Parshah Summary – P’shat
Parshat Ki Tetzei contains seventy-four of the Torah’s 613 mitzvot. Included among them are the inheritance rights of the firstborn, the law of the rebellious son, burial and dignity of the dead, returning a lost object, sending away the mother bird before taking her eggs, the duty to erect a safety fence around the roof of one’s home, and the various forms of kilayim (forbidden plant and animal hybrids).
Also recounted are the laws of having a special place outside the camp for going to the bathroom and covering up one’s waste with earth, the prohibition against turning in an escaped slave, the duty to pay a worker on time and to allow anyone working for you—human or animal— time to eat, the prohibition against charging interest on a loan, the laws of adultery and divorce, and the procedures for yibbum (“levirate marriage”), which is the practice of a man marrying the wife of his deceased childless brother in order to give her children on his brother’s behalf, and chalitzah – the ritual of “removing of the shoe” – in the case that the brother-in-law does not wish to marry her. The parshah concludes with the obligation to remember “what Amalek did to you on the road, on your way out of Egypt.” Amalek was the tribe that attacked Israel in the beginning of the Exodus.
Torah of Awakening – Jewish Meditation Teaching
כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יְיְ אֱלֹקֶיךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ׃ When you go out to battle against your enemies, and Hashem your God puts them in your hand, and you capture their captivity... - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 21:10, Parshat Ki Tetzei
Once, when Rabbi Simha Bunam was traveling with his disciples, they stayed overnight at an inn. It had been a long day of travel, so they gathered in the tavern for some drinks and refreshments before retiring. But because they had been on the road and wanted to get settled before too late, they hadn’t yet davened Ma’ariv, the evening prayer. So, after they disembarked, they first gathered to daven.
As they were praying, the inn began to fill up with tavern goers, and the room became louder and more chaotic. They hadn’t yet reached the Amidah, and the hasidim expected their master to move them into another space more conducive to their devotions. But instead, Rabbi Bunam just stayed where he was amid the noise and jostling and pushing. Later, he explained to his disciples: “Sometimes it seems impossible to pray in a certain place because of the distractions, so one seeks out a better place, but this is not correct. For then, the first place cries out mournfully: ‘Why did you refuse to make your devotions here with me? If you met with obstacles, they were a sign that it was up to you to redeem me!’” The delicious fruits of meditation are most easily enjoyed in the stillness, and it is upon us to prepare and ensure that we have a space conducive to the ripening of these fruits – clean, calm and free from distractions. At the same time, if we always avoid outer disturbances, we miss a precious opportunity; we must not become dependent on our situation being a certain way, but rather learn to be rooted in our inner space regardless of what is going on around us. כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֑יךָ – When you go out to battle against your enemies… What are the enemies? They are the momentary experiences that tend to captivate us. A noise, an abrupt movement, an inappropriate comment – anything we don’t like tends to trigger our emotions, motivating us to either try and force the situation into conforming with our will, or to leave the situation and find a better one. On the other extreme, we may have a particularly wonderful experience, and then we can become disappointed or even depressed when it’s over. In the spiritual sense, all these experiences, both positive and negative, become our “enemies” when we allow ourselves to be manipulated by them, giving them so much importance that we insist on either changing them, fleeing from them, or clinging to them. וּנְתָנ֞וֹ י אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיוֹ … and Hashem your God puts them in your hand, and you capture their captivity… In other words, you can have victory over your enemies, but it doesn’t come through fighting or struggling. Your victory is put right into your hand, if you open your hand. Meaning, don’t struggle with your experiences. Fully let them be as they are, without clinging to good ones or blaming anyone for bad ones, and then let them go when they want to go. It is really quite effortless, because it’s not about controlling things, but about relaxing the impulse to control things. That is meditation. וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ – and you capture their captivity… Meaning, our experiences are constantly trying to capture us, to draw us into their dream and sometimes nightmare, but if you remember: simply be with this moment as it is, and let it go when it goes – then you “capture its captivity” – you can control your impulse to control, and be victorious over your own mind… וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יי אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ – and Hashem your God puts them in your hand… This is the key: to recognize that God is giving this moment to you. That is why, in the story, Rabbi Bunam gives this teaching by saying that the space itself cries out to you for redemption. The point is to understand that in each moment, in every situation, something vital is to be done – and that something is, first of all, to bring our consciousness to it. In this way, we “redeem it” – every moment, no matter how unsatisfactory, becomes a perfect context for practice, as soon as we remember to approach it that way. In this week of Shabbat Ki Tetzei, the Sabbath of Going Out, let’s remember that in order to engage the enemy of resistance and of ego, we need not “go out” into battle, because that only creates more ego, more resistance. Instead, may we remember וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יי אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ – victory is put into our hand, if only we open our hand, if only we open ourselves to this moment as it is, giving our full presence without attempting to change it or flee from it. This quality of “presence with,” which we can also call “patience,” is represented by the letter ח het, and characterizes this month of Elul.
