AND YOU SHALL REMEMBER THE ENTIRE WAY ON WHICH THE LORD, YOUR GOD, LED YOU THESE FORTY YEARS IN THE DESERT... YOUR CLOTHING DID NOT WEAR OUT UPON YOU, NOR DID YOUR FOOT SWELL THESE FORTY YEARS.

(Devarim 8:2,4)

 

 

Your clothing [did not wear out] - Some say: this occurred miraculously. Others say: Because they took out many garments with them from Egypt. And it could be that it is not in the nature of manna to produce sweat. [Nor did your foot] swell [vatzeka] - from the same root as [appears in the verse] and they baked the dough [batzek](Shemot 12:39), for it is usual for the foot of a visitor who has walked a great distance, that his feet swell. It could be either that God gave them strength [to keep their feet from swelling], or that they walked slowly.

(Ibn Ezra ad loc)

 

Your clothing - this also occurred in order to tell us that it is possible to be dressed in garments of glory even during the period of exile when we have no crops that produce materials for clothing. So it occurred miraculously in the wilderness and see below (29:4) how this idea expresses Moses' condolences for the depth of exile.

(Ha'NeTziV miVolozhin: Ha'Amek Davar, ad loc)

 

led you these forty years in the desert...did not wear out - In order to tell us that the dispersal and the troubles are not as bad as they sound to a person who hears about them, for it was ordained that they spend forty years in the wilderness, and this seemed a great misfortune to Israel, as we see from the first chapter of Devarim, which describes how much they cried about it and begged that the decree of forty years wandering in the desert be annulled. All of this sprang from their imagining how much they would suffer without cover or garments or shoes in the wilderness. But the decree was fulfilled and in any event Your clothing did not wear out upon you, nor did your foot... All of his comes to show that God's providence watches over us even during [a period of] "hiding His face," for the garments and shoes were not created miraculously in the manner of the manna and the well [which followed the Israelites through the wilderness]. Rather, it was hidden providence that kept the garments and shoes from wearing out. So you can understand that even in times of deep trouble providence operates over you, and the Holy One Blessed be He is aware of those taking refuge in Him, even in this evil hour, and so it is not so bad.

(Ha'Amek Davar Devarim 29:4)

 

Stages of Faith

David Yiselzohn

What does the Lord your God ask of you - but that you fear Him (Devarim 10:12). But is fear of Heaven a small thing?!?! (Berakhot 33b).

Parashat Ekev is heavy with "demands" that God makes of the Israelites. Moses stands before the people and lays out a list of requests which might all be called simple things that we must do so that life will go well or us. The whole parasha is built out of a recurring formula of conditions and results: if you sin - plagues will follow; if you stray from the path - the earth shall not offer up its bounty. However, if you do not sin - the grain shall flourish; if you stick to the path - rain shall fall. It all seems quite simple.

Suddenly we come across a verse in which Moses addresses the Israelites and asks them persuasively, "How much does God really expect from you? To believe?" 1,500 years later, the Talmud jumps to attention and throws a question back at Moses:"That is what you call ‘How much'"? Aren't you exaggerating a bit? Can fear of Heaven be counted as something small and easy?" Then the Gemara continues and tries to explain Moses' words: "Yes, for Moses it is a small thing." Moses was the most humble of men and sometimes he tried to escape the missions that he was charged to perform, but as a leader he was not lacking faith, and to his mind nothing is easier than belief. So - Moses thought to himself - if that is all the Holy One blessed be He is asking from the Israelites, how hard could it be? Moses may be the one with a problem here; perhaps he did not properly understand the people. After all, he expected that it would be easy for the people to believe if they were asked to. He thought it was all self-evident, and he assumed that the people would see things the same way.

And now, Israel - after all of the Israelites' complaints in the wilderness, and all of their straying from the path, there is here a kind of summary of Moses' mood and God's mood. Now they ask: drop all of your doubts and believe, walk in the straight path we have shown you. To keep his commandments...for your own good.

The RaMBaN connects the demands with for your own good. That is to say: these demands are for your own good.

It is easy for us to criticize the Israelites in the wilderness. We observe how they saw the voices yet did not hesitate to make a calf. They received manna from heaven, but never stopped asking for additions to the wilderness menu. They continued to question Moses after he had brought them out from slavery to freedom; they shouted at him and demanded change. There is no doubt that the people are described as an ungrateful nation. What is so difficult about expecting belief?

