Blessings And
Consequences
D’var Torah for
Parashat Eikev
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
On April 11, 1909, some 70 people gathered on sand dunes a
short distance from the ancient port city of Jaffa in Israel. An old black and white photograph shows them
facing a speaker who is standing on the sandy slope. Though his words are not recorded, the image
is indelibly marked in the annals of the founding of the modern State of
Israel.
On that day, on land purchased from the ruling Ottoman
Turks, the city of Tel Aviv was founded and the first housing plots were
allocated among those who were gathered there.
What did they see in those dunes that made the first
settlers of the first modern city of Israel want to settle there? They saw a future.
Tel Aviv was named so to indicate its two functions. Tel
means “hill,” but even more than that, the word refers to a mound of ancient
ruins, one tumbled historical eon on top of another. Aviv
means “spring,” and refers to the rebirth that comes to the land after the winter
rains and storms. Tel Aviv, then,
combines past and future all rolled into one. In establishing the city, its founders sought
to bring new life to the ancient people as well as to the ancient land. They built their first homes in a city that
was designed from the first to be a modern urban center, built around parks and
fountains, with broad streets and the most current architecture.
They sure had some imagination. Jaffa was, after all, the center of culture
in those days. It was through Jaffa that
immigrants arrived to the Land of Israel.
Jaffa was the seaport and also the rail station that stood at the
intersection of Europe and Africa. Restaurants
and inns abounded there. Surrounded by
orchards and groves, Jaffa was a cultured city in which you could find just
about anything you wanted or needed.
But on that day, as they looked over the sand around them,
the gathered families saw a new horizon and a new future before them. They knew that the work ahead would be
hard. The summer heat, the
uncompromising humidity, the swamps that lay to the north and east along with
their malaria-bearing mosquitoes—all these would have to be conquered in order
to make the dream come true.
A similar vision must have stood before Moses’s eyes as he
described the Land of Israel to his people.
Viewing the Land from the top of the mountain, he describes a land
filled with rivers and streams, nourished by the heavens themselves. He sees the seven kinds of grains and fruits
that represented the Land’s abundance and fruitfulness. He sees the minerals that could be mined from
its mountains.
Moses compares the new land that his people are about to
settle to the old land of Egypt from which they arrived. Though some of the Israelites still recalled
Egypt as a land of plenty, watered by the Nile River, producing an abundance of
fruit and vegetables, Moses reminds them of the degradations and misery that
were their lot there. Life in Israel
would be, by comparison, easy. It was
blessed by God, after all, and all we had to do in order to enjoy the land’s
bounty was to follow God’s word.
Moses was optimistic.
Israel’s terrain and climate are harsh; it is a highly contested piece
of land, warred over by fearful empires. Just ahead there would be wars to fight and
strongholds to be conquered. The cynics
among the people could easily accuse Moses of being overly optimistic, unrealistic,
perhaps even delusional.
But Moses knew what he was saying. The key to the future was in his hand.
This week’s Torah portion, Eikev (Deuteronomy 7:12—11:25), holds out the carrot and the stick.
The Land, indeed, is a blessed land. It
is, Moses tells Israel, “A land in which you will eat bread without scarcity,
in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose
hills you will dig copper” (Deut. 8:9).
Yet within these words, one can hear a cautionary message. Though the land holds out much promise, the
realization of its potential would not be easy.
Iron is not easy to hew, and copper does not grow on trees. Cultivation of the land would require hard
work, along with purpose and determination.
Eikev means “as a
result.” The goodness of the Land of
Israel, embedded in its soil and rocks, is not something we can take for
granted, Moses tells us. Yet it isn’t
merely the labor of our hands that will unlock the Land’s promise. The Hebrew word eikev comes from the same root as the name of our ancestor, Yaakov,
Jacob. Moses reminds us that the
greatness of our Land is closely tied with our tradition. All that abundance isn’t there just for the
taking. It will be the result of hard
work, yes, but the labor must be combined with the message and purpose of our
heritage. The fruit of the land, the
fruition of its potential, the realization of the dream, will come about as a
consequence of Israel’s following God’s commandments.
Rashi, the great 11th century rabbi and
commentator, explains: Never to be taken
for granted, God’s blessing will come only when we pay attention to the minor
details of our behavior, those that are all-too-often considered trivial, that
all-too-often are trampled with the heel (‘akeiv).
Lands are too often distributed by cultural, economic and
political laws. Greed and conquest determine
who gets what. The promise of Tel Aviv
was to be different. The 66 families who
bought the first plots paid equal amounts for equal parcels of land. These then were distributed by lot, so that
nobody could claim favoritism or accuse another of gains achieved by political
maneuvering.
Just so was the vision Moses held for the Land of Israel and
its people. Justice, fairness and equality would be the underpinnings of the new
culture about to be built on the ancient land.
It was an idealized view, yet one that has held true for
Jews throughout our long history. Israel’s
strength, today as always, is due to our purpose and identity. What
characterizes the Israel Defense Force today is not only its technological
prowess, but also the fact that it is the most moral army in the world,
representative of a people that aspires to the highest ideals of morality and
ethics in every aspect of its life.
From its humble beginnings, Tel Aviv has grown to become a
center of justice, health, culture and education. It has fulfilled the dream of its founders as
they stood on the slopes of a sand dune, a dream they shared with Moses as he
viewed the Land from his perch on the top of Mount Nebo.
© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman
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