Rav Chaim Lifshitz

Parashat Ekev

 

 

 

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  Ekev
 

  Translated from HeBRew by DR. S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
L'ILUI NISHMAT MAYER HIRH BEN LAIBEL

 

    

In Praise of the Holy Land



“God your Lord is bringing you to a good land…a land of water streams, fountains and underground wellsprings…a land of wheat and barley…a land where you will not eat bread in poverty, where you will lack for nothing.” (Deuteronomy 8:7-10)  

Indeed?  Does this Land excel in materialism above and beyond all the other lands of human habitation?  I find it puzzling…

For one thing, there are lands whose wealth of natural resources is a thousand times greater than that of the Land of Israel.  Furthermore, even if this Land were wealthier in its material resources than all the other lands, this was not the reason that merited God’s bringing His children to it.  What if so is the true reason behind the Land’s unique character/segula/quality?

Our Sages express a difference of opinion in Tractate Brachot 41B:  Rav Hisda and Rav Hamnuna are discussing the laws of priority in reciting blessings.  Rav Hisda presents his opinion: “Whatever species name appears first in the [scriptural] list of the seven species, that species’ blessing precedes the others.”  Rav Hamnuna then recites a blessing over a date, giving it precedence over the pomegranate, though the pomegranate appears first in the verse, because he reasons that precedence is given to the species that appears nearer to the word ‘Land’ [which appears twice in that same scriptural verse] rather than nearer to the beginning of the verse.  Rav Hisda concedes this point, and admits that Rav Hamnuna’s opinion is the truer one.  “Would that we had legs of iron, so we could serve you.”

Rav Hisda’s beautiful words of praise would not seem to be meaningless metaphors chosen for their poetic splendor.  It almost seems they are not praise at all, but rather a grave warning to the effect that any connection of nearness to the Land requires iron reinforcement, to avoid stumbling over the hidden temptations the Land holds for all who would come near to it.

Further on, the Torah clarifies the exact nature of this temptation: “Watch yourself, lest you will forget God your Lord in order to not keep His commandments.  Lest you will eat and grow sated…and your heart will grow haughty and you will forget God your Lord…and you will say to yourself: ‘My strength and the power of my hand have made me all this wealth.’”

This is not a warning against a natural tendency of human character.  Rather what we see here is mainly a religious warning against placing the Land at the top of the scale of priorities, above all other values.  Here is a clear statement that the Torah and the commandments are what stand at the top of the scale: it is from the value of Torah that all other values are drawn.  Remove the value of Torah, and all other values are turned into lifeless corpses.  “The Land of Israel without the Torah is like a body without a soul.”  warn the sages of the Talmud: “Why was the second Temple destroyed?  Because they did not first bless the Torah.”

Materialism is sanctified by the sanctity of the Sabbath.  This means that the praise of the Land – its incredible fertility in materialistic terms – depends on observance of the Sabbath by her children who have returned to their borders, for the Sabbath has the unique power to sanctify those who guard themselves from transgressing the severe prohibitions against working on the Sabbath. 

Just as the sanctity of Sabbath fills the vacuum created by avoiding work on Sabbath, so does observing the Sabbath in the Holy Land, and observing the Shmitas (the agricultural/economic Sabbaths) and the Yovels (which “proclaim liberty throughout the Land”) have a similar effect.  Shmita entails avoidance: The absence of economic and agricultural activity should be a cause for want and shortage, according to the logic of reality, yet the Torah promises that observing the Shmita is like observing the Sabbath, in that the Shmita partakes of the unique power of the Sabbath.  Avoiding the prohibitions of the Sabbath holds positive blessing and not only negative avoidance.  Just as the Sabbath sanctifies physical matter and materialistic pleasure, so “the Land shall observe a Sabbath for God,” and this agricultural and economic avoidance will cause abundant blessing to be lavished on the Land.

This is meant to remove false notions from the hearts of those who believe that the sanctity of the land stands at the center and at the top of all other values, and that it is sufficient to work the land, to worship the land – that this alone will suffice to fill our granaries with wheat.

“Remember God, your Lord, for He is the One Who gives you strength to produce wealth.”  This statement rebuts Gnostic belief, which the bond with the land risks encouraging.  Gnosticism is the attempt to view reality as a conflict that creates a war between the powers: The physical versus the spiritual.  They do not mean the spiritual as a Godly expression, but rather the spiritual as an autonomous force, having its own particular traits and rules of activity and influence.  Gnosticism posits a preference for the spiritual reality over the physical, and the belief that physical reality stands in contradiction to spiritual reality, and that one must ignore it: One must place spiritual reality at the center of existence, and one must reject and ignore material reality.

It would seem that this Gnostic transfer of emphasis from physical reality to spiritual is only one step higher than an actual belief in physical reality, with all the repercussions that such belief entails, such as belief in the ability to control the forces of nature through the modern scientific mechanism, or even belief in the worship of idols as the forces that control natural forces, as though there were some way to take control of the natural forces through enslavement to and manipulation of the sources that control the natural forces.

