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I picked the image for this post because it's raining today, and wet footprints are everywhere! Conveniently, the image may also reflect the name of the parasha.
According to the commentary I'm reading, Rashi connected the word Eikev, “as a consequence of,” to a similar word that means "heel." He suggested that we are not to trample the commandments. (I wonder if the noun “heel” shares a root with a Hebrew verb “to follow.” The next word in the text is from the root “to listen,” but perhaps the two words together reflect our promise at Sinai that we would do and then hear.)
Eikev, like much of Sefer Vayikra (Deuteronomy), contains passages that feel problematic.
The writers of Vaykira were an eclectic group of people with a new vision, which included a vehement opposition to idolatry and a desire to make the Jerusalem Temple the only sanctuary. Vaykira was “discovered” (i.e., written) during the 7th century BCE during the reign of King Josiah when those cranky, but often inspiring, prophets were coming to the fore. (Jill Hammer offers a contemporary midrash in her book, Sisters at Sinai, that describes the priests taking the text to the prophetess Hulda for confirmation of its authenticity.)
The commands in Vayikra were not “given” just prior to the supposed conquest. Its authors lived six centuries later than the apparent date of the text. Displeased with the culture around them, they posited that if their ancestors hadn’t been influenced by the Canaanites, then Israel's “flirtations with idolatry and the resultant punishments” would not have occurred. So they put orders in the mouth of Moses that archaeology shows were never carried out, but which we must contemplate and struggle with today.
In Eikev, the problematic nature of god's commands to the people "before" entering the Land, has been compared to "a handbook for the Taliban." Kill the infidels and destroy all beauty.
Explanations (i.e., excuses) seem inadequate. It hardly matters to me that other Near Eastern nations, the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Germanic tribes had “the custom to dedicate an enemy to the deity, or to ban him, or after a victory to annihilate him."
I’m thankful that the commands were never carried out; it didn’t happen that way, but what are we to make of this text that we revere? (Richard Dawkins cites a disturbing phenomenon regarding these commandments. When text was altered to seemingly describe a situation in China, Israeli school children condemned it. When shown the original text, other Israeli school children made excuses to support it. He does not clarify whether the children were secular or dati, but still...)
Archaeological finds reveal that Canaanites and Hebrews lived together and there is no evidence of warfare between them. Statues of the goddess Asherah have been found in Jewish and Canaanite homes and I’ve heard (but not confirmed) that Jericho's walls are of a much later date than the supposed conquest. In addition, well-known rabbi, David Wolpe, is a vocal proponent of the idea there may have been no escape from Egypt and no invasion of Canaan, and that the Israelites and Canaanites had lived side by side for centuries. (We may never know, even if the “port towns of Pithom and Ramses,” now under water, are excavated.)
I’m frustrated by my lack of books and knowledge. What have rabbis said about the “Taliban-like” commandments found in Sefer Vayikra? I am certain there are beautiful commentaries and drashot (drashim?) on other passages in Vayikra, but I don’t know what they are.
I would also like to read traditional and modern commentaries on tests and “chastisements of love” in the Torah. At least one medieval (?) commentator argued that Avraham failed his test—god did not speak with him again after the Akedah (the near sacrifice of Yitzchak).
The promises of blessings for obedience in Eikev are problematic for modern Jews—even traditional Jews whisper this portion of the Birkat HaMazon: “I was young and I’ve also grown old, but I’ve never seen a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread.” We just can’t reconcile the reality of our experience with promises such as these.
Rabbi Greenberg, whose descriptions of the holidays in The Jewish Way are pious, writes very differently of Yom HaShoah: during the Holocaust, god withdrew from the world, even further than in the time of Esther and Mordechai. In that chapter, he asserts that God broke the covenant with us and we are no longer bound by it unless we choose to be.
A phrase that has become a common saying may not mean what we think it means. When we use the expression, “by bread alone,” we are emphasizing that we have spiritual needs in addition to material needs. In the context of this parasha, it seems to mean that god can make anything nourishing, by extension, implying humanity’s powerlessness. Blessings are god’s to bestow in any way he chooses and only complete obedience to god can prevent curses.
Perhaps, if this parasha were named after the third word, tishme’un, “you will listen,” the focus would be more on listening and less on obeying, hearing the cries of others’ suffering, hearing god’s voice today instead of reading commandments that are not literally be what god expects of us—which I think Jews have rarely done; we have, I think, generally avoided fundamentalist obedience. Rabbi Berg always said difficult passages can yield the choicest fruit, if we struggle with them.
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