To Merit A Mitzvah
D’var Torah for Parashat Eikev
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
August 7, 2020
It probably didn’t take human beings, even those at the beginning of our evolution, too long to figure out the law of cause and effect. After all, other species learned pretty quickly that patience has its rewards: Ants learned that hard and consistent work results in a thriving colony; and bees, in order to ensure a healthy hive, have been known to cast out useless drones and even queens that are less than adequate. Likewise, at the dawn of our evolution, even the earliest original humanoids must have realized that certain behaviors would lead to desirable outcomes more frequently than other, less efficient means.
But it wasn’t until Moses that the principle of cause and effect was put into law form.
In this week’s Torah portion, Eikev (“Consequences,” Deuteronomy 7:12—11:25), we find the foundations of a system of foolproof behavior: Do what God deems right, and you shall be rewarded amply; do that which God disapproves, and the punishments will be just as quick and inevitable.
Thousands of years have passed since the words of the Torah were written and codified. We have since learned that things aren’t quite so simple. We have seen good and innocent folks suffer while evil and arrogant individuals seem to prosper. Sometimes, even our best intentions fall apart for reasons beyond our understanding. We have learned that other people’s actions and behavior can affect our work in negative ways. Success is not a given—at least not always in the short run. It may take a while; it may mean trying again and again until all conditions are favorable. It may mean starting all over, seeking a different path.
In the Torah, what seemed at first to be a short route from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land turned out to be an arduous journey. A path north by north-east, along the Mediterranean seacoast, would have taken a week, maybe two, to complete. Instead, we found ourselves wandering and often lost for forty years in the harsh Sinai wilderness.
Certainly questions came up: Was all this roving necessary? Did it not lead to even more rebellions against Moses, Aaron, and God? Could no one foresee the plagues, fires and warfare that this grueling journey would entail?
Deuteronomy answers all that, by restating the Law of Cause and Effect: Because we rebelled against God and Moses, we were punished, and we suffered. Because we lost faith, we had to learn it from scratch. We now know the truth that faith is easily broken, but repair is not so simple. It may take years, perhaps a lifetime, and sometimes even more.
Still, this week’s portion gives us a most beautiful vision of the Promised Land: “A good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper. When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to Adonai your God for the good land which God has given you” (Deut. 8:7-10).
But this wistful vision is tarnished by reality. The Land of Israel—then or today—has rarely known a time without war. The promise of abundance for all, of justice and compassion for the poor, of housing for the homeless, of health and peace for all its inhabitants seems as far from us today as it was when Moses first described it to the weary Israelites in the harsh wilderness.
While the author of Deuteronomy must have been certain why that was so, we are not. And while we constantly repeat these words, and every day look up toward the marvelous vision of the Promised Land, nagging doubts continue to undermine our faith in this blessed outcome.
While Deuteronomy provides certainty, real life brings up doubt.
Questions come up with every disaster, with every plague and every drought. What have we done wrong?
Fortunately, Jewish philosophy doesn’t stop with the Torah. The Prophets of ancient days tried to offer their own reasons; Jewish mysticism—the Zohar and Kabbalah—offers yet another theory, the one that teaches that the universe itself is broken, and that it is our task to repair it. Tikkun Olam, they called it.
But perhaps the reasons for the broken state of the world today are much simpler than the explanations offered by prophets and mystics. Maybe it’s because Creation emerges out of Destruction, because we live in an eternal cycle of day and night, of life and death. Or maybe it’s as simple as the fact that we live in a world that is always on the verge of chaos. We can begin to understand the weather, but we can’t predict the course of a hurricane. We know why volcanoes exist, why earthquakes happen, but we can’t foresee when or where the next disaster will take place. We know about viruses, but obviously we don’t have the cures for all—or even most—of them.
And we know that some people, knowingly or not, intentionally or not, will cause harm. Free choice is part of the human soul, and that means that evil—the bad, the wrong choice—is always there, “crouching at the door,” like a beast just waiting to pounce.
Jewish thought is not fatalistic. It never was and never will be. If only things happened exactly as predicted, as prophesied, as foretold! But they don’t, and so Faith plays an important part in Jewish thinking. In the Jewish view of the world, miracles do happen, and good deeds do lead to good consequences, as surely as mischief leads to evil.
There are times when evil overpowers righteousness, and when that happens, bad things happen, even to good people.
And that’s why it’s important to do good deeds—mitzvahs, mitzvot—to balance the effects of evil on the world around us.
The rewards of a mitzvah, the rabbis teach, is yet another mitzvah. One good deed leads to another as surely as a wicked deed leads to more wickedness. It’s the cumulative effect of all our deeds of kindness and compassion that will lead to a better world. And that’s why we sometimes hear the words, tizkeh l’mitzvot—“may you merit mitzvahs”—as a thank you to a good deed. It’s a blessing that we merit not a perfect world, but a world that runs well because we do our best to make it so, because we do not grow weary or discouraged, because we do not despair or lose faith or hope.
The vision of the Torah and our Prophets may be a dream, but as long as we perform mitzvot, we are not lost in the wilderness. Rather, mitzvot are the way we work towards making that dream real. May we never lose sight of that prophecy; may our hands never tire, may our heart and soul never grow faint. There will be challenges, but with belief and faith in ourselves and in God we will overcome them.
That is why we still repeat the words of this week’s portion, thousands of years after they were first put down on parchment. The promise of the Promised Land is still before our eyes; the Torah and the teachings of the Rabbis are our roadmap there. As long as these are there, we remain strong, we endure and persevere through every storm, wind or fire.
May the holiness of this teaching strengthen us and keeps our feet steady on our path from day to day, from one mitzvah to the next.
© 2020 by Boaz D. Heilman
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