Read past teachings on Ki Tetzei HERE.
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Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah opens with the instruction to appoint judges and law enforcement officers in every city. “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” Moses tells them. Crimes must be thoroughly investigated and a minimum of two credible witnesses is required for conviction. Furthermore, the Torah must be alive: in every generation, the law must be interpreted and applied in new ways. Moses than reviews laws governing the appointment and behavior of a king, along with the laws of the “cities of refuge” for the inadvertent murderer. Also set forth are the rules of war: the exemption from battle for one who has just built a home, planted a vineyard, married, or is “afraid and soft-hearted;” the requirement to offer terms of peace before attacking a city; and the prohibition against needlessly destroying something of value, such as the law that forbids cutting down fruit trees when laying siege – “For a human being is a tree of the field.” The parshah concludes with the law of the eglah arufah—the special procedure to be followed when a person is killed by an unknown murderer and the body is found in a field—which underscores the responsibility of the community and its leaders not only for what they do, but also for what they might have prevented from being done.
Torah of Awakening: Jewish Meditation Teaching
שֹׁפְטִ֣ים וְשֹֽׁטְרִ֗ים תִּֽתֶּן־לְךָ֙ בְּכׇל־שְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ לִשְׁבָטֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁפְט֥וּ אֶת־הָעָ֖ם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶֽדֶק׃ Judges and officers you shall place in all your gates that Hashem your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with fairness... - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 11:26, Parshat Re’eh
Rabbi Hanokh told this story: A Polish girl hired herself out as a house worker to a wealthy family in Germany. There, they use the expression “to scare off” in their cooking. This means that when a pot of meat is boiling for soup and the broth begins to foam up, they would pour some cold water into it to prevent it from boiling over, so that they could calmly skim off the foam without it making a mess. Once, when the lady of the house had to go off to market while a pot of meat was cooking, she said to the girl, “Watch the soup, and don’t forget to ‘scare off.’” The girl didn’t know what this meant, but was afraid to admit it. So, when she saw the foam rising in the pot, she picked up a broom and shook it at the pot threateningly, while the foam boiled over and made a big mess.
“Now if you try to scare off the yetzer hara (lit. “evil impulse,” meaning ego), you will upset everything. You need to first ‘pour some cold water into’ it and then calmly ‘skim it off.’” How do we do this? We “pour cold water on it” by admitting it, by becoming humble about our imperfections – that’s how we conquer ego. Sometimes, in feeling the weight of our misdeeds and embarrassments, we may try to push them out of our minds, to minimize them and focus instead on something positive, to “scare them off.” But, the wisdom of prayerfulness says to do the opposite: embrace them, admit them, ask for forgiveness; that’s the “cold water.”
