Parashat Eikev-20 Av, 5773

Parashat Eikev-20 Av, 5773
by Cantor Phil Baron

“When you have eaten your fill and built fine houses 
to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, 
and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty 
and you forget the Lord your God.”
-Deut: 8:12

There’s a joke.  It seems there was a 5 year-old boy who had never spoken a word.  His distraught parents had taken him to every specialist, but no doctor of the body or mind could unlock the mystery of the child’s disability.  Then one day, the boy’s mother placed his breakfast before him, and out of the blue he spoke up and said, “Hey, the toast is burnt!”  The mother was ecstatic.  Tears of joy filled her eyes and she asked the boy why he had never spoken before.  The boy answered, “Well, up until now, everything was okay.”

This is what the Torah is concerned about.  There is a danger that when everything seems okay, that we quickly forget the Source of our contentment.  We rarely pause during those good times to reflect on the fact that for everything to be okay, so many many things need to be just right, and that the odds are against that.  I try to remind myself occasionally that for my car to start and run smoothly, it takes hundreds of precision parts to function together in harmony. The car not running is actually its natural state.  A misplaced wire or insufficient fluid will transform a vehicle into a very expensive pile of useless metal. How amazing when it works – and how much more surprising when our lives run smoothly.

Just this morning I received a prescient e-mail for AIPAC on a similar theme, with a critically important subject.  Here is an excerpt:

“Most pro-Israel Americans only pay attention to the Jewish state during times of immediate crisis. When hundreds of rockets are launched at Israeli towns…everyone pays attention. When Israel gets unjustly targeted at the U.N. for acts of self defense … everyone pays attention. But everyone does not always pay attention when Israel itself is not front page news. Most remain unaware of the effect other Middle East events may have on Israel’s safety until it’s too late.”

It’s the same in our lives.  We are easily lulled into a sense of security and complacency until the “rockets” start flying.  While the alarm bell rings we find it easier to pray, to beseech God, to search our souls.  It’s much more challenging to do this when “everything is okay,” and we don’t need to pay attention.

But that is exactly what we should do.  A thorough practice of Judaism provides ample reminders, from the mezuzot on our doors to the 613 mitzvot.  It provides the countless blessings we recite for washing our hands, for eating different foods, for waking up and for going to sleep.  We are reminded throughout the Torah and our liturgy that God brought us out of Egyptian slavery.  These are all reminders, much needed in today’s soft and (comparatively) easy world, that gratitude and memory are essential.  The Torah cautions us never to “…say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.”

The great Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel embodied for me the solution to our memory problem in what he called “radical amazement.”  He said, “Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” 

So let’s take the Torah’s warning and Heschel’s solution, and appreciate the Source or our many gifts. And let’s do it now while “everything is okay.”