Is God a Hostage of His Own Ideas?

Thoughts on Parashat Ekev

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“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 the LORD your God is dispossessing those nations before you, and in order to fulfill the oath that the LORD made to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Know, then, that it is not for any virtue of yours that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess; for you are a stiff-necked people. Remember, never forget, how you provoked the LORD 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 the LORD. At Horeb you so provoked the LORD that the LORD was angry enough with you to have destroyed you.” (Deut. 9.5-8.)[/perfectpullquote]

Menachem Mirski

What do we learn from the verses quoted above? Several significant information about our relationship with God. First of all, the act of choosing us and of granting us the land of Israel was not based on our merits or on our superiority of any kind, such as a moral superiority, in comparison with other nations of the world. Yes, some were “worse” than us and those “worse ones” were the ones whom God decided to punish and dispossess. Our chosenness resembles somewhat the choosing of Noah, who was “righteous in his own times”, which can be understood as suggesting that he was simply decent among the wicked ones. However, if we take into consideration the later verses, which rebuke our ancestors for a whole series of insubordinations and wrongdoings, then even the analogy with Noah seems to be an “overstatement”. So why then did God bestow special love and care on a nation which was in fact (and in its own times) very average? There can be many answers to this question. One of them states: He chose us in order to entrust us with a specific mission, out of loyalty towards our righteous ancestors. It is also possible that he saw in us a potential that would enable us to fulfil that mission, and that is exactly why the insubordination of our ancestors was such a source of doubts and disappointments for Him. This motif appears many times throughout the entire story of the Exodus from Egypt, and thereby in the story of our spiritual transformation into a new nation, a new society. Such a vision of chosenness is supposed to teach us humbleness towards God as well as towards each other.

However, being a stiff-necked people, which was the subject of God’s critique, has also certain unquestionable advantages and I would even venture the thesis that it was one of the reasons why we have been chosen. What is the main advantage of being stiff-necked? Effectiveness and indomitability, especially in difficult situations, in the face of various challenges. If this trait is appropriately toned down and balanced for example with some unquestionably positive traits, such as openness and a peaceful approach towards others, it can make us extremely effective in carrying out our goals as we live among other nations and as we face the conflicts of human interests that always arise in such circumstances. And this was exactly the situation they were dealing with from the very beginning: from the very beginning the people of Israel has lived among other nations, nations who had their different deities and different worldviews. God could not have chosen a submissive nation and it is exactly this submissiveness displayed by the Israelites – towards other nations and cults – that makes Him the most indignant. The message which can be derived from this is as follows: While God demands that we are obedient to Him, at the same time He rejects and condemns our obedience and submissiveness displayed towards others. That is why He chose a “stiff-necked” nation, since otherwise He could not have carried out His mission in the world. The main problem with stiff-neckness of our people was that it was misdirected: instead of being stiff-necked towards other peoples and their cults the Israelites we stiff-necked towards God and that was the source of God’s anger.

A different answer which I’d like to discuss here states as follows: God had to accept Moses’ repeated pleading on behalf of Israel because, in essence, He had no choice. Not only because of the oath that He made to the patriarchs, but also considering the inherent characteristics of human nature. All humans are burdened with the baggage of their past, on all different levels: cognitive, spiritual, psychological and ethical. Since he chose an imperfect people, he had to come to terms with its human flaws. If God had not listened to Moses’ reasoning and had annihilated the people of Israel in His wrath and had chosen another people instead, there is no reason why we should believe that another, new chosen nation would have behaved in a completely different way. Therefore, we can say that the Eternal was „stuck” in a relationship with us.

Therefore, our relationship with God is quite complicated, just like a relationship between two “difficult” people. This relationship would have undoubtedly come undone had it not been for the role played by the mediator, Moses, who, driven by his love both towards God and towards the nation, makes various personal sacrifices – for example he doesn’t eat nor drink for forty days in order to put himself in a “prophetic state of mind”, or he ventures into risky discussions with God Himself. He does all of that out of his love for his people, a love which seems to be more unconditional than God’s love towards Israel.

Even though in our tradition we can find voices claiming that our chosenness is something eternal and immutable, it doesn’t seem to have an absolutely unconditional character. In this week’s Torah portion as well as in the previous Parashat we find various threats of breaking up that relationship with God and, in fact, of breaking it up in the most dramatic way possible – through the physical elimination of the people of Israel:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“Let Me alone and I will destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make you a nation far more numerous than they.”[/perfectpullquote]

An equally brutal threat can be found in the same Book in Chapter 6:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“[…] For the LORD your God in your midst is an impassioned God — lest the anger of the LORD your God blaze forth against you and He wipe you off the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 6:15.)[/perfectpullquote]

In the Hebrew text of both these verses we find the verb lehashmid, which is translated here as “destroy” or “wipe off”, but which in essence means “to exterminate”. Whichever way we want to translate it, it is hard to avoid the impression that God is threatening Israel with a mass genocide.

Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (dean of the Volozhin Yeshiva and author of several works of rabbinic literature in Lithuania, in 19th century) in his commentary to this verse claims that a “quick extermination” could happen only in times of war, and not in times of peace. During a war such an extermination becomes increasingly more likely the worse we are prepared for it, on many different levels. Therefore, our relationship with God depends on the approach of other nations towards the Divine and towards the universal values which the Eternal has set out not only for us, but for all of humanity. We can distinguish two extreme, opposite cases here – the state of peace and the state of war, but in reality there is also an entire spectrum of different states found in between these two. The current state of the world in which we live defines our relationship with God, and thus also our obligations towards Him.

The state of peace is not an absolutely safe state for us. In times of peace and prosperity we are often the ones who move away from God, and thus we “annihilate ourselves” as a unique community if we abandon our tradition and all of its wisdom as well as a life according to the rules which the Supreme One has imposed on us.

This being said, it looks as though the covenant (brit) cannot exist without a leader/mediator or leaders/mediators. If this is the case, it suggests that a covenantal relationship is not a two-party relationship, but rather a three-way relationship. And if that intermediary element does not find an appropriate representation, something in God’s relationship with the chosen nation starts to go amiss.

Of course such a concept of a three-way covenantal relationship can be found in our tradition. Sometimes it is the Torah that is being cast in the role of this “mediator”. However, it needs to find its embodiment; if it doesn’t find such an embodiment, it becomes an ordinary text, one of many others, simply a compilation of tales and codes. That is why one of the main obligations of a Jew is to love the Torah. This love does not have to be blind and mindless – such an approach could lead to various distortions. It should be mature and based on awareness and respect towards [the Torah] and towards everything else that God has created.

Shabbat Shalom!

Translated from Polish by: Marzena Szymańska-Błotnicka