Ekev

When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was still a young man, before his fleeing the Shoah and before he became known as one of the leading spiritual voices of the middle of the twentieth century, he wrote: “Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me.”

For the rest of his life Rabbi Heschel taught that cultivating a feeling of wonder is essential for living a life of meaning and holiness. 

Moses has hit his stride in his exhortations to the Children of Israel, seeking to prepare them for the next stage of their journey, their entry into the Promised Land. In his direct address to the people, calling on them to faithfully love God, he emphasizes their personal experience of God’s might and God’s love for Israel. His words ring forth: “Know this day that it is not to your children, who do not know and who have not seen the message of the Eternal, your Almighty God – His greatness, His strong hand and outstretched arm …[Moses lists some of God’s great miracles, mentioning the Exodus and the opening of the earth to swallow the rebels against Moses and Aaron] but it is your very eyes that have seen all the acts that the great Eternal One has done.” (Deut. 11:2 – 7)

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Ekev, the title of our Torah reading, is odd.  It means “heel.”
The reading today meanders through Moshe rabbenu’s memories of the forty years of wandering through the desert.  One of the things he choses to remind his people is that God is forgiving.  No sooner that God given His inscribed Tablets to His faithful servant than the people began to worship a golden calf.  Yet, God forgave.   
What is more the people were forgiven and changed by that experience.  They became baalei teshuvah, people who repented and changed their actions.  This is the height of wisdom.
We are not born wise.  We learn through experience, teachers and learning through watching others.  If we observe carefully and try to gain knowledge from life we will come into wisdom.  But.  Wisdom does not come simply by being passive; it comes when we are willing to admit we made mistakes and then adjust our behavior.  This is what God teaches us when He forgives the people.
So why is this portion called “Ekev?”  It is so named so that we learned from our head to our “heels”.  Learning new behaviors involves the entire body and soul.


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