“ ‘Ekev’ as in keva: ‘Asay Toratcha keva.’  ‘Make your Torah your fixed and regular routine.’” (Ba’al HaTurim)  This means to say that if the mitsvot hatluyot ba’arets - the Land-of-Israel-dependent commandments - are not fulfilled, then balance between spirit and matter will not be achieved. 

What we have here is not a list of specifications in a bilateral business agreement.  (You guys get the Land, I get your obedience to My commandments.) Nor is it a declaration of rewards and punishments, based on the Land as reward for the fulfillment of the mitzvahs.  For after all, “it is not due to your righteousness, nor to the honesty of your heart that you come to inherit their Land…”

The Holy Land can bite.  It can turn into “a land that devours its inhabitants” for anyone who presumes to dwell in it without fulfilling its conditions, prescribed by the Godly plan.

In the previous week's Torah reading, Va’etchanan, we focused on the cooperative relationship between the Creator and man, which the Creator was promoting with the intention that they should jointly manage the universe.  A first stage in the plan of the cooperative relationship was to educate man to the experience of living in a spiritual dimension - to experience no needs or toils in the realm of physical matter.

Manna from heaven and water from flint rock.  An ideal situation on the surface of things.  “Your garment did not rot off of you, etc.”  Yet here in our parasha, this idyll is suddenly given a negative tone: “He Who feeds you mahn in the desert…in order to afflict you and in order to try you… ”  This issue requires explanation.

It appears that man is not built for a life of the spirit that has no dimension of physical matter whatsoever.  The absence of physical matter deprives man of a sense of tangible realness, as in: “We are utterly sick of this lightweight bread,” which was said of the manna!  “It goes in and does not come out.” (Rashi)  They were disturbed by the fact that the manna created no waste matter to be excreted.  A lack of tangible realness does not contribute to the success of one's task of taking control of physical matter and guarding the balance between spirit and matter.

Yet endowing them with the dimension of material, tangible realness could also upset the balance between spirit and matter: “And you will say in your heart: ‘My strength, and the power of my hand have given me this prowess.”  “And your heart will grow haughty, and you will forget God, your Lord, Who takes you out of Egypt.”

Here is the answer to the clownish argument that Moses should have led us to a more fertile, more water-blessed land: The Land of Israel is not as all the other lands, which give one a predictable hold on tangible reality.  Erets Yisrael is blessed with a sanctity that makes its characteristic feature a dependency on its own sanctity, meaning to say that it does not follow any fixed and regular laws of nature, but is instead dependent on the Godly law that rules it, i.e. Torah law:

“Make your Torah your fixed and regular routine, and your labor occasional.”

Whoever upholds the Torah in this Land, upholds the law that gives the Land its proper seasonal functioning, its regularity and reliability.

Anyone who denies the commandments of the Torah, is vomited out by the Land, and then the Land is left desolate.  “For it is due to the wickedness of these peoples that God bequeaths their inheritance to you.”

From there to our own times:  It is not the studiers of Torah and the upholders of its commandments who are living off of the secular Jews who occupy themselves with building the Land and fighting its wars, despite the mitsvah entailed in such occupation, but rather the contrary.  Those who dwell on the Land, live by virtue of those who occupy themselves with Torah, study it and uphold its mitzvahs.

However, a situation that deviates from the ways of nature can stir up problems.  This is especially the case when the two tracks remain parallel and never meet.  The spiritual system runs along its own track, parallel to the material laws of nature. 

This arrangement forces a man to decide which he prefers, and which he had best give up, for after all there seems to be no chance of enjoying “both tables”.  This is how the other religions were formed, out of the need to assist man in living the life of the spirit at the expense of the material system, through a frustrating renunciation and sacrifice of existence’s needs.  Out of this confrontation, a scale of values grew within these religions, which preached and recommended the life of masochism, whereby anyone who causes himself suffering, anyone whose affliction is greater than his fellow’s is righteous.  The monk or nun or hermit, who withdraw from this world, stand highest, at the peak of this scale of values.

Life in the Holy Land makes a chaotic mess out of this simplistic, two-dimensional perception.  Neither strict separation between the two tracks, nor even sanctifying brute force for the sake of the religious imperative (if such a thing were possible) – as in the Islamic perception – can promise an ideal of values.

