Parshat Ekev Deuteronomy 7:12- 11:25

Rabbi Denise L. Eger

In this week’s portion, Ekev, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is addressing the Children of Israel and repeats and repeats and repeats the core message, “Be faithful to God and the Covenant. Don’t engage in idol worship!” Moses says this over and over again in many different ways: “And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, your God Adonai will maintain faithfully for you the covenant...”;(7:12); “You shall faithfully observe all the instructions that I enjoin upon you today that you may thrive and increase and be able to possess the land that Adonai promised on oath to your fathers. (8:1); “Take care lest you forget your God and fail to keep the divine commandments, rules and laws which I enjoin upon you this day” (8:11); “You must revere Adonai.”(10:20); “Love therefore, your God Adonai, and always keep God’s charge, God’s law, God’s rules, and God’s commandments.” (11:1).

Wow! Moses must think they are not listening. He says the same thing so many times and so many different ways. But I think with good reason. His experience with the Children of Israel on the journey through the years is proof. They don’t listen and their faith in God and the covenant waxes and wanes. Moses must recount the journey to this group because this is the generation born in the desert. He recalls the failings of their parents including the incident of the Golden Calf as well as other moments when the children of Israel doubted God and rebelled.

The group Moses is addressing did not have the direct experience of Sinai only what their parents had told them. And Moses is also mindful of this fact and that the children of those who will enter the Promised Land will also not have had that direct Sinai experience. “Take thought this day that it was not your children who neither experienced nor witnessed the lessons of your God Adonai” (11:2). Thus Moses wants the brief history from the Red Sea to steppes of Moab to be emblazoned in the minds and hearts of this new desert dwelling generation who will be the warriors to conquer the Promised Land. He needs them to be motivated to their task and to see themselves as part of the chain of this covenant that stretches way beyond the generation that left Egypt and witnessed Sinai but extending to the ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

We have a similar challenge today. We need the message of God’s saving hand told to us over and over again. We need to figure out how we fit into this long line of history and covenant and promise. That is the spiritual journey. We might not be in the literal Wilderness of Sinai but most of us are wandering in a wilderness of some sort.

Our traditions of Judaism help us cross through that wilderness connected to a People and Ethics to guide us to become the holy people and holy nation. If we can chase away our doubts but more importantly our fears, we can let the promise of our covenant with the Holy Divine One help us seek contentment and peace.

So in these weeks between Tisha B’av and Rosh Hashanah, let us prepare our souls for growing and our spirits for reviving at the Oasis of faith and hope. As this week’s portion concludes, “Therefore impress these My words upon your very heart. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead and teach them to your children-reciting them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. And inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates to the end that you and your children may endure in the land that Adonai swore to your ancestors to assign to them as long as there is a heaven over the earth” (11:18-21).

Parshat V’etchanan Deuteronomy 3:23 -7:11

Rabbi Denise L. Eger

The Shema prayer is one of the highlight of this week’s Torah portion. Listen Israel Adonai is Your God, Adonai is One (Deut. 6:4). These words are words that are emblazoned on the doorposts of our house in the mezuzah that protects our comings and goings. These words fill the tefillin boxes that we wrap around our head and near our heart. These words are also to be emblazoned in our very being.

We are to say them as we begin our day and as we end it with night time prayers. We say it in the Shachrit service and in the Maariv service. We say it throughout the prayer service when the Torah is taken out on Shabbat and holidays and in the musaf Amidah. We end the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur with the recitation of the Shema. The obligation to say the Shema is in addition to the mitzvah to pray daily.

Along with the V’ahavta paragraph that follows (Deut. 6:5-9) also found in this week’s portion we learn a message of unity, oneness, faith and love.

I often say the Shema is our love song to God. It is a statement of our faith; of our affirmation in the belief of One God. But even as we affirm the notion that God is One, we also seek to unify our lives with this same oneness. We are created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. And just as God is One we too need to bring all the different parts of ourselves into a fine weave of oneness. This same principle holds true for the Jewish people. Even as we span the globe, and interpret differently we still must link our lives and arms and our hearts as one. The prayer that precedes the Shema speaks of God’s great love for us. In the morning prayers it is Ahavah Rabbah-A great love; in the evening Ahavat Olam an eternal love. It speaks of the gifts of Torah and mitzvot that help us shape our lives and are the gifts of the covenant that we have with the Eternal. Our recitation of the Shema and the V’ahavata is then our love song back to the Divine Holy One. It is call and answer. It is gift given and the thank you we recite.

It is the offer of covenant and our acceptance. It is a spiritual discipline to direct our efforts at creating a better world both large and small.

