It's the small things that count: Eikev 5784

Eikev—the word itself and the parsha generally—stresses the cause-and-effect equation that governs not just Jewish history but the history of all human civilization. Both the happy events in our lives and the sad ones are conditioned on previous human attitudes and actions. Life eventually teaches us that there is no free lunch. The rabbis stated it succinctly in Avot: “According to the effort (or hardship), so too will be the reward.” 

There really are no shortcuts in life. All attempts to tailor eternal Jewish practices and values to fit current fads and societal norms have ended in abysmal failure. The path of Jewish history is littered with the remains of people and movements who looked to reform Judaism and improve it—but instead only succeeded in making it irrelevant to their followers. 

The Torah emphasizes that Moshe raised the people up so that they would be closer to Heaven; he did not degrade Heaven by dragging it down to the level of the people. The tragedy of much of American Jewry and of many secular Jews today is not that Judaism is too hard. Rather, it was rendered too easy, too convenient—and thus void of any meaning in their everyday existence. As Moshe generally does in the book of Devarim, so too in this week’s parsha does he emphasize the difficult times that the people endured in their forty-year sojourn in the desert of Sinai. 

Moshe does not promise his people a rose garden in the Middle East when they enter the Land of Israel and conquer it. He warns them instead of the consequences of abandoning God and Torah. God is exacting: He does not tolerate the easy path that leads to spiritual weakness and eventual physical destruction. Rashi comments in our parsha that this message is particularly true regarding the “small” things in life that one easily crushes under one’s ekev (“heel”). It is the small things that truly characterize our personality in our relationships with others and with our Creator as well. 

I have noticed a trend in contemporary society that, when eulogies are delivered, they concentrate on the small things in life—stories, anecdotes, memories and personal relationships—rather than on the deceased’s public or commercial achievements, no matter how impressive they might have been. It is the small things in life that engender within us likes and dislikes, feelings of affection and love, emotions of annoyance and frustration. Our Torah too is comprised of myriad details and minutiae. The God of the vast universe reveals Himself to us, so to speak, in the atom and the tiny mite. For upon reflection and analysis there are really no small things in life. 

Everything that we say and do bears consequences for our personal and national future. It is this sense of almost cosmic influence, which every individual exercises in their everyday life, that lies at the heart of Torah and Judaism. We build the world through our own lives’ seemingly mundane behavior. 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein