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.
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