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Ekev 5767

This week's parashah, Ekev, presents with many wonderful passages, teachings, insights, and a few commandments as well. It sets the stage for the next three parashiyot which, together, contain an astounding 170 of all the Torah's 613 mitzvot. The first we encounter in parashat Ekev is the commandment to bench. After describing the marvelous qualities of the Land to which Hashem is bringing B'nei Yisrael - a goodly land, a land lacking in nothing - Moshe says, "V'achalta v'sava'ta uverachta et Hashem E-lokecha al ha'aretz hatovah asher natan lach" - You will eat and you will be satisfied and you will bless/thank the Eternal, your G-d, for the good land which He has given you.

The trouble with this passage is that it hardly seems to be phrased as a commandment. Rather, it is Moshe's prophetic vision of a people, eating to satiation and exprssing the natural feeling of gratitude that comes in the wake of such abundance and satiation. For, if it were a commandment to bless, would it not also be a commandment to eat, in fact, to be satiatied? After all, they are all expressed using the same form of the verb - the future (achieved via a vav conversive/consecutive). Clearly, there is no such commandment to eat, and thus, the commandment to bless must be derived either via tradition or interpretive principles (i.e., drash).

But, actually, there many mitzvot expressed in the same fashion. The imperative form of the verb is not by any means the default choice when formulating a mitzvah. But why not? Why not be clear: command, using the part of speech reserved for this mood!!

Whence does a command issue for us? Does it well up from inside, emerging from the deepest parts of ourselves, urging us to live up to who we really must become? Or does it surround us and overwhelm us from the outside, emanating from the ultimate Other, insisting we relinquish our hold on our sense of ourselves and act in a way which conforms to something greater?

The modern period has prefered autonomous obligation, but there is a substatial subcurrent which argues for a heteronomous source. Mitzvah, however, a word which the mystical link to tzavtah, meaning "joined together", might only achieve the fullness of its intent when the two sources are joined together. When the voice inside responds to the chorus outside, adding its unique harmony until "just do it" is neither one's one initiative nor external compulsion but being itself - that's when we have achieved "mitzvah".

So, isn't it so appropriate that the verb form used so frequently for commandment is the future tense - THIS WILL HAPPEN - not because someone is twisting my arm, nor because some voice of conscience is battering away quietly from the inside, but because it is true, and good, and I can be part of it.

Eat, feel the satiation and bless. What could be more natural a chain of events? So let's put our full awareness into those moments of being which are blessing, for that is our truest satiation.

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