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Parshat Ekev
2003
Eat Together or Starve Together: Easy Torah and Hard Torah of Feast and Famine
There are more difficult portions of Torah, and there are easier portions of Torah. But what if some of the verses in the Torah that are the hardest to swallow appeared in the same portion as some of the most palatable and delicious ones?
Two verses, both alike in dignity:
1) The "easy" verse: the "attitude of gratitude"
Every time a religious Jew eats a meal, she recites Birkat Hamazon, the "blessing for food" after the meal. The second blessing of Birkat Hamazon concludes with this quote from our portion:
"V'achalta v'savata oovay'rachta et Adoshem Elokecha, al ha'aretz hatova asher natan lach." (Deuteronomy 8:10) "When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the L-rd your G-d for the good land which He has given you." (JPS translation)
Even for atheist or less religious Jews, the idea of thanksgiving for the blessing of food is an easy one to comprehend. We know that in a world where resources are still distributed unequally and even unfairly, we are lucky to enjoy the privilege of not wondering where our next meal is coming from. The tradition, by including this quote in the blessing, moves the focus from the food to the land, reminding us that we depend on G-d for the food, and that we have a unique connection to the Land of Israel.
2) The "difficult" verses: reward and punishment
Twice a day religious Jews recite the Sh'ma, the three paragraphs from the Torah that proclaim G-d's unity and sovereignty. Many Jews could quote the first paragraph, the v'ahavta, by heart. Almost any Jew who has had a Bar or Bat mitzvah remembers the commandment to wear tzitzit, from the last paragraph. Yet the middle paragraph remains less familiar to most, possibly due to its content:
"If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the L-rd your G-d and serving Him 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 the L-rd's anger will flare up against you, and He will shut 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 the L-rd is assigning to you." (Deuteronomy 11:13-17; JPS translation)
These verses speak of reward and punishment, a deity who is kind and merciful when obeyed, harsh and angry when disobeyed. Even the most devout and pious among us can find this description of G-d troubling. Why will we suffer so unavoidably if we disobey? Where are the traces of G-d's mercy and patience, so often invoked in other portions of the Torah?
A Word
Hebrew has both singular and plural versions of the word "you." The first text, from Birkat Hamazon, speaks of individual gratitude. Each one of us should be personally grateful for the blessings bestowed upon us. The other text, from the Sh'ma, speaks of collective responsibility. If we, as a community, fail to follow G-d's laws of blessings and life, then the results - not so much as punishments, but rather, consequences - will be curses and death.
The shared lesson of both texts is to evoke our faith and understanding that G-d's world does follow predictable laws of nature. The blessing of Birkat Hamazon reminds us to express our thanks when we partake of nature's bounty. The warning of the Sh'ma reminds us to accept our part in obeying the laws of nature. The teachings of the Torah connect our moral behavior, the life of the Land, and our ultimate destiny.
Prepared by Rabbi Ben Lanckton , Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Learn More
Additional commentaries and text studies on Ekev at MyJewishLearning.com.
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