אֱלֹהַי עַד שֶׁלֹּא נוֹצַֽרְתִּי אֵינִי כְדַאי,
וְעַכְשָׁו שֶׁנּוֹצַֽרְתִּי כְּאִלּוּ לֹא נוֹצַֽרְתִּי. עָפָר אֲנִי בְּחַיָּי, קַל וָחֹֽמֶר בְּמִיתָתִי: My God, before I was formed, I was not enough – and now that I am formed, it is as if I am not formed. I am dust in my life; how much more so in death…
עַד שֶׁלֹּא נוֹצַֽרְתִּי אֵינִי כְדַאי – before I was formed, I was not enough. That’s the fundamental feeling of ego: “I am not enough. I have to become more, I have to have more, I have to get better, I have to look better, I have to complete myself.” So, the prayer is crying out – look! Even before I got here, I didn’t even have a fighting chance. The deck was stacked against me, because the very feeling of being a someone, of being a being, is inherently one of incompleteness.
וְעַכְשָׁו שֶׁנּוֹצַֽרְתִּי כְּאִלּוּ לֹא נוֹצַֽרְתִּי – and now that I am formed, it is as if I am not formed. Meaning, I’m never fully formed! No matter what I do, there is always this sense of being almost defective. No wonder there is such a booming self-help industry! And yet, the paradox is that when we admit our incompleteness, we shift out of identification with the source of incompleteness – that is, the yetzer hara, the ego, the fragile self – and identify instead with no-thingness, with the open space within which the ego arises. That open space doesn’t care about its self-image, about appearing complete. It can admit: I am nothing! I am unworthy! And that No-Thing, that “not-caring-about-self-image,” is paradoxically full and complete; when we surrender and admit our incompleteness, that beautiful and intangible feeling of Completeness can arise on its own. That ineffable inner sense of Wholeness is represented by the letter ג gimel. And when you feel this Wholeness, you will know that you are not the צוּרָה tzurah – you are not the ever-inadequate form. You don’t have to and you cannot perfect yourself as form. That’s why Yom Kippur comes every year. You don’t get atoned and then you’re all done. It’s like eating. You just had a wonderful meal, now you’re full. You never have to eat again, right? It’s like my beloved father-in-law: whenever he eats a really big and satisfying meal, he says, “I’m never eating again.” The humor, of course, is because matter how much you eat, a few hours later you have to eat again. That is why on Yom Kippur, you just let yourself be hungry, because you are not the hunger. You are not the form. Rather, all forms are perceived within the openness that you are, the vast field of awareness within which that sense of “me” appears – the field that is ever full and complete – that is ג gimel שֹׁפְטִ֣ים וְשֹֽׁטְרִ֗ים תִּֽתֶּן־לְךָ֙ בְּכׇל־שְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ – Judges and officers you shall place in your gates… Who are the שֹׁפְטִים shoftim, the judges? Their job is to discern the truth of something and then make a decision based on that truth. And who are the שֹֽׁטְרִים shotrim, the officers? They enforce the decisions of the שֹׁפְטִים shoftim. These two functions in society also represent two functions on the spiritual path as well. To be a שׁוֹפֵט shofet is to see ourselves clearly, to not get “scared off” from facing our own faults, from the ways we tend to how act from ego. It is helpful to verbalize this, to “confess” in a prayerful way – that’s the essence of the Yom Kippur liturgy. לֹ֥א תַכִּ֖יר פָּנִ֑ים וְלֹא־תִקַּ֣ח שֹׁ֔חַד – Don’t give preference to anyone and don’t take a bribe… 16:19 Meaning, try not to let your view be distorted by the ego’s desire to see oneself in a positive light; look at your “self” objectively. Rise and shine – pour the “cold water” on your head and wake up from the dreams of the ego! But the next step is then to “skim off the foam” – that’s the job of the שֹֽׁטְרִים shotrim, the officers. Because the point is not just to beat ourselves up and wallow in self-deprecation; that would also be ego, using the opposite strategy to avoid change. Instead, our task is to turn away from our old negative patterns and create new and positive ones: צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ – Justice Justice you shall pursue, so that you may live. It says צֶדֶק tzedek – meaning justice or fairness – twice. The first is that we must be impartial in how we see ourselves, and then the second is to transform and consciously choose a better path, living not from ego, but from our inherent Wholeness; this is the Path of ג Gimel. In this week Shabbat Shoftim, the Sabbath of Judges, which is the first Shabbat of Elul, may our pots overflow blessings, arising from the Wholeness that we are, and may we not shrink away from facing our patterns that are in need of transformation in this coming time of teshuvah.
