Aug 12/06 - Parashat Ekev

Commentary by Rabbi Alan Green

 

“You will become arrogant, and forget the Lord your God—Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; Who led you through the great and terrible wilderness of poisonous snakes and scorpions and thirst, where there was no water; Who brought you water from the flint; Who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had not known, in order to humble you; to temper you; to ultimately make it good.

“You will say to yourselves: ‘My own strength and the power of my own hand attained this wealth for me.’ Remember that it is the Lord our God who gives you the power to attain wealth, in order to fulfill the covenant God made with your ancestors, as He is doing today.” (Deuteronomy 8:11, 14-18)

The Torah is a textbook of human nature. It informs us that when it comes to the mistakes people make, there truly is nothing new under the sun. In the quotation above, Moses is warning the people of exactly what will happen to them once they have settled and begun to prosper in the Land of Promise.

This is a story that has been repeated time and again in both Jewish and world history. The Jews of North America are living out this story today. Here is this story in a nutshell: Coming from humble circumstances, a persecuted, impoverished people arrive in a “land of promise” filled with new opportunities. The first generation works16 hours a day and sacrifices and saves every penny so that the second generation will have it easier than they did.

The second generation studies hard, attends university, attains professional success, and moves to the suburbs. By the time the yet more privileged third generation comes of age, amnesia about the first generation’s unique mode of relating to the world has already begun to set in. Then the fourth generation—the most affluent of all—arrives: a lost generation that has become completely absorbed by the host culture.

This same story is told by the famous passage in the Pesach Haggadah about the Four Children. The Wise Child represents the immigrant generation, comfortable and knowledgeable in the old ways, though fleeing from the world in which these ways prevailed. The Wicked Child represents the second generation, which rebels by casting off tradition, sacrificing all for the sake of social status and material success.

The Simple Child represents the third generation which, having been raised by the rebellious second generation, is no longer in a position to ask intelligently about the tradition. At best, they can only say, “What is this?” This lack of familiarity indicates the degree to which they have already moved on. Finally, there is the fourth generation—the Child Who Doesn’t Even Know How To Ask. Here, all connection to the tradition has broken down. This generation is too bored to even be curious.

However, in spite of this repeating dynamic, the Jewish people have managed to survive for more than thirty-five centuries. How did we accomplish that? Certainly, it wasn’t because we didn’t lose people. The centrifugal forces of assimilation have always been powerful and pervasive. The particulars of the environment hardly seem to matter. In fact, benign host societies have claimed far more Jewish souls, through assimilation, than hostile ones.

So how have we Jews survived and thrived as we have traversed the corridors of time? Without a doubt, there are probably several historically valid explanations that could be offered. However, my personal preference is a theological explanation. Deuteronomy 14:1 says it best: “You are children of the Lord your God.”

In other words, God has reason to keep the Jewish people intact, in spite of the considerable forces—internal and external—that are always arrayed against it. Why? Maybe it’s because we Jews are the conscience of humanity. Maybe it’s because, like T-cells in the human body, the Jewish people are the shock troops who regularly confront evil in the body of humanity.

Maybe it’s because our miraculous survival as an Eternal People is the most eloquent possible testimony to the existence of the Eternal God. Maybe it’s because Jews have manifested so many hundreds of blessings from which the world has benefited and will continue to benefit far into the future.

From the invention of ethical monotheism in ancient times, to the development of cell phones and microchips today, Jews have exercised an incalculably great influence on the stage of history. Certainly, the world would be a far less comfortable and far more violent place today were it not for the contributions that the Jewish people have freely distributed to every nation on earth throughout the generations.

In the final analysis, maybe this is the real reason that God sustains his people year after year, century after century, and millennia after millennia.”

Shabbat Shalom.