Once again it is time to take the proverbial pen in hand and share with you my thoughts on the parsha (weekly Torah portion) we read this shabbat. The parsha is called Aykev which means, “As a consequence of,” and it begins by telling us that as a consequence of our listening to the judgements, and guarding them, and doing them, haShem (god) will guard the brit (covenant) for us.
Before I go any further, I want to remind you that this is still part of Moshe’s (Moses) final words to the nation.
He continues by saying that god will love us and bless us and our offspring and our animals and our crops upon the land he swore to give to our ancestors. We will be more blessed than the other nations. HaShem will remove disease from us and give it to our enemies. We are to consume the nations that haShem gives us and not show them pity and not serve their gods, for that is a snare for us. We are not to fear them, rather we are to remember what haShem did to Pharaoh and Egypt.
Moshe tells us that haShem will move out the other nations slowly to prevent a huge increase in wild animals. We are again told to guard and do the commandments in order to live and increase and come into the land and settle it. We are told to remember the 40 years in the wilderness where god tested us to know what was in our hearts and whether we would do the mitzvot (commandments/joinings) or not. HaShem fed us mahn (manna) so we would know that man does not live by bread alone, but by all that comes out of the mouth of haShem. We are to know that just as a person disciplines their child, so too does haShem discipline us.
Moshe warns us to take care not to forget haShem by not following her mitzvot, and thinking that all the good that comes our way is from our own doing. Rather, it is god who gave us the ability to acquire and have all wealth we have. If we forget haShem and serve other gods, we will be lost just like the other nations that haShem is removing from the land before us.
Moshe informs us that we are not to think that we are on the land due to our own merit. We are inheriting the land because of the wickedness of the other nations and the promise haShem made to our ancestors.
We rebelled against haShem during our time in the wilderness. Moshe gives the example of when he received the stone tablets from haShem and how the people sinned and how they were saved from haShem’s wrath by Moshe’s prayers and actions. He then quickly recounts parts of the journey and then tells us that all haShem wants from us is to be in awe of him and follow in her ways and love and serve him with all our hearts and souls. She asks us to cut away the outer shell of our hearts and not be so stiff necked. Because haShem does not take bribes and exacts justice for the orphan and widow and loves an alien to give him food and clothing, we are to love the alien, for we were once aliens in Egypt.
We are again reminded of what haShem did to Egypt and to Datan and Aviram of the tribe of Reuvan, that the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and all they owned.
Moshe again repeats that we are to guard all the mitzvot so we will be strengthened and come in and settle the land and to prolong our days on the land. However, this time he continues by telling us that the land is not like Egypt where you can sew seeds and walk along watering them. This land is dependent on the rain which requires haShem’s constant attention.
If we follow the mitzvot, haShem will provide rain in its proper time and the land will give us its produce. If not, then there will be no rain and no produce and the land will vomit us out. These are the things we are to teach to our children and to always be talking about from the time we get up to the time we go to sleep, sitting in our homes, and when we are out in the streets.
Our parsha ends with Moshe, yet again telling us that if we guard these mitzvot and love haShem and follow her ways and cleave to him, haShem will remove the nations from before us and every place we walk, from the wilderness and the Lebanon and the river Prat until the western sea will be our borders. No one will be able to face us for haShem will put fear and awe of us on the entire land that we walk.
So, what do you think of all that?
“What do I think of all that,” you ask? Well, let me tell you. I think that our parsha is trying to tell us how life works.
The first thing that I noticed is how many times Moshe tells us that we should follow in haShem’s ways and in the mitzvot. Why do we have all this repetition?
Well, it isn’t quite repetition. Each time, Moshe tells us something different. One time he tells us if we do the mitzvot, things will be good for us. Another time he says it will allow us to stay on the land. Yet another time he mentions that it is important because the land is different from Egypt and needs god’s attention so it rains at the appropriate times for the land to flourish. Essentially, what Moshe is doing is what all good teachers do: he is providing the same information in a number of different ways.
Why is this a good teaching technique? For two reasons. One reason is that people understand things in different ways. People connect to different things. By providing more than one reason for following the mitzvot, Moshe is able to reach more people – more people are able to connect to and relate to why following in god’s ways are important.
The second reason is because the more times a person hears something, the more he will remember it. However if you repeat something exactly the same way, people will tune out and become bored. By varying the message, even a little bit, keeps people’s interest and hence the people will really hear the message several times and have a better chance of remembering it.
There is something else I saw in the parsha. There are three verses that caught my attention and seem to be connected. The verses are: 8:3, 8:5, and 8:16 (all in the book D’varim or Deuteronomy). The first verse reads, “And he will afflict you and he will starve you and you will eat the mahn that you did not know and was not known to your ancestors in order to make it known to you that man does not live by bread alone, but he lives on what comes out of the mouth of haShem.” The second verse is: “And you will know with your heart that as a man disciplines his son, haShem your god/powers disciplines you.” The last verse reads: “The one who feeds you mahn in the wilderness, that was not known to your ancestors, in order to afflict you and in order to test you, to benefit you in the end.”
What do these three verses have in common? They tell us a basic fact of life: that in order to grow, we need to suffer or be tested.
The first verse tells us this by saying that we can not know the purpose of the suffering until after we have been tested. The verse tells us this with a specific example. The whole reason haShem starved us and gave us the mahn was to teach us that we depend only on haShem for our life. In other words, we cannot understand that we really depend on haShem for our lives until we feel the lack of bread and still survive by haShem giving us the mahn.
The third verse tells us that even though we might not understand why we are suffering at the time of our suffering, we need to trust that when we get to the other side of our suffering, we will discover that our suffering was really for our benefit. Now I want to point out at this point that the Torah mentions testing and suffering together. This is to tell us that we are not talking about needless suffering; rather, we are talking about suffering that has a purpose: to test us in order to teach us something or help us grow.
The second verse has a slightly different angle. It is telling us that the way we cause others to suffer, how we discipline our children, this is how god will test us. If we do it in a loving way, god will test us in a loving way. If we are abusive in our discipline, god will be abusive in how he causes us to suffer, to learn. The choice, our verse and our parsha is telling us, is ours.
May we test each other in a loving way, may all our tests be given from a place of love, and may we hear the messages god is giving us in all the different ways that god tries to communicate with us.
If you want to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.