lands were given servants to tend them: Egypt is watered by the Nile, Babylon is watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. Only the land of Israel is provided for directly by God. This midrash suggests that while other lands are also noble, God has a special relationship with Israel because God knows us and our parents after all, we are the


people whose ancestors God chose to enter into a covenantal relationship with in the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God knows the family we come from, and thus God takes us directly under the divine wing.

 

The midrash takes pains to emphasize that God s care for the land of Israel does not come at the expense of providing for other lands. In our parashah the land of Israel is described as a land which the Lord you God looks after, on which the Lord your God always keeps His eye (11:12). The midrash questions, Is this the only land God cares for? Does God not care for all lands? (Sifrei Deuteronomy

40). While Israel is the land promised to God s chosen people, God is also the Master of the Universe, responsible for all aspects of creation. The midrash resolves this tension by explaining that God cares about the land of Israel as a way of caring about all other nations: It is as if it were possible to say that God cares for Israel alone, but because of God s care for it, God cares for all the other lands along with it. One land cannot flourish if the lands bordering it are afflicted by drought and privation; in providing for the land of Israel, God must also provide for the countries around its borders, and for more far-flung nations which must also enjoy a considerable degree of welfare if the world is be a healthy and safe place to live. This notion is even more evident in a globalized world, in which the welfare of any single country impacts the welfare of so many others.

 

Furthermore, what is true of the land of Israel is true of the people of Israel as well, as the midrash goes on to explain: Similarly you might ask Does God keep only Israel? Does He need keep all nations? Does God care only for the Israelites at the expense of all other peoples? The midrash gives the same answer: It is as if it were possible to say that God keeps only Israel, but because God keeps them, He keeps every other nation along with them. God develops a close bond with the people of Israel as a way of ensuring that the


whole world enjoys divine favor and protection. This notion of cultivating a particular relationship as a means to caring more universally finds its expression in God s pledge to Abraham: All the families of the earth shall find blessing through you (Genesis 12:3). God blesses Abraham so that he might be a conduit of blessing to the world at large.

 

The covenantal relationship between God and Israel is based on a particular bond with Israel alone, but it is also rooted in an awareness that God is responsible for the entirety of creation: You shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine (Exodus 19:5). As the midrash on our parashah suggests, a devotion to the particular can inspire a devotion the universal. We all have people in our lives whom we care about more deeply than everyone else; we may enjoy an exclusive relationship with a spouse, or a special bond with our children, or a whole-hearted dedication to our parents. By caring for those closest to us, we are training ourselves to care deeply for those more distant and more different. We hope that our close bond with family and friends will teach us to give generously of ourselves to others as well, so that everyone around us will be showered in blessing.


Food or Famine? Up to Us

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

 

Text: Devarim 11:13-21

 

13 And it shall be that if you harken to My commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14then I will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. 15And I will give grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be satiated. 16Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, 17lest the Lord s anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the earth will not yield its produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you. 18And you shall put these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house

 

This is the second part of Shema. Much is similar to the first part, yet the rabbis identified a basic difference: The first part (in Devarim 6:4-9) speaks to the individual; this section addresses the community. What, in the conditions and promises in this section (as well as the language, if you are looking in the Hebrew) made the rabbis reach this conclusion?

What is the reward for observing God s mitzvot?

What are the penalties for turning away from God? Are they a natural result or a deliberate punishment? How could the answer be both ?

How do the instructions starting in v.18 connect to what came previously?


Commentar y: Rashi Devarim 11:16

 

Take heed when you have eaten and are full, take heed to yourselves that you kick not against God; for usually no man rebels against the Holy One, blessed be He, except out of satiety

 

How does Rashi understand the potential sequence of events described in this section of Shema? What is the risk in all the good we could receive?

Based on how the section continues from v.18, what is the remedy for this risk? What aspects of the remedy help ward off this risk?

 

Commentar y: Rashi Devarim 11:18

 

And you shall put these words Even after you have been exiled, make yourselves distinctive by means of My commands: lay Tefillin, attach Mezuzoth to your doorposts, so that these shall not be novelties to you when you return.

 

Why are these specific Mitzvot answers to the risk of leaving God? Why are they even more important once we have been exiled?


Birthing Israel

Bex Stern Rosenblatt

 

 

The Torah opens with stories of the making of descendants. One after another, we read stories of longing for children, opened wombs, difficult pregnancies and births, and marriages made to ensure the cycle continues. Abraham receives the promise of descendants more numerous than the stars, and we spend the rest of the Torah trying to reach a point where we can no longer be numbered.

 

 

This fecundity is the sign of our chosenness. And we create a system for passing tradition down generations. We perfect the art of storytelling, articulating a narrative to be told and retold ritually. We are the people who are fruitful and multiply, teaching our children to be fruitful and multiply after us.

 

 

Our haftarah celebrates this tradition. In a beautiful prophecy of reconciliation, God promises us that all will be well. God returns us to our status as inheritors of the Abrahamic promise. The images used to describe this reconciliation are of conception, pregnancy, birthing, and childrearing. Where God was our director in Genesis, opening the wombs of the women so that they might bear children, here God listens to the fears and the complaints of women. God creates a whole new way of understanding what conception, pregnancy, birth, and childrearing can be.

 

 

The first such image we read is, as translated by Robert Alter: Does a woman forget her babe, have no mercy on the child of her womb? Though she forgot, I will not forget you. We can read this as the utter


terror of the mother, the realized worst nightmare. This was our lived experience in the Book of Lamentations, as the dire situation made it so that we could no longer provide for our offspring. God promises us here that the rules of the game are changing. We are God s offspring and cannot be forgotten.

 

 

The next image juxtaposes the swift arrival of children with the going out of those who cause destruction. The straightforward reading of the text is that our nation will be rebuilt and our enemies will leave. But we can also read it as a rewriting of the birthing experience. God promises a swift and easy birth as opposed to a slow going out in which the child exiting the womb causes destruction to the birther. No longer will we have to bear our children in pain and in sorrow.

 

 

The final image is that of the woman marveling at the existence of her children, tended by royalty. She questions who bore the children for her. The difficulties and the trauma associated with the making of descendants in Genesis have been transformed. God becomes the one birthing, and the nations rear the children. For us, for Israel, this means the suffering is gone and only the children remain. We have still been chosen, but no longer is pain the sign of our chosenness.