Read past teachings on Shoftim HERE.
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Parshah Summary – P’shat
Parshat Re’eh, which means “see,” opens with Moses’ stark teaching to the Children of Israel, that before them is blessing and curse – choose blessing! He then reminds them of the ceremony they must perform when they enter the land, that the litany of blessings promised to them if they follow the Torah should be proclaimed publicly on Mount Gerizim, and the curses for not following the Torah on Mount Ebal. Instructions are then given for establishing a Temple in “the place that Hashem will choose,” and that the Temple should be the only place that offerings are brought. And while it is permitted to slaughter animals anywhere for meat, the blood (which is poured upon the altar when animals are offered in the Temple), may not be eaten. The people are then warned against false prophets, and the identifying signs for kosher animals and fish, along with the list of non-kosher birds (first given in Leviticus 11), are repeated.
Moses then reminds the Israelites that they must tithe a tenth of their produce, and that this tithe must be eaten in Jerusalem, or else exchanged for money with which food is purchased and eaten there. In certain years this tithe is instead given to the poor. (Today the practice is to self-tithe a tenth of our livelihood for the poor.) Firstborn cattle and sheep, however, are to be offered in the Temple, and eaten only by the kohanim (priests). Moses then reviews the mitzvah of tzedakah, charity, the obligation to lift up anyone in the community who becomes needy with a gift or a loan. Furthermore, on the Sabbatical year (occurring seven years), all loans are forgiven, and all indentured servants are set free after six years of service. The parshah concludes with the laws of the three pilgrimage festivals – Pesakh (Passover), Shavuot and Sukkot – when everyone is to make the journey to Jerusalem and bring their offerings …
Torah of Awakening: Jewish Meditation Teaching
רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃ אֶֽת־הַבְּרָכָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּֽוֹם׃ וְהַקְּלָלָ֗ה אִם־לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְסַרְתֶּ֣ם מִן־הַדֶּ֔רֶךְ אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם לָלֶ֗כֶת אַחֲרֵ֛י אֱלֹהִ֥ים אֲחֵרִ֖ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יְדַעְתֶּֽם׃ “See – I place before you today blessing and curse! Blessing, if you listen to the commandments of Hashem your God that I command you today; and curse, if you do not listen the commandments of Hashem your God, but turn away from the path that I command you today and go after other gods, whom you have not known…” Devarim (Deuteronomy) 11:26, Parshat Re’eh
Rabbi Yitzhak of Vorki told this story: “Once, when I was on the road with my holy teacher Rabbi David of Lelov, and stopped over in a town far from our home, a woman suddenly fell upon him in the street and began to beat him. She thought he was her husband who had abandoned her many years ago. After a few moments she saw her error and burst into tears. ‘Do not cry,’ Rabbi David said to her, ‘You were not striking me, but your husband.’ And he added in a low tone, ‘How often we cannot see the truth of what is right in front of us!’”