However, it may be that there is both nothing simpler but also nothing more complex than belief. It is impossible for us to take the measure of someone's faith or to even quantify our own belief. Faith is like love, it cannot in any wise be quantified, but its presence and power can be felt.

However, it is precisely here belief plays a very important role.

but that you fear - Rashi cites the Sages' dictum from Berakhot 33b, "Everything is in Heaven's hands, except for the fear of Heaven." This statement is usually trotted out when we come across someone who says that it is difficult for him to believe. However, this may be the hardest thing to say to someone who faces a crisis of faith, since if God Himself cannot give us faith - who are we to find it on our own? The Israelites simply received all their needs from God, and now they are suddenly required to believe all by themselves?

One can learn about faith not only from Moses' request, but also from the commandments that Sefer HaHinukh counts in our parasha. Three out of its eight total commandments point to the three types of faith mentioned in the parasha. Perhaps these commandments can help us understand belief's great power.

The parasha's first commandment is Birkat HaMazon ("Grace after Meals"), which speaks of faith continuing even when we are satiated. It would appear obvious that we must pronounce a blessing when something appears before us; we give thanks for that which we have received and begin to eat. However, after we are satiated and had our fill, we forget that we were ever hungry, that we were ever in need. If belief is firmly rooted in us we remember the source of the food that satiated us - and we offer the blessing. Here we see that there is faith that endures in memory after the gift we received is no longer remembered in the source of faith.

The second type of faith is found in the commandment to pray, the second commandment in our parasha. Here we have belief born of connection; prayer is our means of connection with God. The RaMBAM states that ideally, meditation is the best way to draw near to God, and all the other methods are mere default options. If so, then today prayer is our means to express out faith in words; it is the instrument by which we underline and express our faith in God.

The third commandment takes us to the third type of faith - love of strangers. This commandment is special in that it allows us to see the connection to faith by way of deeds. From the moment of its achieving nationhood, the Jewish People has had a mixed multitude - strangers - living in its midst. The Torah came and pointed out something that is in no way self-evident: that we must love the stranger, we must be careful with them and never let them feel out of place. The reason is clear: we were strangers ourselves. We may have forgotten that episode from our past, since it is human nature to forget what they have undergone or to not always draw the correct conclusions from that past experience.

It may be that these three commandments appear in our parasha in chronological order in order to teach us this lesson. At its climax, the parasha deals with belief, and the three aforementioned commandments come to arouse our faith in a gradual fashion. Memory of the past may nourish our faith. This faith gives us the strength to find the way to express our faith and connect with it through prayer; it finds practical expression through fulfillment of the commandment to love the stranger. If we remember from whence we came and what we belief then we will be able to carry out the needed public and social improvements. Doing justice for the orphan and the widow and loving the stranger allow for the creation of a better society based upon faith and healthier values; correcting that which already exists, making all possible improvements - this is the third stage of faith: work towards societal reform.

In order to continue and understand this matter we need to consider a similarly structured verse from the book of Micah (6:14): What does God ask of you, but to do justice and love kindness. Regarding this verse, the Rabbi in the Book of the Kuzari says: "He who fails to uphold these - fear [of God], justice, loving kindness - does not uphold the sacrifices, the Sabbath, circumcision, and the like...could an Israelite possibly keep do justice and love kindness while abandoning circumcision, and the Sabbath, and the laws of Passover, and the rest of the Torah and still succeed?!" The commandments were not intended to make life hard for us, but rather to give us direction and mark out the path in which we can make our faith into something tangible. Deeds both spring from faith and complete faith.

The end of the matter, everything having been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the entire man (Kohellet 12:13).

The entire man expresses man's greater complexity. However, if we understand that man's struggle for the realization of his purpose in the world must be achieved gradually, and that it is not for us to complete the work, perhaps we will be able to understand that which God "asks of us" as a simple thing, something not in heaven.

David Yiselzohn is a teacher in the Jerusalem area.

 

And you shall love the stranger - this relates to one who wishes well for himself that the Holy One blessed be He should be beneficent to him in wealth and in his worldly dealings, that he should in any case love the stranger.

For you were strangers in the land of Egypt - Nevertheless, today you have become important. So to regarding this lowly stranger; who knows what abilities hide within him and within his future progeny? It is written et hager [the stranger] and not as in Vayikra, ve'ahavta lo kamokha [and have love towards him as yourself], because there it refers to deeds, and here it refers to ideas.