Kidush hahomer, sanctifying physical matter - does not need man in the Holy Land.  This sanctification is imbedded in the Land’s very nature, “for God’s eyes are upon it from year’s beginning to year’s end… .  From the precipitation of the heavens shall you drink water.”

The Jew alone possesses the incredible traits that allow him to live a “natural” life in the Land.  It is a new nature, a new way of seeing, a new understanding and even new senses, which are not one-sided.

It is a capacity for judgment that is not comprised of logical-mathematical reasoning, ordered along the lines of merely mechanical rules, but rather a thinking along lines of mechanical rules that are guided by the will of God.

Even the morality that obligates its inhabitants is not comprised of society’s need to maintain mere order.  Jewish morality contains an individual’s commitment to himself, even when not within a social context.

From here we derive the conclusion that the social law is not sacred; indeed it is all entirely born in sin - the sin of existing at the expense of the rights of the private individual.

An example of the Torah’s commitment to the private individual are the laws of arei miklat, the shelter cities for the unintentional murderers; the individual murderer’s personal freedom is dependent on the death of the High Priest.  This means that the High Priest is compelled to make an effort to cultivate individual ties of friendship with each unintentional murderer [so that the unintentional murderer will not pray for the demise of the High Priest.]

Even esthetic perceptions are different in the Holy Land – the light is different; lighting effects take on a different life; their influence on color, objects, and plant life is different.

It is the human factor that determines its dimensions and its laws.  And this human factor is neither deterministic nor controlled.  It is the variable factor, changing incessantly, according to the ever-dynamic spiritual and moral quality of man.

  This brings us to the conclusion that a Jew who studies and upholds the Torah wields an exclusive significance for the Holy Land, and what is more, that the proper functioning of the laws of nature in the Holy Land is dependent upon the power of this Jew’s influence.

There is no justification to any denial of the physical laws of the Land, because this means a denial of the mitsvot hatluyot ba’aretz - the "Land-of-Israel-dependment commandments."  Furthemore, separating the study of Torah from involvement with other labors is not helpful to the study of Torah, though such separation actually has proven successful in the lands of exile.

The preoccupation with a purely ethereal, theoretical study of Torah in the Holy Land is harmful to the ability to envision a perfect man in a perfect universe.  One’s Torah perspective and one's capacity for halachic judgment can be adversely affected by such an approach.

The harm done can be especially acute when Torah study is separated from the need to address the human aspect.  “The Second Sanctuary would not have been destroyed except for the fact that they supported their views on Torah law.”  [Rather than moral and humane considerations.]  Here we see the outcome of causeless hatred - which caused the Destruction.  Causeless hatred is in itself sufficient cause for the destruction of the Sanctuary.

According to what has been said, we may add to the severe sin of causeless hatred a further distortion and corruption of the harmony, of the delicate balance between the three mutually complementary dimensions: “Upon three things, the universe stands: Upon Torah, upon serving, and upon acts generous kindnesses.” 

Let any one of these three legs slip out, and collapse is inevitable.  This three-dimensionality is what explains the rule-governed process that binds God, man, and universe together in one unifying embrace.

Moses does not mention the Sin of the Calf in order to remind the people of old sins.  “Remember…how you enraged God…in the desert, from the day you went out of the land of Egypt until your coming to this place, you have been rebellious with God.”  Meaning, despite your being with God, and not having distanced yourselves from Him, you nevertheless have not lived up to His expectations of you.

We need to explain this phrasing of “until your coming to this place.”  After all, the discussion is addressing a time, rather than a place.  It should have said ‘from then until now.’

It appears that the intention is not to blame them but rather to justify their failure, in that it was due to the lack of the dimension of place, within the three-dimensional formula.  Because of the lack of the dimension of tangible realness that is special to the Holy Land, you were not able to live up to God’s expectation that you become “a kingdom of priests and a holy people.”  This dimension does not determine mere place.  Rather it determines human behavior, comprised of and steeped in this three-dimensional formula.

Moses justifies them and persuades them that their failure has not derived from a lack of will but from a lack of proper conditions.  Having said this, his warning to them continues, regarding the dangers that await them even afterward, even when they will have arrived at tranquility, and settled into their promised heritage – because this three-dimensional confrontation carries no guarantee of automatic success.

To be continued...