What is the truth of what is right in front of us? רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה See, I set before you today blessing and curse… “Blessing” and “curse” are constant possibilities, moment to moment – the choice of how we receive this moment is ours. Our tendency is to assume that the “unpleasant” is a curse and the “pleasant” is a blessing, and we put our intention toward the maximizing of our preference and the diminishing of that which we judge as bad. But while we certainly must work toward and maintain that which is desirable, just as important is the question of how we receive what is. This moment has already become; whether we receive it as a “blessing” or a “curse” is our ever-present spiritual task: אֶֽת־הַבְּרָכָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ ... אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּֽוֹם – The Blessing, if you listen to the mitzvot that I command you today… That is, if we consciously receive whatever the moment brings, be it pleasant or unpleasant, receiving it literally as mitzvah, as commandment, and surrendering to the truth of our actual experience, then we can begin to notice: Beyond the sorrow and joy, there is a blessedness that comes from simple openness to the moment; a blessedness which is inherent within awareness itself, inherent within knowing ourselves as this blessed awareness. Then, even the “curses” are like blessings, because through our awareness of the curses, we can come to know ourselves as the blessedness. וְהַקְּלָלָ֗ה אִם־לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ – And curse, if you do not listen… That is, if we don’t receive the present moment just as it is, regardless of whether we like or not, we forfeit the deeper blessedness which is our birthright and our nature. וְסַרְתֶּ֣ם מִן־הַדֶּ֔רֶךְ אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּוֹם – and turn away from the path that I command you today… The commanded path is this path, before us right now – this is it – if we would turn toward it rather than resist it. לָלֶ֗כֶת אַחֲרֵ֛י אֱלֹהִ֥ים אֲחֵרִ֖ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יְדַעְתֶּֽם – and run after other gods, whom you have not known... When we turn away from the present moment, projecting our own concerns upon it like the woman in the story, we sacrifice the Real for the imaginary, worshiping idols of our own thoughts, and ignoring the Reality before us. Then, even “good” things can be like curses – a friendly stranger becomes a guilty abandoning husband – a missed meeting with Reality, a missed encounter with the Divine. So: embrace life as it is: pleasure and pain, sweetness and bitterness, fullness and loss, and uncover the deeper blessedness of Being, which is not separate from the awareness that you are… וְשָׂמַחְתָּ֞ לִפְנֵ֣י יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֗יךָ And you shall rejoice before Reality, your own inner Divinity… - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 16:11
Read past teachings on Re'eh HERE.
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Parshah Summary – P’shat
The third parshah of Sefer Devarim continues with Moses’ closing address to the Children of Israel, promising them that if (Eikev) they will fulfill the mitzvot, they will prosper in the Land: “…a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.”
Moses also rebukes them for their failings in their first generation as a people, recalling their worship of the Golden Calf, the rebellion of Korach and the sin of the spies. But he also speaks of forgiveness and the Second Tablets, instructing them in the core principles of “circumcising the heart,” and the mitzvah to “love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Moses explains that their forty years in the desert, during which they were sustained with daily “manna” from heaven, was to teach them “that a human being does not live by bread alone, but by all that emanates from the mouth of the Divine does a person live!” Moses describes the land they are about to enter as “flowing with milk and honey,” blessed with the “seven species” – wheat, barley, grapevines, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. He warns them to be aware, lest they become arrogant and begin to believe of themselves that “my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth…”
Torah of Awakening
וְהָיָ֣ה עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֤ת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים֙ הָאֵ֔לֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם וְשָׁמַר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ לְךָ֗ אֶֽת־הַבְּרִית֙ וְאֶת־הַחֶ֔סֶד אֲשֶׁ֥ר נִשְׁבַּ֖ע לַאֲבֹתֶֽיךָ׃ And it will be if you listen to these discernments and guard them and do them, then Hashem your God will guard for you the covenant and the kindness which was sworn to your ancestors… - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 7:12 Parshat Eikev
There’s a story of Reb Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, that once, when his grandfather was teaching him Torah as a young boy, they came to this verse: עֵ֕קֶב אֲשֶׁר־שָׁמַ֥ע אַבְרָהָ֖ם בְּקֹלִ֑י – Because (eikev) Abraham listened to my voice… and Menachem Mendel’s grandfather asked him to explain it. The child said, “Abraham heard God’s Voice even with his עֵקֶב eikev – his heel!”
