Where Faith and Reason Intersect: Eikev

Where Faith and Reason Intersect

D’var Torah for Parashat Eikev

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

One of the more amusing characters in the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling is Sybil Trelawney, Professor of Divination.  Gifted with “the Sight,” also known as “the Inner Eye,” Sybil is a prophetess, a seer of future happenings.  Named after cultic figures of ancient Greece and Rome (the Delphic Sybils were oracles based at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus), Professor Trelawney provided equally puzzling predictions, most of them vague, ambiguous—and ultimately unreliable.

Fortunetellers, whatever their method, have always been in high demand.  Yet at best, their rate of success never exceeded the rate of probability. 

A far better method of foreseeing the future is rational thinking.  This week’s Torah portion, Eikev (“Consequences,” Deut. 7:12—12:25), recognizes this fact.  Expounding a theory of consequences, the portion specifies blessings and curses that are bound to result from following—or disobeying—God’s word.

Yet even causality has its limits.  All too often we see good deeds go unrewarded while evil seems to thrive.  Bad things happen to good people while the wicked seem to overcome any and all obstacles.  It’s enough to turn even the most faithful among us into incorrigible cynics.

The nagging doubts arise at the very opening of this week’s parasha:  “And it will be, because you will heed these ordinances and keep them… that Adonai your God… will love you and bless you and multiply you; God will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your soil, your grain, your wine, and your oil, the offspring of your cattle and the choice of your flock, in the land which God swore to your forefathers to give to you” (Deut. 7:12-13).  

One could, of course, repeat these words like a mantra until they become as real and concrete—or perhaps as meaningless—as the greetings we exchange with one another:  “How are you;”  “I’m fine, thank you”—pleasantries that often hide turmoil and confusion.

Or one could see them as guidelines, to be viewed with a healthy measure of skepticism:  Maybe.  If you’re lucky.

But what does luck have to do with faith?  The two are opposites on the spectrum of human belief.

The fact is that chaos and disorder are part of the universe we live in.  They exist within us as well as around us.  The cycle of life includes death and decay; the seeds of imperfection are sown within us.

Often enough, it is true, our choices do determine the course of our life.  But we do not live alone; there are others around us, whose choices affect us—for better or for worse. 

So what are we to make of the Torah’s theory of causality?  Can a portion like Eikev have any meaning for us post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima humans?  What hope have we, mere dust specs in a meaningless universe, to effect lasting change for ourselves and for our progeny?

What kind of megalomaniac could come up with a more outrageous proposal than the one this portion would have us believe—that we can bring the Creator of the entire universe to recognize us?  To take note of us and bless us?  Or—even more preposterous—that we can actually reach such a vast cosmic force as God with any word, thought or deed, and make Him smile or frown upon us?

Yet, such is the power of faith that it can make us believe such things.

Life without faith would make us little less than insects; it would make life itself an insult.  Why be given the power of wonder and imagination, if not to ask, to doubt, to explore, to question God Himself?

The struggle we wage with the truth of Eikev elevates us spiritually and makes us more than the sum total of our physical parts.

And there’s more:  Our faith, newly discovered every day, reinforced with each smile we receive in return for a kind act, grows stronger because of our questioning.  We test God, yet God patiently responds to us time after time, each according to our deeds.  Sympathy begets sympathy; compassion effects love and faith; kindness results in more kindness. 

Torah isn’t theory.  It isn’t riddle-veiled prophecy, either.  It isn’t merely words thrown haphazardly, cynically or blindly.  Nor is it brainwashing—do this or else!  Judaism is never autocratic or dictatorial.  Rather, Torah is a faith-based course of action that encourages us to think, to question, to come up with our own choices.  It is a rational path that does not bid us forgo reason, but rather to take our chances.  It isn’t about magic or luck—it’s about faith.  It isn’t about the evil that some people do, but rather about the goodness we can choose to live by.

It is, after all, all about consequences.  We can take a meaningless world and bring meaning into it—by an act as simple, yet as painful, as asking “Why?”  And that is the truest blessing we can ever pray or hope for.

© 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman