Eikev

By Rabbi Eric Hoffman

Someone was leading worship in the presence of the
Talmudic sage Rabbi Chanina. In the Avot
benediction he extended the string of adjectives for
Ha-Eyl: ‘the God, the great, the heroic, the
awesome, the mighty, the strong, the fearless . . .’
and on he went. Rabbi Chanina waited until he had
finished. Then he said, ‘Have you exhausted all the
praises of your Master? We couldn’t even say the
first three, ‘the great, heroic and awesome God,’ if
Moses had not said them (in this week’s sedra,
Ekev, Deut. 10:17) and the Men of the Great
Assembly had not ordained them in the Avot
benediction!’ (Neh. 9:32) Once we start
describing God, we ought never to be able to stop,
so instead of imposing our own arbitrary limits on
God’s limitless goodness, we accept the formulation
of Torah and tradition. [BTBerakhot 33b]

These Men of the Great Assembly are actually seen
as restoring the fullness of Moses’s spare Read More >