In working the earth of the Holy Land, the tiller of the soil feels a sensation of tangible realness permeating his senses, as he drips sacred sweat.  This is a sensation of spiritual tangibility that arises out of the belief that the earth of this Land has been graced with inherent spiritual sanctity, and that it is capable of bestowing of its sanctity upon the one who works it. 

Thus he does not feel that the single legitimate religious connection is the direct connection with the Creator of the universe exclusively through the Torah and the commandments. Since the commandments require a sense-based materialization in physical reality, therefore to the extent that he relates to physical reality with the intention of thereby expressing his attachment to the Cause of all causes, to the Holy One, Blessed be He, his physical activity in carrying out the mitzvah becomes enriched with Godly content.

The bond between the human being and the Lord is sustained by virtue of a personal covenant between God’s servant and his Lord.  This is a bond of the subjective inner human being, the gavra, rather than a bond of the object of the mitzvah, the heftsa; it is rather the effect of the mitzvah on human action. 

The belief in Gnosticism is formed in someone who is supposedly bonding with a spiritual reality.  The bonding takes form in the mind of the one carrying out the Gnostic action, but in truth, the Gnostic intends nothing whatsoever by his physical action.  His only intention is to escape from physical reality and to deny it, while raising his hands upward, toward…the spiritual sensation in himself, in his own feverish mind, believing that this spiritual sensation that he has created is, in itself, the purpose of Gnosticism. 

In working the Land without having the sense of a direct connection with the Creator, “for He is the One Who gives you strength to produce wealth,” the tiller of the soil of the Holy Land falls directly into the arms of the Gnostic trap.

This definition enables us to make the necessary distinction between the pure worship of God and the worship that misleads into deviant worship: Idolatry, paganism, necromancy, and beliefs that cannot distinguish accessories of sanctity from sanctity itself, pure and direct.

****
Neither the non-Jews’ meritorious behavior nor their wickedness involve the Godly attitude to the Holy Land; it is only your own attitude to the Land that matters – the extent to which you relate to the Land as an accessory of sanctity and as an expression for your worship of God.

Regarding this point too it must be emphasized that the Godly reality cannot be created through the work of building up the Land, but only through upholding the commandments entailed in the Land, such as “the Land shall observe its own Sabbath for God.”

Just as the privilege of the Sabbath is a gift of God, rather than a force existing within the physical, or within the spiritual, so too with the privilege of the Land: It is specifically your withdrawing from prohibited relating – removing yourself from the non-Jews living in the Land, from their base practices, the toxic expression of which is the brute force that characterizes them and their beliefs and their Gnostic, idolatrous views – this withdrawal specifically is what will bring you blessing.

Removing yourself from them, just like removing yourself from working the earth during the Shmita year, the Land’s Sabbath, does not leave a vacuum of non-presence, caused by inaction, just as removing yourself from doing labor on the Sabbath does not leave a vacuum.  It leaves a cleared space, which is then filled with sanctity, in the merit of having fulfilled God’s commandment to withdraw.

The sanctity that is the unique power of the Sabbath and the Shmita are added to your reality through the reality of time (Sabbath) and through the reality of space (Shmita).

This added sanctity forms and unites the components of time and space that are the basis of tangible reality, making of them an entirely new existential reality: Godly reality.

The breaking of the Tablets, described in this parasha with  detailed emphasis upon each of its various stages, is explained by Moses as a response to the Gnostic peril, exemplified by the sin of the Golden Calf, which had become a spiritual (not Godly) reality unto itself. “A calf mask,” it had the effect of concealing and separating the Godly source from the Calf believers.

Even the Tablets themselves aroused Moses' concern: Though they were the ultimate accessory of sanctity, they could become an object of idolatry.  The people could attribute autonomous, independent sanctity to the Tablets, which would then represent a hazard for God’s servant, barring him from his Godly source – deterring rather than connecting.

“Therefore Levi has no portion or estate among his brothers.  God is his estate.”  The tribe of Levi must cast off every means of independent sanctity, and focus directly on the Godly source, by concentrating exclusively on carrying out the commandment exactly as it is worded and transmitted, “as God has commanded,” removing every tendency to spiritual expression that is not directly bound to the mitzvah.

This lends new meaning to Moses' superb advice:  “Now, Israel, what is God your Lord asking of you, except just to fear… to walk in His ways.”  The intention here is not to reduce the magnitude of this challenge through the term “except just…” as if it were a small matter.  “Just to fear” is meant to express a sense of exclusiveness, a sense of direct attachment to the Creator.  Whoever adds other elements to it, falls into the trap of  “whoever adds, detracts,” and sins in counterfeiting the Godly truth.

Love, too (as opposed to fear) is here illuminated with a new perspective.  Fear of God distances one from ugliness and from anything resembling ugliness – from tendencies to spirituality that sever one from one’s Godly source.  Fear of God brings the withdrawing that does not create a vacuum but that is instead filled by love, by the nearness of dvaikut, of connectedness.  The God-fearing person is privileged to attain a new condition, in which he no longer requires the reality that bonds existential-material reality with Godly reality – which can be a rather fragile and vulnerable bond as we have seen.  Instead he becomes one reality together with his Creator, through the work of Torah and mitzvah.