The grandfather, Reb Shneur Zalman, was ecstatic with his answer and said, “In fact we find this same idea in another verse: וְהָיָ֣ה עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן – It will be if you listen... This verse tells us we should strive to become so sensitive that even our eikev – our heel – should ‘listen,’ meaning that we should sense the holiness that permeates all creation even with the most insensitive part of our bodies.” This story cleverly summarizes the fruit of spiritual practice: The sensitizing and tuning of awareness into the sacred dimension that underlies all experience. Part of the way we accomplish this is through the addition of practices and structures in our lives that help to develop consciousness, similarly to the way in which the addition of physical exercise develops the body. But the other important element is not a form of addition, but subtraction – meaning, intentionally refraining from taking, and consequently the having of less. Do you know the sensation of drinking water after the 25-hour fast of Yom Kippur? Several days after a huge earthquake in Haiti, television news showed a man searching day and night for his wife who was buried somewhere under a collapsed building. After something like five days, a voice was heard from beneath the rubble. Men dug furiously toward the voice. Soon they pulled out this man’s wife. She had been buried, no space to move, no food or water for several days. What did she do? She sang hymns! As they pulled her out, she was moving and singing. She was clapping her hands, crying “Halleluyah!” Incomprehensible – but there it was: she was singing in gratitude for her life, for the sunlight, for being able to move. That’s sensitivity. The principle to remember is: the more you get, the less sensitive you are to what you already have; hence the tendency to always want MORE. This is so obvious with children. We want the best for them. We want to give them everything. And yet, the more we give, the more they want. Giving them more and more doesn’t always satisfy them more; it can create spoilage. So, it turns out, if we want to give them more, we sometimes have to give them less. וְהָיָ֣ה עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן – It shall be if you listen… The sentence is strange, because as we saw in the story, the word עֵקֶב eikev really means “heel.” Here, it is understood to mean “if” or “because” or “consequence.” This meaning is probably related to the English idiom when we say that something “follows on the heels” of another thing. The thing that “follows on the heels” is the consequence. עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן eikev tishma’un can also be translated as “reward for listening” as in “the positive consequence” of “paying attention,” or being sensitive. What is the reward? בָּר֥וּךְ תִּֽהְיֶ֖ה מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּ֑ים – Blessed you will be from all the peoples… In other words, you will receive and appreciate all the blessedness of being a person among people – the gift of being human. This is the whole point of all of those traditional spiritual practices that restrict you in some way, such as fasting. Their message is: don’t keep going in the direction of “more.” Go in the direction of less, even if just for a small period of time, so that you can consciously receive the blessedness of being, rather than constantly looking toward the horizon of the future for more gratification. וַֽיְעַנְּךָ֮ וַיַּרְעִבֶ֒ךָ֒ … לְמַ֣עַן הוֹדִֽיעֲךָ֗ כִּ֠י לֹ֣א עַל־הַלֶּ֤חֶם לְבַדּוֹ֙ יִחְיֶ֣ה הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֛י עַל־כׇּל־מוֹצָ֥א פִֽי־יְהֹוָ֖ה יִחְיֶ֥ה הָאָדָֽם׃ You were afflicted and hungered… so that you would know: not by bread alone does a person live, but by everything that emanates from the mouth of the Divine does a person live! - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 8:3 In other words, to truly live, you have to feel your most basic needs. You have to hunger a little. Otherwise, you won’t appreciate your life and sustenance as a gift, as coming from the “Divine mouth.” And, while fasting and other traditional restrictions can be useful aids, you can actually practice this in a small but powerful way every time you are about to eat. Rather than just digging in, take a moment. Delay the first bite. Appreciate. Say a brakha – either the traditional one or something in your own words. When you are finished, don’t just get up and go. Take a moment… וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ וְשָׂבָ֑עְתָּ וּבֵֽרַכְתָּ֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ עַל־הָאָ֥רֶץ הַטֹּבָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָֽתַן־לָֽךְ׃ – And you shall eat, and you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless… 8:10 In this week of Shabbat Eikev, the Sabbath of the Heel, may we practice sensitivity to the many gifts of sustenance that often get taken for granted. Most of all, may we be sensitive to the one gift that holds all the others: the gift of the space of awareness within which all experience unfolds. Don’t hurry through the present moment to get to the next thing. There is only one life to enjoy – and that is the one you are living, in this moment…
Read past teachings on Eikev HERE.
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