Select Page

The defining structure of this parsha is repetition. We have encountered everything in this parsha, more than once. As if someone is either phoning it in, being paid by the word, or are afraid the message was lost in translation. Considering how many times the Israelites strayed, and how many times God came remarkably close to giving up on us in favor of a less stiff neck people.

I have taken to renaming this parsha:

Parsha Prevagin or,
Parsha Déjà vu or
Or even, Parsha Michael Finnegan

Is my mind slipping? Is it this specific parsha or am I simply confused with the first four books of the Torah? And no matter how many times I have shaved my whiskers they rebelliously grow in again.

The real name of the Parshah, “Eikev,” means “because of or as a result of or even quo pro quid.”

In this parsha, Moses continues his valedictorian address to the Israelites. If they will fulfill the mitzvot of the Torah, they will prosper in the Land they are about to conquer. If the Israelites heed their side of the covenant, they will be rewarded with a verdant homeland. If they do not oybavoylachem.

This parsha swings between sticks and carrots with an eerie reminiscence of the first time you bring your non-Jewish paramour home for Pesach.

Moses launches into what can be called Israelite Transgression Greatest Hits: Moses recounts their numerous failings, recalling their worship of the Golden Calf, the rebellion of Korach, the sin of the spies, angering G‑d at Taveirah, Massah and every one’s favorite track Kivrot Hataavah (“The Graves of Lust”).

“You have been rebellious against G‑d,” Moses says to them, “since the day I knew you.” You can almost taste the regret.

But Moses also speaks of G‑d’s forgiveness and forbearance. Their forty years in the desert, during which G‑d sustained them with daily manna from heaven, was to teach them “that man does not live on bread alone, but by the utterance of G‑d’s mouth.”

The land they are about to enter (but do not deserve) flows with milk and honey,” but also with wheat, barley, grapevines, figs, pomegranates, olive oil and dates. Sounds nice, right?

Not so fast; the parsha pendulum swings back as Moses commands the Israelites to destroy the idols of the land’s former masters, and to beware lest they become haughty and begin to believe that they deserve God’s blessings.

A key passage in our Parshah is the second chapter of the Shema, which repeats the fundamental mitzvot enumerated in the Shema’s first chapter and describes the rewards of fulfilling G‑d’s commandments and the adverse results (famine and exile) of their neglect.

As William Faulkner said: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” To which Mark Twain added: “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” The parsha ends with an eerily contemporary map of the land the Israelites are about to conquer.

“For if you keep all these commandments which I command you to do them, to love the Lord, your God, to walk in all His ways, and to cleave to Him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will possess nations greater and stronger than you.

And the kicker: “Every place upon which the soles of your feet will tread, will be yours: from the desert and Lebanon, from the Euphrates River, and the western sea, will be your territory.” This is not going to end well.

Ultimately this parsha’s repetitive nature, offers us two choices. It can simply be — been there done that. Or we engage in the vertigo of the misery-go-round.

As we spin towards the high holidays; we begin the movement of self-reflection. What ideals have we lived up to and where did we fall short? How many promises did we make only to be disappointed by our fragility.

There is something strangely comforting of failing and flailing in the same manner year after year. It isn’t pretty, but it is at least familiar.

As the noted Torah scholar, Amy Winehouse noted: “Half time, time to think it through, consider the change, see it from a different view.”

Let us all begin again.

Shabbat Shalom