So many people say they don’t believe in God or doubt the existence of God. Our recitation of the Shema asserts that there is a Divine Unity that connects all life and all of us. That is our vision of God. Like the colors of the spectrum, God has many aspects but ultimately the light is one. So too the Divine Unity has many aspects. Our Torah is the prism through which we struggle to understand these many aspects. But ultimately we affirm the Divine Oneness even when we doubt, even when we are struggling in the ultimate hope that we can hear, listen, come to know and yes, to love.

So get in the habit. Reaffirm your connection to our people and to the Divine Unity. And let God’s love wash over you and open your heart to being a loving human being connected to all life and love.

Parshat Devarim Deuteronomy 1:1 -3:22

Rabbi Denise L. Eger

We begin the last book of the Torah this week, Devarim also known as Deuteronomy. In scholarly circles there has always been a lot of discussion about this book of the Bible including a reference in the book of 2 Kings about its discovery during the reign of King Josiah by Hilkiah the High Priest. Some scholars see this book of the Torah and the covenantal outline detailed by Moses as documents used to justify King Josiah’s reformation and centralization. But other scholars see this book of the Bible as a way to elevate Moses to the realm of a prophet.

The Book of Deuteronomy is at its core a law book. Even though it is dressed as Moses’ last oration to the Children of Israel before his death on Mt. Nebo and before the Children of Israel cross over the Jordan River to the Promised Land, Deuteronomy is filled with the laws of the covenant and some of which are restated from other sections of the Torah, such as a second version of the Ten Commandments.

But let’s look at this week’s portion from a more literary and spiritual view. This week’s Torah portion begins by a review of the journey from Mt. Sinai to the steppes of Moab. This is important because the generation that was at Sinai is not the generation that is about to enter the Promised Land. Moses reminds them that their parents doubted God, complained and believed the reports of the scouts that the land was filled people stronger than they. Moses tells this new generation born in the wilderness the story of how they got to the edge of the land of Israel and in doing so is able to reinforce Joshua’s leadership as the successor.

But this story of origins is also important because I think Moses wants to make sure that the doubts that this generation may have of God and covenant don’t get the best of them. They are preparing to enter the Land. Even though Moses won’t be with them Moses wants to assure them that God will be with them “Indeed Adonai your God has blessed you in all your undertakings. God has watched over your wandering through this great wilderness, Adonai your God has been with you these past forty years. You have lacked nothing (2:7).”

Moses wants to inspire the Israelites to their task and to reinforce the idea that God is with them now as God has been with Children of Israel for the entire time since Egypt. This is as critical a message today as it was then.

The question is can we hear it? Can we hear this notion and believe that God is with us? But even as Jewish tradition teaches God is outside, we also assert God is within—in our very breath as God put the breath of life in the first human being. Our very souls are part of the eternal fabric of the Universe that we call God and links all humanity one to the other. This assertion that God is with us then and now reaches its peak in Deuteronomy and will be asserted in next week’s portion, V’etchanan as we assert God’s oneness through the words of the Shema!

Parshat Matot/Masei Numbers 30:2 – 36:13

Rabbi Denise L. Eger

Our double portion is the end of the book of Numbers. The children of Israel are poised to enter the Promised Land. Preparations are being made on the steppes of Moab to cross over and begin a new phase-occupying and settling the land and building a home for the Israelite nation. Last week the daughters of Zelophechad made history by changing the way the land was apportioned and inherited. When a male member of the tribe had no male heirs their portion of the land could now be passed on to his daughters. This was the ruling by God and created a new precedent for the Twelve Tribes.

But in this week’s portion the practical application of the law creates a new problem. The heads of the tribe of Manaseh come to Moses and the chieftains and the heads of the Israelites. They worry about their holdings being reduced if the five daughters of Zelophechad marry outside of their tribe. One of the unique parts of God’s ruling in their favor was that the daughters had the right not only to inherit from their father but to pass on that inheritance to their descendants. The tribal holdings of land were in perpetuity. The tribal leaders don’t object to the women having the claim and the stake hold but worry that if they marry outside the tribe then that portion of Manasseh’s land holding could be diminished.

Thus we have a dilemma—the practical application of the Divine judgment! The text tells us that Moses speaking for God renders a decision. We don’t know if Moses actually takes the case before God-but tradition wants us to assume that. It might be Moses trying to make sense of it all on his own.

But the daughters were restricted in who they could marry. They had to marry within the tribe so that the land holdings could be preserved for the tribe of Manasseh. This was important because one has to remember that they are not yet in the land. This anticipates their holdings and so at the time of the division of the land, keeping the boundaries intact took on a greater importance.

The Rabbis of the Talmud were clear that this was a practical application of the law that only applied in that generation—keeping the possibility that women might inherit from their son-less fathers!

And so before us we see evolving law. It is not static but adaptive. And this is important for all of us who are liberal Jews! We know and see that things change with the times and change in the practical applications of daily life. And this should bring us comfort to find that even Moses in the wilderness understood that Jewish law must grow and change. Even as we understand it today!