Ekev 5763 – divine rewards
Ekev is a great name for this week’s parsha.
It means “will follow.”
More emphatically, “will surely follow.”
It’s the same as the word for heel, as “on the heels of.”
And that surely is the theme of this week’s parsha.
Obey the commandments, the mitzvot, and you will surely be
rewarded. Disobey the
commandments and you will be punished.
In case we don’t get the message from the opening verses of the
parsha, the same idea is repeated several times, emphasizing the message
and bringing different angles to the message: individual vs. communal,
as well as a description of what exactly the rewards and punishments
will be. The second
paragraph of the Shema, the one that is ALWAYS recited quietly, is one
of these repetitions in this week’s parsha.
We are being told in no uncertain terms that there will be great
reward for us if we are but faithful to the commandments.
Taking this week’s Torah portion literally is probably the fastest way
to lose your faith in God, and become if not an atheist, at least a
totally non-observant person.
All you have to do is take a quick glance at the world around you and
you will see there is seemingly very little correlation between how many
mitzvot a person does and his financial and physical well being.
The most pious person in the community is not usually the richest
person in the community.
The least observant among us don’t always have more tzuras, more
grief, than any of the rest of us.
In fact taking this concept too literally led to the only case of a
rabbi
of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court of 2000 years ago, to become
an apostate, to give up Judaism.
In the Torah it is written that the reward for obeying your parents is
that your days will be lengthened.
It also says that the reward for chasing the mother bird out of the nest
before taking the eggs is that your days will be lengthened.
One day Elisha b. Abuyya, a great scholar and
rabbi
, saw a father tell his son to climb a tree and fetch some eggs.
The boy did exactly that, and chased the mother bird away
first—obeying two commandments at the same time, both of which promise
long life. While he was in
the midst of obeying these two seemingly life-extending commandments, he
fell to his death. Elisha
b. Abuyya declared “layt din v'layt dayan--There is no justice
and there is no judge.” He
didn’t say there was no God: he just said God doesn’t judge people.
There is no reward for keeping mitzvot—so he resigned from the
court and went to visit a harlot!
If our practical life experience is not enough to tell us not to take
all of these admonishments literally, we get a similar message from
scripture. The enigmatic
Book of Job, the story of a good man who gets seriously punished and
tested despite not having done anything wrong, is a serious challenge to
anyone who would take a simple approach to the teachings in this week’s
Torah portion that reward
and punishment is directly tied to observance of the commandments.
If we are not to take all of these warnings and promises in this week’s
Torah portion literally, how are to understand them?
What do we do with them?
In his introduction to the last chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin, Perek
Chelek, The great
rabbi
of the 12th century, Rambam (Maimonides) explains different
approaches that
rabbi
s have taken to the concept of Divine reward and punishment.
The whole problem is that the world doesn’t seem to work that
way. Rambam says there are
those
rabbi
s who understand the rewards as being Gan Eden, heaven, and the
punishments as being Gehinnom, hell.
The Talmud teaches that this explains why righteous people
sometimes suffer and wicked people sometimes prosper in this world: the
righteous get whatever punishment they deserve for minor transgressions
in this world, so they will have nothing but reward in the next world.
The wicked get whatever reward they might have coming for those
good things they did do in this world, so they get nothing but
punishment in the next world.
According to this world view, there is reward and punishment for doing
the mitzvot, it’s just that the books aren’t balanced until after death.
Other
rabbi
s tie the reward to the days of the Messiah: live a clean life, and you
will merit to be resurrected when the Messiah comes, fail to live a
proper life and you’ll be in the dust for eternity.
Others say that the point of living a good life is so that in the
future you’ll be resurrected and restored to your family.
Rambam says there are others who take the promise of reward and
punishment as literal, in this world, that if you keep the mitzvot
you’ll be rewarded in this world.
And another group, seemingly confused, mixes all of the above
reasons together in one big stew.
