Do We Deserve This Land? Parshat Ekev

Reading this week’s parsha ekev in light of what is happening today is frightening. Frightening, depending on one’s perspective of course. Supposedly if we are Godfearing and observant of God’s rules, we will be blessed. As part of our blessings God will protect us and also destroy our enemies. When we read that “[God] will not bring upon you any of the dreadful diseases of Egypt”, we think immediately about the polio that seems to be present in Gaza and that has led some to call a cease fire so that people can be inoculated. We know today that we cannot isolate ourselves from the diseases that “inflict our enemies”. Diseases spread. And when they don’t spread to “particular groups”, like in the Middle Ages, those who are not inflicted will be targeted as the cause of those diseases—most often, the Jews, who may have practiced the hygienic measures of washing their hands regularly.

And if you do obey והיה עקב these rules and observe them carefully, your God will maintain faithfully for you the covenant made on oath with your fathers:  [God] will favor you and bless you and multiply you—blessing your issue from the womb and your produce from the soil, your new grain and wine and oil, the calving of your herd and the lambing of your flock, in the land sworn to your fathers to be assigned to you. You shall be blessed above all other peoples: there shall be no sterile male or female among you or among your livestock. God will ward off from you all sickness; [God] will not bring upon you any of the dreadful diseases of Egypt, about which you know, but will inflict them upon all your enemies.

Now we come to the difficult part which is that of ideology or wish fulfillment. I regularly attend classes at Beit Avichai and this week our lecturer was a brilliant scholar who convincingly argued that most of the texts that are about the command to totally destroy the inhabitants of the land are “just” ideological statements, and that they never took place. However, as we know there are many who view ideology seriously and when we read: “You shall destroy all the peoples that your God delivers to you, showing them no pity,” it is ingenuous and even dangerous to dismiss this and say it is “only” wishes and hopes. Because as a sovereign nation, we have the ability to decimate a population and “show them no pity”. The text speaks to us today and is very daring when it encourages us not to fear nations who are bigger than us: “Should you say to yourselves, “These nations are more numerous than we; how can we dispossess them?” You need have no fear of them.” An attitude like that today is asking ourselves for trouble—yes, we should have fear of them, because the God who did what he did to Pharaoh in ancient times is not necessarily the same God who is with us (or not) today. Even our biblical God was unable to totally eliminate the population: “Your God will dislodge those peoples before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them at once”. But eventually “no one shall stand up to you, until you have wiped them out.” (Deuteronomy 7: 12-26). Those who are reading this week’s parsha and taking it seriously, are misled. It is time to change our ideology, even if it goes against the grain of the biblical message.

But what possible justification can the Bible give us for these massacres? Surely we are not to be encouraged to kill innocent people, just because God wants to give us this land. As we continue reading we find a fascinating passage:

Hear, O Israel! You are about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and more populous than you: great cities with walls sky-high [we can substitute tunnels and high rise buildings]; a people great and tall, the Anakites [Hamas, Hizballah, Houthis, Iran], of whom you have knowledge; for you have heard it said, “Who can stand up to the children of Anak?”  [Not to worry]: Know then this day that none other than your God is crossing at your head, a devouring fire; it is [God] who will wipe them out—subduing them before you, that you may quickly dispossess and destroy them [with tanks, planes, drones and troops], as God promised you.

And then Moses says something startling, repeating it three times:

And when your God has thrust them from your path, say not to yourselves, “God has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues”; it is rather because of the wickedness of those nations that God is dispossessing them before you. It is not because of your virtues and your rectitude that you will be able to possess their country; but it is because of their wickedness that your God is dispossessing those nations before you, and in order to fulfill the oath that God made to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Know, then, that it is not for any virtue of yours that your God is giving you this good land to possess; for you are a stiff-necked people.

We are then reminded to never forget our previous sins:

Remember, never forget, how you provoked your God to anger in the wilderness: from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you reached this place, you have continued defiant toward God. At Horeb you so provoked God that God was angry enough with you to have destroyed you (Deuteronomy 9:1-8).

This is followed by Moses’s recollection of all of Israel’s sinning and how Moses had to intercede with God not to totally destroy them after the sin of the Golden Calf.

It is interesting to me that God does not give us the land for the fact that we are more virtuous than the other nations, but rather that it is because these “natives” are wicked and deserve to be dispossessed. It is incumbent on us to understand that if WE are wicked, then we too, do not deserve to be in the land. Needless to say, we have to distinguish between our rightful duty to protect our land from our enemies. But when we read that there are Jewish terrorists who attack and murder people on their land, in a West Bank Village, presumably for ideological reasons, it is time to draw the line—which to be fair has been done, but not enough.

I am equally frightened not only by the actions of our own people, but by those who stand by and or defend their actions. Finally, a headline has referred to them as Jewish Israeli terrorists. It is not only the bad name we get for actions such as these. It is impossible to justify such actions. It reminds me too much of Jacob’s reaction to Levi and Simon’s overkilling rampage in Shechem, when he said: עֲכַרְתֶּ֣ם אֹתִי֒ לְהַבְאִישֵׁ֙נִי֙ בְּיֹשֵׁ֣ב הָאָ֔רֶץ  “You have brought trouble on me, making me odious/stink among the inhabitants of the land”. And what was their response?  הַכְזוֹנָ֕ה יַעֲשֶׂ֖ה אֶת־אֲחוֹתֵֽנוּ  “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” (Genesis 34: 30-31). Now one can argue, that we live in the Middle East, where honor killings take place on a regular basis, so why should we be any better. But, many of us think of ourselves as having Western values, and that we are the bastion of these values in the Middle East. So if our government does not take quick action against these and other terrorists (including those who allegedly sodomized an enemy prisoner), our biblical justification for ownership of this land will fade. I write this sadly, not as a “left wing, self-hating Jewish liberal”, but as a very concerned Jewish citizen who came on Aliyah in 1967 for ideological reasons. Feel free to read an earlier blog that I wrote exactly two years ago where I discussed this. Although we are now in the Seven Weeks of Comfort, it is worthwhile going back to the book of Lamentations (Eicha) for a very important verse that is exactly in the middle of the scroll (Lamentations 3: 40-42):

נַחְפְּשָׂ֤ה דְרָכֵ֙ינוּ֙ וְֽנַחְקֹ֔רָה וְנָשׁ֖וּבָה עַד־יְהֹוָֽה׃  Let us search and examine our ways, And turn back to the LORD;  If we do not, we run the following risk:

נַ֤חְנוּ פָשַׁ֙עְנוּ֙ וּמָרִ֔ינוּ אַתָּ֖ה לֹ֥א סָלָֽחְתָּ׃ We have transgressed and rebelled, And You have not forgiven.

I hope that all the “God-fearing” among us understand this. We absolutely must examine our conduct and change, but, if we continue to transgress, we will not be forgiven.

Shabbat shalom and with hopes for better times.