Parashat Eikev 5784
Parashat Eikev brings to mind a personal remembrance – it was the first parashah which I called by its name!
19
08, 2024
18
08, 2022
Parashat Eikev 5782
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
Of Bread and Potential
A D’var Toraj for Parashat Eikev
By Rabbi Katy Allen (’05)
The grass dries out in the heat–
it’s brown now.
Flowering plants, and even shrubs,
are wilting,
their leaves dull and stiff,
the bright blue of the sky
day after day
broken only
by occasional fair-weather clouds,
as the temperatures soar
and relief doesn’t come.
Here in my yard,
the visible life and death question is
focused on plants,
and perhaps some pollinators
or creepy crawlers in the soil
(though the bunnies and woodchucks no longer graze outside my window,
and I’m wondering where and what they are munching instead).
Elsewhere, however,
earthlings
are dying.
Humans cannot live by bread alone, (Deuteronomy 8:3)
our Torah text tells us,
and some rabbis say this means
we actually can live on less–
although I find it impossible to imagine no need for water.
The text also says
that humans can live on anything the Lord decrees,
and thus the manna from heaven was Read More >
29
07, 2021
Parashat Eikev 5781
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
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6
08, 2020
Parashat Eikev 5780
A D’var Torah for Parashat Eikev
By Cantor Sandy Horowitz (’14)
In an episode of the Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schultz, Linus tells his sister Lucy that he wants to be a doctor. She replies in her big-sister way, “You could never be a doctor, you know why? Because you don’t love mankind, that’s why!” To which Linus replies:
This seems to illustrate Moses’ feeling towards the Israelites in Parashat Eikev.
One can’t argue with his commitment to the Israelites as a people (“mankind”), while at the same time we experience his deep frustration with their behavior. As they prepare to enter the Promised Land, Moses’ words include a series of rebukes as he tells them, “You have been rebelling against the Lord since the day I have known you” (Deut. 9:24). He recounts their transgressions in detail – how they built a golden calf idol, and Read More >
23
08, 2019
Parashat Eikev 5779
A D’var Torah for Parashat Eikev
By Rabbi Isaac Mann
In the beginning of this week’s Torah reading we have two references to the manna (man in Hebrew) that sustained the Israelites in the desert for forty years as a test (nisayon) by God. In this essay I wish to explore what was the nature of this test and how it relates to us in practical terms.
In his long exhortation to B’nei Yisrael, Moses reminds them that God had them travel in the wilderness for the past forty years that “He might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep His commandments or not. He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat … in order to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the Lord decrees” (Deut. 8:2-3). Read More >
3
08, 2018
Eikev 5778
A D’Var Torah for Parashat Eikev
By Cantor Sandy Horowitz (’14)
“Dear when you smiled at me, I heard a melody
It haunted me from the start
Something inside of me started a symphony
Zing! Went the strings of my heart”
These lyrics come from a song made famous by Judy Garland in 1938 and recorded by others many times since. “Zing went the strings of my heart…” What does this mean, exactly? According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the term “heartstrings” refers to one’s “deepest emotions or affections”. According to our singer, “Zing!” is the sound of heartstrings tugged by love.
Imagine our awareness of Divine Love being so strong, so immediate that it would make our heart go “Zing!” Perhaps that is what God is asking of the Israelites in Parashat Eikev this week when they are commanded, “U’maltem et orlat l’vavkhem v’arp’khem lo takshu od”, “You shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart, therefore, and be Read More >
9
08, 2012
Parashat Ekev
Gratitude to God, Source of Our Wealth
By Rabbi Len Levin
“Beware lest your heart grow haughty…and you say to yourselves, ‘My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.’ Remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to get wealth…” (Deuteronomy 8:14-18).
On first sight, the portion Ekev-like most of the first eleven and last six chapters of Deuteronomy-appears purely sermonic in character. A sermon offers ethical inspiration and goals that are commendable to strive for. But we draw a vital distinction between ethics and law. Ethics teaches what is commendable but to some degree optional; law lays down what is obligatory. In classic Jewish parlance, ethics is in the realm of agada, law is coterminous with halakha.
But is the distinction so hard and fast? The medieval work Sefer Ha-Hinnukh comprises a discussion of the 613 commandments of the Torah Read More >
28
07, 2010
Parashat Ekev
By Sandy Horowitz
Towards the end of my high school senior year, I woke up one morning with an intense neck spasm, barely able move my head without severe pain. It subsided after awhile, thanks to painkillers and an embarrassingly unattractive neck collar.
Viewing this incident as a physical mirror of my mental state at the time, it s clear that the timing wasn t coincidental “ I wasn t feeling ready for whatever might lie ahead as I stepped into adulthood.
The term k sheh-oref, or œstiff-necked , which appears several times in Ekev and in the Exodus text which is referenced in this week s Torah portion, also speaks to us about the question of our ancestors readiness to meet their future, as they prepared to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. Read More >
4
08, 2009
Parashat Ekev
By Rabbi Dorit Edut
There is a juxtaposition of two verses in this week’s Torah portion, Ekev, which relate very well to a modern-day phenomenon. Moses, just prior to his death, exhorts the People of Israel to stop blocking themselves from belief in and loyalty to God (Deuteronomy 10:16):
Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more.
Three verses later, Moses emphasizes that we are to emulate the greatness of God through our actions, specifically (Deuteronomy 10:19):
You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
The Hebrew word for “stranger” is “ger” which has also been used to mean “convert.”
In other words, we are being asked to look at our own practices and open ourselves us up to developing a deep and abiding relationship with our Creator, the One Who is concerned about all those created. And then, Read More >
19
08, 2008
Parashat Eqev
Parashat Eqev – Assembling the Menorah
By Moshe Rudin
As careful readers of the Torah text- both the text given to us at Sinai and its commentary that God reveals to each of us through the unfolding text of our lives- we have been taught to be constantly on the lookout for the unusual turn of phrase or the unexpected word. We have learned that it is from the seemingly out of place language that there emerge tilei tilim – heaps and heaps – of insight and teachings.
One such word emerges from the first pasuq (verse) of this week’s parashah: Eqev. The pasuq reads: It shall be that following upon (eqev) that you listen to these ordinances, that you keep and do them, that HaShem your God will keep for you the Covenant (Brit) and the Lovingkindness which God swore to your ancestors.
Eqev is a term related to Read More >
