TorahPortion: Ekev

By Shlomo Riskin

“And now Israel what does the Lord Your God ask of you, only to revere the Lord your God and to walk in all of His ways, and to love Him and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. To observe the commandments of the Lord and His statutes for your good…” (Deuteronomy 10:11-13)

Almost four decades ago, when teaching Talmud, at the James Striar School of Yeshiva University for those without previous yeshiva background, the star of the class was a brilliant young man from Montreal who progressed from barely being able to read the words in Aramaic to real proficiency in analyzing a difficult Tosafot (super-commentary). At the end of the year, he decided to leave both Yeshiva University as well as his newly found Torah observance!
His explanation has remained imprinted in my consciousness all these years: “As a non-religious Jew, I would get up each morning asking myself how I wished to spend the day; as a religious Jew, I must get up each morning asking myself how God wants me to spend the day. The pressure is simply too intense for me to take…”
I was sorely disappointed – but I did understand his tension. He understood that true religious devotion is more than praying at certain times each day and subscribing to specific do’s and don’ts; true religious devotion means dedicating every moment to a higher ideal, to answering a Divine call whose message you can never be certain that you correctly discern. It is difficult and even
pressurizing, to be a sincerely religious Jew. So how can the Bible query “What does the Lord your God ask of you but only … to love Him and serve… (Him) with all your heart and with all your soul?” But only?! And how can it be ”for your good,” Letov lakh?
This question may be linked to a curious comparison made by the text of our Torah reading between the land of Egypt and the land of Israel: “For the land which you are coming to inherit is not like the land of Egypt which you left, where you (merely) seeded your seed and watered with your feet a garden of vegetation [the water came naturally from the overflow of the Nile River]; the land which you are crossing there to inherit is a land of mountains and valleys, [making you dependent upon] heavenly rains to drink water; it is a land which the Lord your God constantly investigates, the eyes of the Lord your God being upon it from the beginning of the year until end-year” (Deuteronomy 11:10,11). Is the fact that the land of Israel is dependent upon the rains of Divine grace which come as a result of the Jewish people’s moral and ethical standing, that agricultural activity is a much more arduous and precarious a task than it is in Egypt, a reason for praising Israel?
It is fascinating to note that both of the issues we have raised thus far — the Torah, which is the source of our responsibilities towards God, and the land of Israel, which is the medium through which our nation will flourish and impart the message of ethical monotheism to the world — are both uniquely called morasha or heritage, by the Bible (Exodus 6:8, Deuteronomy 33:4). Yerusha is the usual term for inheritance; morasha is translated as heritage. The Jerusalem Talmud explains that an inheritance is often received through no expenditure of effort on the part
of the recipient; a morasha, on the other hand, implies intense exertion, physical and/or emotional input, commitment and even sacrifice on the part of the recipient.
The verb form of morasha, l’horish, also means to conquer, and conquest implies struggle and even sacrifice. At the same time, the basic verb form around which morasha is built is vav resh shin, almost the very same letters as shin, yud, resh (yud and vav are virtually interchangeable in Hebrew) which spells shir or song. And the Midrashic sages already noted the linguistic comparison between morasha and m’orasa, fiancée or beloved.
All of this leads us to one inescapable conclusion: those objects, ideals and people for which we have labored intensively and sacrificed unsparingly are the very ones we love the most and value above all others. Note the experiences which in retrospect give the most satisfaction and which everyone loves to recount are rarely the days of lazy relaxation we spend on vacation, but more usually the sacrifices during periods of poverty or the battles in time of war. Ask any parent about the special love he/she has for the one child who needed the most care and commitment because of a serious illness or accident and you immediately understand the inextricable connection between conquest and song, commitment and love, intensive effort and emotional gratification. A life without ideals or people for whom one would gladly sacrifice is a life not worth living; a life devoid of emotional commitments is a life which has merely passed one by but which has never been truly lived.
Our commitment to God – with all our heart, soul and might – is a small thing to ask as long as it is an expression of our mutual love. In the final analysis, it is certainly for our good, because it gives ultimate meaning, purpose and eternity to our finite lives.