Torah This Week - Ekev

Living the Better story

EKEV

I was going to skip writing a d’var this week, as I wrote something on Sunday although it was about last week’s parasha.

But I had a thought this morning (it happens sometimes) and I thought I might write here, as I usually say, a few short words about the parasha.

Look, this is the paradigm I see.  It is not seamless, it is not completely accurate, but life is not about accuracy, it’s about understanding (Lukacs). 

The first parasha in the book of Words (D’varim) has to do mostly with place.  The book starts out placing us in a specific place, locates that space in relation to Har Sinai, and points us into the direction of Eretz Yisrael.  We were almost there, almost at the Promised Land (promised, unconditionally, by Hashem to Avraham, Yitzhak, and Ya’akov and their seed forever).  When we reject the land (the sin of the “spies”), we are taken for a 40 year tour of the area.  Every place we get to (until we arrive to Amorite country), Hashem tells us “this land is not yours.  I gave it to the _______ as an inheritance.”  The point seems to be that Hashem has troubled Himself to make sure that every nation has its place. 

Two comments come to mind here.  The first is the first Rashi on the Torah, where he addresses the question of the reason the Torah includes so much seemingly irrelevant narrative when it could simply have started with the first mitzvah given to the Israelites in Egypt concerning fixing the calendar (the dichotomy of space and time is fascinating here, and I hope I remember this idea long enough to explore it later).  Rashi writes (in the name of R. Yitzchak) that we are to learn that the world belongs to Hashem, and He assigns nations to lands according to His will.  One can never say, “You stole this land that you are living on” for Hashem  displaces and replaces nations on lands according to His will and their actions.

Stop getting hung up on the indigenous peoples idea

Or not.  The Maharal writes that in fact every nation has its “natural” space, and for the world to function as it should, every nation should be dwelling in its natural land.  When Hashem tells us not to bother the Edomites for He has given Seir to the Edomites as an eternal possession, that means that there is a cosmic connection between the Edomites and their land that lasts as long as the Edomites last.

It is only the stupid stubborn short-sighted Israelites who can’t figure this out, who reject their own national destiny and their own natural land.  So Hashem makes clear to them on this “till this generation passes” tour of the middle east that nations and lands are connected, and their natural home is Eretz Yisrael. 

The first parasha is about space.

The second parasha, I think, is about relationship, which means relationship with Hashem.  The relationship is based on love and the medium, the language of the relationship, is mitzvah.  The switch in the second parasha from land to Torah is dramatic.  The word hok (statute), for instance, does not appear the first parasha.  It appears 14 times in the second parasha.  But the point of the emphasis on mitzvah is relationship, as expressed in Shma Yisrael.

So this week’s parasha, Ekev?  Ekev talks about what happens when the nation of Israel is in the land of Israel observing the Torah of Israel.  When this happens, a certain dynamic between Am (nation) - Eretz (land) - Hashem develops that establishes a natural law that is simply unlike the laws of nature that we know.  There is a shift in frame, and fine strands of connection build that form a fabric of thrice woven threads, both strong and fragile.  In other words, the fabric is easily torn, but when whole is impermeable. 

Read the parasha and you’ll see examples of this everywhere.  The most familiar instance might be in the second paragraph of the Shem’a, which appears in Ekev. (11:13-21)

If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving your God Hashem and serving Hashem with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late. You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil—

I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle—and thus you shall eat your fill.

Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them.

For Hashem’s anger will flare up against you, shutting up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that Hashem is assigning to you.

Therefore impress these My words upon your very heart: bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, and teach them to your children—reciting them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up; and inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates— to the end that you and your children may endure, in the land that יהוה swore to your fathers to assign to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth.

Sometimes we read or recite this section without really thinking about what we are reading.  But clearly, the text is drawing a connection between our actions and the weather!  This is not something we either usually perceive nor expect.  But the Torah sees this as natural law.

We see it in other places as well.  Israel is enjoined not to engage in agricultural activity on the seventh year (shmita).  “And if you ask,” says the Torah, reasonably, “what shall we eat, I’ll promise to send you such a blessing on your 6th year produce so that it will suffice for the 6th, 7th, and even the 8th year until the produce comes in, so that you will not starve.”

Every year, all Jewish men (usually together with family) are to go up to Jerusalem to celebrate the pilgrimage festivals of Pesah, Shavuot, and Sukkot.  “And if you ask,” says the Torah, reasonably, “who will defend our borders if all are in Jerusalem, know that I am here to protect you.”

Don’t worry,  I’ve got it covered.

See, these are the kinds of passages that bring people to say, “what a strange book this is.  It describes a reality that is not reality.  It expects us to rely upon Hashem in a very material, this-worldly way when we know the world does not work like that.”

Yes, that’s how I was raised to see the world:  rational and understandable laws, every phenomenon define by a simple fundamental principle - cause and effect.   It was the world of late 19th century physicists who believed that they had nailed down the basis of understanding how our reality is put together, not realizing they were living out the last years of such intellectual and scientific confidence.  They were on the brink of the quantum revolution, but they believed that their cut and dried human rationality had tamed the universe.  Only a few details had to be ironed out….

Quantum theory played a significant role in my intellectual and spiritual development.  That’s scary, because my understanding of quantum theory is something you could stick in your eye and not blink.  I’m not a scientist.  I’m not a mathematician.  I study history, and yes, among the histories I study is also the history of science.  So in many ways, quantum physics plays an outsized role in my personal history of ideas.

So here are three ideas, expressed in such generalities that probably make me seem an idiot, that I’ve gleaned from my studies.  First, quantum physics asserts that we do not know exactly what is going on.  Rather we can only calculate the probability that this or some other quantum event might take place.  Second, human consciousness (observation and measurement) has a not completely understood but direct effect upon physical reality.  Third is the idea of entanglement, which describes the connectedness of particles or energy over space and time.  Locality and strict cause and effect describe some frames of reality, but not all.

Truth is, that we really don’t know all there is know about how our reality is structured.  There is a nice quote from the Life of Pi that emphasizes the role of our own perceptions and interpretations of reality.

I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love!  My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.

I like the better story.  I believe that the Torah would not be telling us something so easily contradicted by “dry, yeastiness factuality.”  I don’t think I believe anymore in “dry, yeastiness factuality.”  I live in a world of wonder and wondrous phenomena, none of which is more stunning than living in the land of Israel, raising a family here, and trying to follow the teachings of our Torah.  This doesn’t mean that I will personally benefit from it and that no harm will befall me.  It only means that I personally benefit from it every day, and that no harm can come to the meaning of the life I’ve already lived, nor determine the potential of what is to come.