TorahParsha

The Difference Between Weakness and Strength

 

for Parshat Eikev 

 

Moses recounts how God shepherded Israel in the Desert, the frightening wasteland.

And he tells how Israel will conquer the Land with God’s help.

 

The God who shepherds us in weakness is the God who gives us strength.

 

To say: We are no more powerful when we are strong than when we are weak.

And we are no more powerless when we are weak than when we are strong.

Either way, we can do nothing without God’s help.

 

So that the difference between weakness and strength does not exist. And the difference between the strong and the weak does not exist.

Only God’s help exists.

 

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

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What forgiveness changes

for Parshat Eikev

i

God gives Moses

the Stone Tablets of Law

up on the Mountain.

Down below,

Aaron,

head of the tribe of Levi,                                                                 

lets the people convince him

to make the Golden Calf.

*

God sends Moses down the Mountain.

Descending,

seeing the Calf,

Moses smashes the Tablets.

*

Moses pleads with God.

God forgives the people

and forgives Aaron

and God gives Moses

a new set of Tablets.

God tells Moses:

make a wooden Ark

an Aron;

place the new Tablets

in the Aron,

let the tribe of Levi

carry the Aron

through the Desert.

 

ii

Aaron of the tribe of Levi sins.

He brings the Tablets to break at the foot of the Mountain.

God forgives

and the Aron within the tribe of Levi

holds the new Tablets.

 

iii

To sin is to shatter the holy

down to the earth.

But to sin

is also to initiate your own spiritual process,

to bring some of God’s world down

closer to yours.

*

When God forgives,

perhaps all that is left

is that boldness to bring God close,

and the closeness itself.

 

____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

_____

Based on an idea of Rav Yosef B. Soloveitchik, as presented in Pinchas Peli’s Soloveitchik On Repentance

Verses cited: Deut 9:8-10:11

_____

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How is forgiveness possible?

for Parshat Eikev 

 

i

God appears

on the Day of Congregation

and gives the people Torah.

*

Then the people sin

with the Golden Calf.

*

God is furious.

But Moses says:

do not look to the people’s sinfulness;

look to the righteous Fathers:

to Abraham,

to Isaac,

to Jacob.

And God forgives.

*

Then God tells Moses:

carve two stone Tablets

with your own hands

and I will write the Commandments upon them

and the people will have Torah again.

 

ii

Before the Sin of the Calf,

God appears to the whole Congregation.

After He forgives,

He reaches out to Moses alone

—to one man—

to bring the Commandments.

 

 

iii

A nation grows

from individual people:

from Abraham,

from Isaac,

from Jacob.

One person

is a nation in potential.

*

Though a nation can fall from its greatness

a person is a great nation

waiting to happen.

 

iv

Sinning,

we fall from our greatness.

Forgiving, God says:

I will see you

not as a fallen nation

—not as something great that has failed—

but as a person,

as a greatness  you can still climb towards,

that you can still achieve.

 

____ 

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe
www.TorahParsha.com

 

What adults are afraid of

(for Parshat Eikev)

  

i

Moses says:

You have watched God destroy Pharoah. You have seen what God can do. So do not fear the nations of the Land.

*

Moses says:

I was terrified at God’s anger at at your sin, at the Golden Calf.

 

ii

In Egypt, Israel is a nation in its youth.

 And so it is in youth that Israel learns to understand that  there is no need to fear men.

Because God is more powerful than men.

*

In the Desert, Israel is older.

Pharoah is in the past. The people are on their way to the Land. They are on their way to standing on their own.  

It is then that Israel sins.

It is then that Moses is terrified by God’s anger at Israel’s sin.

 

iii

This is a story of growing up.

*

When you grow up, you learn that people are not frightening.

Even powerful, dangerous people are not frightening.

Because everything is in God’s hands.

*

When you grow up a bit more, you learn this:

that the cause of legitimate fear

is the wrong that we do, ourselves.

 

 

Based on a thought of Rav Soloveitchik

_________

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

 

Please pray for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, a one-year-old who needs a bone marrow transplant, and get your cheek swabbed today.

For further reading on Torah and the Parsha, consider: Hirhurim – Jewish Ideas Daily - Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s writings –Pardes  - The Virtual Beit Midrash – Yeshiva University Online

 

Thought for Parshat Eikev

What is eating?

i

Moses says: You must remember the Manna that God fed you— the mystical grain that descended upon the Camp, upon the dew, in the Desert—

to teach you that Man does not live by bread alone:

for by that which comes from God’s mouth shall Man live.

*

And Moses says:

When HaShem will bring you to the Land—a Land of wheat, a land where you will eat...bread easily—you will eat and you will be satisfied and you shall bless HaShem your God for the good Land which He has given you.

 

ii

You live by that which comes from God’s mouth

You live by something like God’s speech.

And after you eat, you shall bless HaShem.

You utter back to that speech.

So sustenance is a dialogue with God.

 

iii

The Manna that God spoke descends upon the ground.

The wheat grows from the Land.

You bless HaShem for the good Land.

The subject of that dialogue is the Land, the earth—the worldly place where we gather food.

*

If we remember, we make our worldly place into this place of conversation with God.  

 

___________

Shabbat shalom, Abe

___________

(Note—In some places the translations to the verses here are not exact and / or have been woven together from multiple places within the Torah.)

If you enjoyed this thought, please share it with a friend.

Please continue to pray for Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah, and for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther.

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For Parshat Eikev

Forever and Now

i
There are memories that work your mind very far back.

There a memories that reach to the times of your grandfathers, or of your great-grandfathers.

There are memories that reach back to the beginnings of the world.

Remember the Sabbath day…for in six days HaShem made the Heavens and Earth, the Sea, and all that is in them; and on the seventh day, He rested.

ii
Moses says: You must not forget the manna—the bread which God fed you in the Desert; the bread which your fathers did not know.

iii
God has been in the world from before time.

And you live with God right now, in a time your fathers did not know.

*
You must remember both of these times.

You must see that your life with God binds you to all of these times.

You must know that you inherit the whole history of the world; but that you also live with God in this one moment, right now.

~

Please pray for the recovery of Miriam Esther bat Devora Sara, who has fallen into a coma.

Shabbat shalom, Abe


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