DRASH – EIKEV

Rabbi Nicole Roberts

Senior Rabbi - North Shore Temple Emanuel

Some of our b’mitzvah students get very, very anxious about taking hold of a Torah scroll for the first time.  Especially when they’ve heard rumours about what happens if, heaven forbid, they drop it: 40 days of fasting, for the entire community who was entrusted with its guardianship!  Different communities have different traditions some have 40 members fast for a day each, others drop all their plans and devote a full day to Torah study but almost every community I know takes this seriously.  I knew a rabbi who actually fractured an index-finger mid-Torah service, as she rushed in to rescue a lilting scroll before it touched the ground.  Dropping the Torah is serious business.  It is sacred text God’s word, or God-inspired words, depending on what you believe happened at Sinai.

That said, the Torah’s text is not magic text.  It’s not that we’ll have bad luck if we drop it.  The spirit of its words is what we really must protect.  The words themselves are easily replicable, regardless of what happens to one scroll of parchment in the sanctuary, so why do we all still tense up when we see a scroll start to slip or teeter?  Why the broken finger?  Why the fasting?  Is dropping a scroll really so consequential?

In a word, yes.

There is a spiritual consequence.  Because not the scroll itself, but the carrying of it, is deeply symbolic.  The bearing of Torah may just be the very reason synagogues exist.

Because what we are bearing aren’t just words, laws, or the basis for a way of life.  What we bear in that scroll is a narrative.  And that narrative that we bear in turn bears something on its shoulders: hope.  On this second of seven Shabbatot of Consolation between Tisha b’Av and the new year, it behooves us to recognize that the synagogue is the keeper and guardian of a sacred story about hope.

Once as a rabbinical student, a hospital patient asked me why I thought religion was necessary.  I fumbled over an answer that I’m sure was dissatisfying to both of us, but later that evening I posed the question to my liturgy and Midrash professor, Rabbi Richard Sarason.  He responded that religion is necessary because a religious stance is beneficial for the world.  “What is that stance?” I pressed him.  “A hopeful stance,” he replied.  His answer has always stuck with me, and ever since that night I’ve taken note of where and how that stance is articulated in our tradition.  Where do we find hope in Judaism?

In lots of places: in the idea that in spite of his humbling stutter, Moses is chosen to be a prophet and leader; in the idea that even in the driest desert, one can still experience the spiritual high of Sinai; and in the story of Abraham and Sarah, who thought their best days were behind them, only to learn they’d still have a profound impact on the world.  There’s hope in every psalm, hope in the idea that a messianic age is still to come, hope in a legal system based on justice, and hope in “HaTikvah”life emerging from the ashes.

As well, there’s hope in our parasha, Ekev, which suggests that God will take care of us as we traverse the desert, just as God fed us manna in the wilderness and “the clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did your feet swell these forty years.”  The parasha goes on to paint the promise of a luxuriant and easier future: “Adonai your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of streaming waters, springs, and fountains, flowing through valleys and hills,” eretz chitah us’orah v’gefen ut’enah v’rimon, eretz-zeit-shemen udvash—“a land of wheat and barley, vines and figs, pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey,” where you’ll eat without struggle, where you’ll lack nothing a land of iron-ore rocks and copper-filled hills.  The desert is hell no one disputes that but look at what awaits you on the horizon… keep going.

It’s not just this week’s parasha.  This is the story of every parasha.  It’s the whole story!  Moses traversed all through the wilderness with his kvetching people in tow, never to enter the Promised Land before the Torah ended.  So maybe the Torah is not a story about arriving, but of how to survive and stay hopeful in the wilderness.  That’s the story, our parasha teaches, that we MUST NEVER DROP.  “Set these words to heart, bind them to your hand.”  V’limad’tem otam et b’neichem l’daber bam “teach them to your children, and teach them to say them.”  This is exactly what a synagogue does.  Nowhere else do we hear this story of hope repeated week after week in the sanctuary, in our classrooms.  We’ve institutionalised, ritualised the telling of a narrative of hope, in order to protect, preserve, and transmit it, forever.  In order to keep it from falling.  For all the other activities a synagogue may do,
THIS ONE IS CENTRAL.  Like the tribe of Levites whose function, our parasha tells us, was laseit et aron
“to carry the Ark” which contained the tablets we, too, are the bearers of a sacred and life-sustaining narrative… of hope.  This is the Torah we lift.

Yes, it’s a heavy load to bear.  This is weighty business.  But it’s our synagogues’ business, and our communities’ load to bear.  Whatever you believe happened on Sinai, we’ve been entrusted with a timeless and life-giving story about hope.  God help us, should we ever let it fall.

2 Deut. 8:7-9
3 Deut. 10:3; 10:8