D’var Torah – Ekev 5769

Rabbi Maurice

1. Summary of parashah
a. Moses continues his final speeches to the Israelites shortly
before they prepare to enter the Promised Land without him.
b. He reminds the people that God has placed their future in their
own hands – if they follow God’s ways they will experience
great blessings. Not following God’s commandments will lead
to disaster.
c. Moses gives a brief recap of the peoples’ 40 years of wandering
in the wilderness. Reminding the people of the miracles that
God created for them during their years of wandering, Moses
tells the Israelites that as they enter a bountiful land they must
remember to give thanks continually to God.
i. “When you have eaten you fill, and have 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 ETERNAL your God –
who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of
bondage; who led you through the great and terrible
wilderness with its winged serpents and scorpions, a
parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water
from the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with
manna, which your ancestors had never known… THE
TEXT GOES ON TO SAY BEWARE LEST “…you say
to yourselves, ‘My own power and the might of my own
hand have won this wealth for me.’ Remember that it is
the ETERNAL your God who gives you the power to get
wealth…”
d. Moses goes on to remind the people of some of their acts of
disloyalty and rebellion against God, like that little disaster with
the Golden Calf, during their wandering.
e. Moses also includes in his speeches some essential guidelines
for the people to remember:
i. “And now, O Israel, what does the ETERNAL your God
demand of you? Only this: to revere the ETERNAL
your God, to walk only in God’s paths, to love God, and
 to serve the ETERNAL your God with all your heart and
soul…”
ii. “Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts
and stiffen your necks no more. For the ETERNAL your
God is God of Gods and Master of all Masters, the great,
the mighty, the awesome God, who shows no favor and
takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the orphan and
the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing the
stranger with food and clothing. You too must love the
stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

FOCAL POINT

Deuteronomy 8:3 –

“…humankind does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of the Eternal does humankind live…”

The popular expression is “man does not live by bread alone,” and it
generally means that we need more than our basic needs for physical
survival to have a good life. The popular saying is taken out of context from
the verse in the Torah. In its original context, the intent is a reminder that it
is God’s actions that make our lives possible.

Three insights:

• We tend to not understand what we need

• We have needs beyond our physical survival
o Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• We are dependent upon forces that are larger than our seemingly
isolated, independent selves

Maslow’s hierarchy:

The Search for Understanding

by Janet A. Simons, Donald B. Irwin and Beverly A. Drinnien
1. Physiological Needs
These are biological needs that the body can’t survive without.

2. Safety Needs

3. Needs of Love, Affection and Belongingness

4. Needs for Esteem

These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person
gets from others. Humans have a need for a stable, firmly based, high
level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are
satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable as a person in
the world. When these needs are frustrated, the person feels inferior,
weak, helpless and worthless.

5. Needs for Self-Actualization

When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are
the needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-
actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person
was "born to do." "A musician must make music, an artist must paint,
and a poet must write." These needs make themselves felt in signs of
restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in
short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted, or
lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless
about. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need
for self-actualization.

Maslow believes that the only reason that people would not move well in
direction of self-actualization is because of hindrances placed in their way
by society. He states that education is one of these hindrances. He
recommends ways education can switch from its usual person-stunting
tactics to person-growing approaches. Maslow states that educators should
respond to the potential an individual has for growing into a self-actualizing
person of his/her own kind.

Ten points that educators should address are listed:

 1. We should teach people to be authentic, to be aware of their inner
selves and to hear their inner-feeling voices.
2. We should teach people to transcend their cultural conditioning and
become world citizens.
3. We should help people discover their vocation in life, their calling,
fate or destiny. This is especially focused on finding the right career
and the right mate.
4. We should teach people that life is precious, that there is joy to be
experienced in life, and if people are open to seeing the good and
joyous in all kinds of situations, it makes life worth living.
5. We must accept the person as he or she is and help the person learn
their inner nature. From real knowledge of aptitudes and limitations
we can know what to build upon, what potentials are really there.
6. We must see that the person's basic needs are satisfied. This includes
safety, belongingness, and esteem needs.
7. We should refreshen consciousness, teaching the person to appreciate
beauty and the other good things in nature and in living.
8. We should teach people that controls are good, and complete abandon
is bad. It takes control to improve the quality of life in all areas.
9. We should teach people to transcend the trifling problems and
grapple with the serious problems in life. These include the problems
of injustice, of pain, suffering, and death.
10. We must teach people to be good choosers. They must be given
practice in making good choices.

We are dependent upon forces that are larger than

our seemingly isolated, independent selves

Back to our quote from the Torah portion:

“…by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Eternal does
humankind live…”

In the metaphoric words of Torah, we can understand the words coming out
of the mouth of God to be the creative life force itself. Torah metaphorizes
and depicts a super-human-like God speaking words as the initial creative
act. Jewish medieval philosophers and the mystics of Kabbalah take this
image and treat it as a metaphor for a cosmic creative process that is
simultaneously embedded in our bodies and yet beyond our intellectual
grasp. So if we look at the Torah’s words in this way, we can understand the
teaching here to be that our very existence comes ultimately not from the
day-to-day biological and mechanical act of eating and drinking nutrients,
but rather from the never-ending flow of the life force itself. It is this
foundational energy, running through everything, creating and sustaining
everything, that some of us call God. And it is through this energy that we
not only survive day to day, but it is through getting to understand ourselves
as vessels of this energy that we can live lives of higher purpose and
meaning. To quote the concentration camp survivor and philosopher, Viktor
Frankl, “It does not matter what we expect from life, but rather what life
expects from us.”

The idea that our very lives depend on a creative force greater than our
isolated selves also points us towards a recognition of our interdependence
with all other human beings and creatures. If we are all manifestations of
the same unitive creative force, variations on Life – with a capital L – then
we come to understand that there is no ultimate advantage to be gained by
destroying or diminishing the Other.

As the radical popular singer-songwriter, Ani DiFranco, puts it in one of her

songs:

We can't afford to do anyone harm

Because we owe them our lives
Each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs
Our enemies are the very air in disguise

This is a lot to think about! I’ll close by saying that, as many of you
probably know, Abraham Maslow taught that there are moments in our lives
when we experience a remarkable transcendence of our own egos and
perceive the world from the perspective of a greater unity. He called these
peak experiences, and he went on to theorize that one of the main purposes
of religion is to communicate peak experiences to people in general – to help
people achieve those experiences. Filtered through the lens of Torah, we
reach that peak at the top of Mount Sinai. May we all be blessed to have our
basic and our higher needs met, and may we also be blessed to be agents of
support to others to meet their needs and achieve their human potential.
Shabbat shalom!