(Ha'Amek Davar 10:19)

 

And you shall love the stranger - Resemble God in love of the stranger who accompanies you from alien lands; by your acceptance of the stranger you will realize that pure humanity is the supreme quality in your view. Equality before the law and the love with which Israel relates to the stranger characterize the nation and the Land as the Nation of God and the Land of God. In other circles, man's status depends upon his ancestry and his property; in the Nation of God and the Land of God only pure humanity, subservient to God, determines the status of man.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch, Devarim 10:19)

 

For you were strangers - All of your misfortune in Egypt was that you were strangers there; as such, local custom denied you land, birthplace, livelihood; the natives were free to do with you as they saw fit. As strangers, you were denied rights in Egypt, and this was the root of the servitude and the persecution you underwent. Therefore, watch yourselves - this is the terminology of the admonition - lest you establish human rights in your state on any foundation other than pure humanitarianism, which rests in the heart of every man as a man. Any depravation of human rights will open the door to arbitrariness and to abuse of man - this is the root of the abomination of Egypt.

 (Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, Shemot 22:20)

 

A Land of Which Demands are Made, and Which Makes Demands of those Who Living Within It

But the land you are crossing into to possess is a land of hills and cleft-valleys; from the rain of the heavens it drinks water; a land of which God always makes demands, the eyes of the Lord your God are upon it from the start of the year until the end of the year.

(Devarim 11:1-12)

 

A land of which God makes demands. A land of which demands may be made, e.g., to set aside challah, heave-offerings, and tithes.

Could it be possible that such demands be made of other lands as well? We derive from the passage of which demands may be made - but not of other lands.

(Sifri, Ekev, 40)

 

For the land which you are entering to possess; it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you went out, where you sow your seed and water it with your foot like a garden of greens; But the land you are crossing into to possess is a land of hills and cleft-valleys; from the rain of the heavens it drinks water; a land of which God makes demands... The Yalkut, on Ekev, (860) concludes that "it alone is subject to demands, such as the giving of halla, heave-offerings, and tithes - but not other lands...." and whosoever has eyes to see and heart to understand must wonder at what he sees - what is the connection of hallah and terumah to the subject at hand? And how are we to understand the word ota ("it" - the land) as implying exclusion of all other lands with regard to teruma and tithes? And why is this exclusion mentioned here? But, he [the editor of the Yalkut] must have wanted to give a rationale for the Land of Israel being obligated to give challa, teruma, and maaser more than any other country. He said: In all other lands, all the effort is upon you, even when growing wheat. You must irrigate with your feet, like the garden of greens, and therefore the Torah freed you of the obligations of terumot and maasrot. But the land which you are coming to possess, from the rain of heaven it drinks water. This being the case, half the effort is yours and half is God's, therefore it is right that you give God's share to the servants of our God. And this explains why there were people who despised the land, because they were hard-hearted, uncharitable persons, who had no will or desire to leave a land of exemption for a land of obligation, and they admitted this freely: We remember the fish that we used to eat in Egypt for free - this is explained in the Sifre as "free from commandments."

(Kli Yakar, Bamidbar 26:64)

 

 

You shall devour all the peoples... Your eye is not to take pity upon them: The Commandment and Its Implementation

Initially the king is to wage only a war of commandment, and what is a war of commandment? It is the war against the seven nations, etc...

(RaMBaM, Laws of Kings, 5:1)

 

It is a commandment to devote the seven nations to destruction, as is written: You are to devote them to destruction, yes, destruction. Whoever has the opportunity to kill one of them but does not do so transgresses a negative precept, as is written: You are not leave alive any breath - and their memory is no more.

(RaMBaM, ibid. 5:4)

 

He will hear the cry of the poor and save him

Who does justice: Although He is lofty, He does justice for the orphan and the widow for there is none who aids them, as in the expression Father of orphans (Psalms 68:6). And so too regarding the stranger - He provides for him when he depends on Him; and since the Lord loves the stranger, you are [also] required to love him.

(Ibn Ezra Devarim 10:18)

 

And place these, My words upon your hearts

Next to your hearts, as in the verse and place it as a cover with it upon the Ark, and place upon the covering. From this our Rabbis learned that it [the tefillin] should be placed in juxtaposition to the heart.

(Hizkuni Devarim 11:18)

 

Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk used to say: Why is it written upon your hearts and not in your hearts? Because sometimes the heart is closed up and cannot open itself to certain words, so in the meantime they shall rest upon your hearts, so that one day, when the heart opens up, they will be able to enter...

 

 

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