Eikev

​This week’s parsha—EIKEV—is Moses’s final address to the Jewish people.  He’s pretty long-winded—this begins on the first day of Sheevat and concludes 37 days later on the seventh of Adar, the day of Moses’s death.  There’s quite a sense of urgency here; he reminds the people of their previous sins—of the Golden Calf, of Korach’s rebellion, of the spies who lack faith.   He’s worried, for sure, and with good reason.  As he tells them, “you have been rebelling against the Lord since the day I became acquainted with you.” I’m not sure that this is the best pedagogy (I know I don’t become better when I’m told about all the things I did wrong), but I’m guessing that Moses can’t imagine his people without him. I’m sure that he feels that he has to do his best to instill in this “stiff-necked” people the importance not only of NOT sinning but also of doing positive mitzvot and of creating a Jewish identity for future generations.  No doubt he mourns the fact that he cannot be part of that future.  Hence this death-bed soliloquy.  
Most commentators believe that this parsha includes two negative commandments and six positive ones. The positive ones include the duty to bless God for the food we receive; from this we take the Birkhat ha-mazon, the blessing after meals. We are also commanded in this parsha to associate with Torah scholars and to invoke the name of the Lord when we swear an oath. My personal favorite of these positive commandments is the mitzvah to love the convert to Judaism. 
I want to look for a moment at the second word of this parsha, the word that gives this parsha its name:  EIKEV.  Most translations, including our own here, translate EIKEV as “IF.”  Some go a little further and translate EIKEV as “because” or “in exchange for,” meaning that if you do X, then God will give you Y, presumably IN EXCHANGE FOR your obedience and your faith.  But it’s also worth noting that there is another AKEIV—different spelling but same pronunciation –and that AKEIV means HEEL.  
Think about the HEEL.  It is the part of the body that is most in touch with the ground. It is the true work-horse of the human being.  
Aikev/Ekev might represent a concrete way to remind us that it’s the small things that count. The little things under foot. It’s the mitzvot that we may tend to forget—perhaps the ones that aren’t quite so colorful—that matter in the day-to-day.  Not likely that we’re rushing to kill anyone, for example, but grace after meals is something we might cheat on if we’re in a hurry or just not in the mood.  If we take care of our heels, the rest of the body may follow. Similarly, if we take care of the smaller mitzvot, the bigger ones might follow.  It’s a nice concept.  Thoreau once said “heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” Perhaps that’s why we can connect EIKEV—because—and AKEIV—heel.  Connecting these concepts would suggest that nothing is really mundane in a Jewish life and that the so-called small mitzvot are not so small at all.    
I remember a brilliant speech I heard years ago in a local Temple delivered by Rabbi Harold Kushner. The topic of that talk was “what have the Jewish people given to humankind?”  Of course, he spent a good deal of time discussing monotheism, and when we read Parshiyot like Eikev, we can see just how challenging the idea of ONE GOD must have been to the early Jewish people.  But Rabbi Kushner also cited another major gift of Judaism—namely that Judaism makes the secular or the mundane the divine.  Secular activities like eating, working, farming our crops, repaying a debt, even enjoying sex—these are all spiritual activities for Judaism.  Each is imbued with a divine aspect, and the more we see and feel that spiritual component, the more we embrace Judaism and the more we reach toward God.
So—with a debt to Parsha Eikev—we add the HEEL to the revered HEAD and the beloved HEART.  Doing so means that we recognize that we walk on this earth even as we look towards the heavens.