Eikev’s call is to justice, not blind obedience

Deuteronomy 7:12 – 11:25

I always find it interesting when a certain subset of liberal Jews becomes very fundamentalist when reading Torah. While the rest of the Jewish world reads a portion for the metaphor, for the truisms embedded in a story, or for the hidden Kabbalistic meaning, this subset of Jews treats the text as the direct word of God and therefore true in an exclusively literal manner. This approach runs into real problems in Parshat Eikev when we come up against one “if-then” statement after another. Right from the start, “If you do obey these rules … He will favor you and bless you … . You shall be blessed above all other peoples … .” Or, there is this recapitulation in Chapter 8, referring to the 40 years of wandering, “The clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did your feet swell these forty years.” Or this weird threat, “If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods … I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish like the other nations [that do not follow God].” It sure seems like many other peoples exist today who do not follow God (although it’s true the Canaanites, et al., are no longer around).

Want more? In the recapitulation of the Golden Calf episode, God suggests to Moses that God will wipe out all Israel and start again with Moses. Yikes. And then Moses, who did not want God to kill all the Israelites, let alone create a new people from his stock, eats no bread, drinks no water for 40 days and yet somehow survives.

It goes on and on like this, and if I were one of these literalists I probably would have stopped reading some time ago. But of course, this type of literal reading is a faux-pious strawman argument. I’m referring to someone who approaches the text this way and says, “Fine! I’ll read it like a true believer and show you how silly it is.” But a true, true believer knows better. Fidelity to the text requires not buying into every word. Rashi knows that; he made a whole career of it. Same for Rambam and every Kabbalist and every commentator up to this very day, including those insights that guy in your Torah study comes up with.

The real point is found in places like chapter 10, when we read, “Israel, what does the Lord your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God to walk only in His paths, to love Him and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.” And why should we do this? Because if we follow God we will act like God who “upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with good and clothing. You, too, must befriend the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Now, Eikev concludes with more if-then statements that seek to encourage allegiance to God. But I always wonder, what is the purpose of this allegiance? Do we follow God just to follow God? How much attention does God really need? How big an ego are we dealing with? No, the purpose of following God is to give us a clear, encouraging path to do the things that make the world a better place. Follow God not for God but for the orphan, for the stranger, for the widow; to uplift the least among us, to make better the life of the downtrodden. Some people will do it on their own. Maybe. But for Jews, the Torah we read is there to bring us to the goal God has for us: make the world a better place, make yourself a better person.

Are the words of Eikev true? Wrong question. Is the message of Eikev true? Absolutely. PJC

Rabbi Larry Freedman is the director of the religious school of Congregation Beth Shalom and the newly unified Beit Kulanu. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.