Ultimately, Rambam concludes that the whole notion of reward and
punishment for doing the mitzvot is really for people who are at a
simple level of development, like children who will only learn their
lessons because the teacher or their parents promise them treats.
They don’t appreciate the intrinsic value of their studies.
Rambam says the same thing applies to mitzvot.
This week’s Torah portion talks about reward and punishment for
those who need an external motivating force to do the right thing, who
are not yet on a sufficiently high spiritual level to appreciate that we
don’t do the mitzvot for promise of reward, rather we do them out of
love of God and a desire to know God.
This week’s Torah portion also contains a hint to this: we are
commanded to devuk, to cleave to God, and the Jewish mystics tell us
that devekut, cleaving to God, is in fact the purpose of life.
There is a teaching in the Talmud which says that one should not do
mitzvot like a servant expecting a reward from his master; rather we
should run to do mitzvot like a servant who loves his master and just
wants to please him. The
great Chasidic
rabbi
, Rebbe Nachman of Bretslav takes this idea even further, and tells us
that we should serve God with so much joy that we don’t even want any
reward, other than the opportunity to do another mitzvah.
But the truth is, most of us are not at such an exalted spiritual level
as Rambam or Rebbe Nachman.
And if you are not yet at that level, it would be all to easy to use
those teachings as a rationale to do nothing.
Fine, you might say, if someday I feel like I really need to
develop that strong a connection to God I’ll do mitzvot, in the
meanwhile, why bother? I’ve
got a lot of other things to do.
Rambam, by the way, never says that there is no such thing as reward for
doing the mitzvot; he just says that shouldn’t be the real motivation
for a spiritually developed person.
I would like to suggest that there are rewards for doing the mitzvot,
even if it is not as immediate and cut and dried as this week’s Torah
portion might make it appear.
Most of the mitzvot have some kind of intrinsic reward or at least a
purpose, if we but examine them closely.
Shabbat is perhaps the finest example of this.
Many people think of all of the rules and restrictions
surrounding Shabbat as a great burden, something very difficult to do,
something that interferes with our enjoyment of life.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Shabbat is the greatest gift that God gave the Jewish people.
Observing Shabbat can transform your life.
It will deepen your connection with God, your family, and the
Jewish people. It will add
meaning to your life, and recharge you spiritually and physically in a
way no vacation could hope to compete with.
My wife Lauri describes Shabbat as a 25-hour spa for the soul.
When this week’s Torah portion cautions us that failure to observe the
mitzvot will result in our destruction, it is also making a simple
statement of fact.
Observing the mitzvot is, over the long run, what makes us Jews.
What makes us a unique people.
Where are the seven Canaanite nations described in the Torah?
Gone, every one of them.
Where are the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Parthians?
Where are the Romans?
Even though there are still people called Greeks and Egyptians,
classical
Greece
and
Egypt
are long gone. Greeks and
Egyptians are now simply people who live in those places, not followers
of ancient religions, living their lives in accord with ancient
traditions. If we abandon
the mitzvot, within a generation or two we have abandoned Judaism.
If we give up our mitzvot, give up our customs, give up our
Jewish way of life, the prophecies in this week’s portion would surely
become true: we would perish, at least as a distinct people if not
individually.
The Ishbitzer Rebbe, a Chasidic
rabbi
of the 19th century, tells us that the opening word of this
week’s parsha v’haya, it will be, tells us that the rewards that
will ekev, that will follow, will follow in the future when we
understand the purpose of the mitzvot.
The Ishbitzer teaches that in the future, Israel’s patience in
doing the mitzvot without understanding why will be rewarded with
understanding the deep goodness of all of those mitzvot that to our eyes
today seem without any good rhyme nor reason.
And that, I think, is the real message of this parsha.
We should be patient, and have faith that the things God has
commanded us are not for His sake, but for OUR sake.
If we follow the teachings of the Torah, our lives will be
enriched.
Shabbat Shalom.