PARASHAT EIKEV

Saturday 23rd August 2024                                 20th Av 5784

PARASHAT EIKEV

Dev 7:12 – 11:25; Isaiah 49:14-51:3; Matthew 16:13-20

A few months ago, I taught a class on what is known as Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith. In that class I delved into Maimonides’ rather remarkable conclusion that a person isn’t obligated to believe in God – rather he is obligated in knowing there is a God. There is a huge distinction between believing something and knowing something. Judaism isn’t a religion based on faith; it’s a collection of tenets that we are obligated to know and accept to fulfill.

After the class a young man sidled up to me, leaned in, and whispered, almost self-consciously; “Rabbi how do you know there is a God?”

I explained to him that my knowledge of God wasn’t going to help him. We are individually obligated to experience the Divine and through that experience we come to knowledge. We must each take our own journey, and the road is often vastly different from one person to another. I have heard many personal stories describing different individual “eureka” moments; the miracle of childbirth, an incredibly moving experience at a National Park, and an intense meditative experience, to name a few.

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to explain this concept to a person with whom I have become quite close over the last several years. This man is in his late eighties and has achieved professional and material success. However, this idea, that a person has to know that there is a God, did not sit well with him. He had grown up in Williamsburg, NY, and received a fine Jewish education. But he never internally reconciled whether he actually “believed in God.” He was not at all satisfied with my approach.

With some frustration he told me, “Rabbi, I am a scientist. If you cannot prove to me the existence of God, then I cannot know there is a God!”

I explained to him that his assertion simply wasn’t true. “Over the last 30 years of teaching I have made many rational arguments for the absolute existence of God – ontological, teleological, cosmological etc. –  but no student ever subsequently stood up and exclaimed, ‘Oh wow, I get it. NOW, I believe!’ In my experience, true knowledge doesn’t come from what you learn – it comes from what you experience.”

I then asked my friend, “Tell me, how do you know that your mother loved you? Do you know for a fact that your wife loved you?” He answered, “Of course!” I told him to prove it to me. He said, “Well, they told me that they did.” I replied, “That’s not proof. They may have had ulterior motives for saying that to you, and moreover, them telling that to you is certainly not a proof for me.”

I continued, “The way you know, to your very core, that they loved you is that you experienced their love. I have no doubt that it is true, but there is no way for you can prove it to me. You cannot give me that experience. You can share information that may, or may not, indicate it to me, but that’s not scientific proof. Still, you absolutely know it to be true.”

This is the nature of the type of knowledge with which we are obligated to know there is a God. The real issue is that very few people try to experience the Divine and even when they do, they often do their very best to immediately forget it. This is because real knowledge of God comes with obligations, and no one likes the feeling of owing. It’s also the reason that few people try experiencing it in the first place.

It’s important to understand that this knowledge is not intellectual, it’s what you know to be true in your heart. That’s why King David wrote, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalms 14:1) and in the very next verse he says, “From heaven the Almighty gazed down to see if there exists a reflective man who seeks out God” (Ibid 14:2). Knowledge of God begins with a search for God.

There is a well-known story about Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Horowitz (1745-1815) aka the Chozeh of Lublin – the famous “Seer of Lublin.” As a child, he enjoyed spending long periods of time alone wandering the forests surrounding his village. When his father asked him why, he answered, “I go there to find God.” His father then asked, “But haven’t I taught you that God is the same everywhere?” “Yes, God is the same,” his son answered, “But I am not.”

This search for the Almighty begins with the understanding and awareness that we are constantly in His presence. This is not easy to accomplish, because, as humans, we really don’t want that pressure – we just want to do what we want to do.

It reminds me of the time I spent a weekend with a newly married friend of mine who had been a bachelor until middle age. Over lunch we got to talking and he wanted to make a comment about his new wife, but before doing so he turned to look over both his shoulders to make sure she wasn’t in earshot. I looked at him and said, “Wow, you’re really married now!”

We often treat God the same way, hoping that we can hide, or that He isn’t “paying attention.” I often hear from students, “Why does God care if I do this or that?” This willful disconnect exactly mirrors Adam’s reaction after he sinned from the Tree of Knowledge. We find in the Torah that he actually tried to “hide” from the Almighty (Genesis 3:10).

One of the most consequential verses in the entire Torah appears in this week’s Torah portion, and is directly related to this discussion:

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to be in awe of the Lord, your God […]” (Deuteronomy 10:12).

There is a fascinating passage in the Talmud relating to this verse: “Rabbi Chanina said, ‘Everything is in the hands of Heaven except for having awe of the Lord.’” In other words, the only thing that the Almighty leaves completely up to man is the extent that man chooses to live in awe of His presence. This is the essence of free-will, and of man’s absolute ability to choose his own path – for both good and evil.

The Talmud points out that the verse seems to imply that it is “only” this requirement (of living in awe of the Almighty) and that it’s not so hard to do. “Is fear of Heaven, then, such a small matter, as the verse implies? How can that be?”

One of the answers that the Talmud suggests is that it doesn’t mean a “small” matter, but rather it is the only matter. “This is in accordance with another teaching from Rabbi Chanina. Rabbi Chanina said in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai: The Holy One, Blessed is He, has nothing in His treasure house other than the storage of the merits that come with of awe of Heaven, as the verse says, ‘The fear of the Lord is his treasure’” (Isiah 33:6).

The great Talmudic sage Rava proclaimed that the only merits that a person retains for the World to Come are those performed within the context of awe of God. Rava explains that no matter how much Torah is studied or good deeds are performed, if they aren’t taking place within a relationship with the Almighty then they don’t remain as merits in the World to Come. Rava goes on to give the following illustration.

“This is analogous to a homeowner who said to his servant: ‘Take a large measure of wheat to the attic for storage.’ His servant went and brought it up. Afterwards, the homeowner said to him, ‘Did you mix into the wheat a measure of chumton (a protective mixture of salt and earth) so as to preserve it?’ The servant replied to him: ‘No.’ The homeowner said: ‘It would have been better, then, had you never brought up the wheat in the first place’” (Shabbat 31a).

Rava’s point is that there is little utility in expending the effort if it won’t last. Similarly, a person can study Torah because he enjoys it, give charity because it gives him honor, take care of orphans and widows because it makes him feel good about himself, however, these are temporal joys, and if the deeds aren’t done within the context of a relationship with the Almighty, then they are doomed to dissipate. The only good deeds that remain in the World to Come are merits that are part of our relationship with God, because that is the sole way to preserve them.

This isn’t to say that we should not engage in doing good deeds if we aren’t doing them for the proper reasons. In fact, the Talmud gives us the axiom that one should always do mitzvot (commandments/good deeds) even if he initially does them for selfish reasons. Because as long as one is doing mitzvot he will eventually arrive at doing them for the right reasons.

But as the great sage Rava points out, this struggle to maintain an ongoing awareness of the awe-inspiring presence of the Almighty is the “only” thing that matters. How much or how little we let God into our lives, and spend our lives in awe of Him, is totally up to us.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgensztern (1787-1859) (aka the Kotzker Rebbe) once asked his students, “Where does God dwell?” They answered him, “Everywhere, as we find in Isaiah (6:3), ‘All the world is filled with His Glory.’”

“No,” he told them, “God dwells only where we let him in.”