Consequences of Covenant?

Ekev

Deuteronomy 7:12 - 11:25

Précis: Moses continues his recapitulation of the commandments to the people, reminding them to be obedient to God’s laws in their forthcoming struggle with the Canaanites. Moses describes in detail all of the blessings which God had already provided them, and reminds them to bless and thank God for the bounty they receive. On the other hand, they should learn the lesson of rebelliousness of their fathers, including the incident of the Golden Calf. Moses reminds the people that he brought down a second set of tablets, which require their continued obedience to God.


Deuteronomy 7:14 “You shall be blessed above all other peoples….”

This verse explains that if the people carefully obey God’s rules, He will faithfully maintain the covenant, and that the people will be blessed. The Hebrew phrase “baruch ti’hiyeh mikol ha-amim” which we translate here as “you shall be blessed above all other peoples” can also be read to mean “you will be blessed by all the other peoples.” Etz Hayim, citing Deut. Rabbah 3:6, notes that as a reward for Israel’s way of life, other nations will admire and praise Israel.

While the authors of this relatively late addition to Rabbinic Literature (some suggest that the commentary was written in the 9th century of the Common Era) often had incredibly prescient observations to draw from the texts they were explicating, I submit that in this particular midrash, they had it wrong: wrong when written, wrong explaining the past, and wrong predicting the future.

As we review the long and tortured history of the Jewish people, there have been only a few very rare times when we have been blessed either “above” or “by” other peoples. A traditional point of view is that the Jewish People have suffered because we have failed to live up to our part of the bargain. The rabbis write that the Temple was destroyed and the Great Diaspora began because of baseless hatred among Jews – an obvious failure to live the kind of life demanded by God’s law.

This line of thought that our suffering results from a failure to follow the commandments has been carried to awful and hateful extremes. Indeed, some Jewish fundamentalists “explain” the horror of the Holocaust as resulting from the Jew’s failure to abide by God’s laws in general – and even for their adherence to Reform, Conservative or Progressive modes of Jewish expression!

There can be no doubt about the historical facts. While there have been periods of toleration by the various “host nations” in our history, our memories are chock full of pogroms, forced conversions, and expulsions. It has been said that when Albert Einstein was asked what the result would be if his theory of relativity was proven correct, he remarked that the Germans would call him a German, and the French would call him a citizen of the world. If his theory proved false, the French would call him a German, and the Germans would call him a Jew. The greatest mind of the past century fully understood how Jews were neither blessed by nor held above other peoples.

To me, as we look around the world today, it is a cause of continual amazement that Jews are still persecuted in much of the world, are blamed for the ills which all of humanity face, and are indeed the only people who must continually fights for a “right to exist.” No one seems to doubt that Lichtenstein, or Malta, or Monaco, or Palau has a “right to exist.” But questions continue to be raised regarding Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. There is no doubt that efforts to delegitimize Israel are just the newest and latest form of Anti-Semitism.

So whether we are to be blessed “above” all other peoples, or “by” all other peoples, the fact remains that there is much work to be done. All of us are obligated to rebut any and all attacks on the legitimacy of Israel, the Jewish State. We may (and perhaps at times should) disagree with some tactical decisions made by any particular Israeli Government, but that can never interfere with our defense of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State. “Am Yisrael Chai.”