Parashat Eikev

Food: Something many of us enjoy … and maybe often a little too much. Reading through our Torah portion, Eikev, I thought about the great holiday dinners of Pesach, Rosh HaShanah, Thanksgiving and others. There is nothing like that satiated feeling after an excellent meal, where you feel like curling up on the floor and drifting off into a “food coma.”

When we are without food, we cry out to G-d like our ancestors did in the wilderness, wondering why G-d has abandoned us. We kvetch and complain without faith in G-d’s provision. And yet, when G-d does bring nourishment into our lives, whether physically or spiritually, we often momentarily thank HaShem before wolfing down our food, and again fall quickly back into complacency.

Judaism teaches that in all things we must bless HaShem. And how much more so in those difficult times, like when we are happy, full, and content after a wonderful meal? Torah teaches us that although we are commanded to enjoy the finer things in life, we should remember there are finer spiritual delicacies as well:

Many faith traditions have a custom to bless God before we eat. We do this in Judaism as well. However, the Torah emphasizes that our greatest blessing should come AFTER we eat:

Hence, the mitzvah for Birkat HaMazon. When our natural tendency is to slip into a food coma, Torah instructs us to acknowledge G-d after we have eaten so that even in our satisfaction, we give thanks to our Provider. This reminds us that our true life source is not physical food alone, but HaShem, the Creator of all things.

Moshe links the command to bless G-d after we have eaten to G-d’s provision of manna from heaven. The manna was a spiritual sustenance that the rabbis recognized nourished the soul as well as the body. According to the Lubavitcher Rebbe:

As we daily eat and are satisfied, let us not forget that it is not by bread alone that we live. When those times in our lives arise when it is easier to just slip into a food coma, let us overcome those moments and use them as a vehicle for blessing G-d. This was the lesson of our Mashiach when he too encountered temptation in the wilderness (see Matthew 4:1-4). Instead of giving-in to simple satisfaction, he countered the Adversary with the exact words from our Torah portion.

May we also remember that we do not live by bread alone. As followers of our Mashiach, we are continually nourished spiritually as well. As we eat, let us give thanks to our Creator and for His daily provision in our lives.

Abraham Joshua Heschel says it is a fact that in certain places prayer is of consequence. The leaders, the community, approach prayer as if it matters, not as a gimmick for Jewish continuity, not for social purposes, to bring kids within Yiddishkayt. Prayer as prayer matters. If prayer doesn't matter, then why are we doing this? Why are we wasting our time if these words and these prayers don't matter?

BJ's rabbis believe [that prayer] must be first experienced emotionally and spiritually, rather than understood intellectually and analytically. Consequently, even though many members have only limited knowledge of Hebrew and many do not come from observant backgrounds, there is little instruction or step-by-step explanation of the liturgy at services. Increasing Jewish literacy is important, but it is a separate activity from prayer that is "of consequence." "Learning," Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein explains, “is understood with your mind. Prayer is understood with your soul.” Or, as Rabbi Roly Matalon put it, "Tefillah is not a class." Their goal is for congregants to be so moved by the experience of prayer that they will be inspired to study and take advantage of the panoply of educational opportunities offered by the synagogue.

Instead of didactically instructing the congregation, the rabbis see themselves as "spiritual cables" who, through their own emotional involvement in prayer and their Kavanah (intention in prayer), model, inspire, and guide the prayer of the congregation. Rabbi Roly explained the importance of rabbis genuinely praying with their congregations by referring to a passage in Heschel's Man's Quest for God:

Such an atmosphere [of prayer] is not created by ceremonies, gimmicks or speeches, but by the example of prayer, by a person who prays. You create the atmosphere not around you but within you. I am a congregant and I know from personal experience how different the situation is when the rabbi is concerned with prayer instead of with how many people attend the service; the difference in a service in which the rabbi comes prepared to respond to thirty centuries of Jewish experience and one in which he comes to review the book of the month or the news of the day.

The rabbis own engagement in prayer is most obvious in the physical, at times ecstatic, worship that is part of most services. They are bodily and emotionally involved with the liturgy: the rabbis close their eyes often, they clap, they move to the music while pounding out the beat on the bimah with their fists, and at times they lift their arms in a Hasidic gesture of simultaneously raising the level of excitement and transporting the congregation to a higher level.