Skip to main content

Grow with the Flow

Is a blessing a curse? What happens to people who are showered with goodness? Are we hard-wired to take things for granted and act out of a finally realized state of entitlement?

In this last week’s parashah (Vayelech), Hashem has Moshe tell the people to write down this song (Ha’azinu, this next week’s parashah) to serve as a warning and testimony regarding the anticipating turning away from G-d which will follow upon Moshe’s passing.  “For I will bring them to the land which I have sworn to their forebears, flowing with milk and honey, and they will eat and become satiated and grow fat and they will turn to other gods and serve them and scorn Me and abrogate My covenant.”

It is tempting to fit this verse into the time-worn theme, expressed at length in the second paragraph of the Shema, and encapsulated by three words from the upcoming parashah: “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked” (Devarim 32:15). Growing fat, satiated, complacent is inextricably bound up with corruption, indulgence, self-importance.

But if that were the message of the verse above, it would have been divided as at first it seems to be:
What Hashem does: For I will bring them to the land which I have sworn to their forebears, flowing with milk and honey
What Israel does: they will eat and become satiated and grow fat and they will turn to other gods and serve them and scorn Me and abrogate My covenant.

Note that the Hebrew seems to emphasize the rejection contained in the parallel:
ארץ זבת חלב     ואכל ושבע ודשן
Three three-letter words encapsulating Hashem’s gift – “flowing with milk and honey” – G-d gives, exudes plenty and sweetness that cannot be contained, is nurturing by nature.
And three three-letter words encapsulating our consumption – “they will eat, and become sated and grow fat” – we take in, engulf, become bloated.

Jeshurun grew fat.

Yet the break in the verse is NOT there, but right before the word(s) “and they turned”. For, the Torah doesn’t use the same term for “grow fat” here as it does in Ha’azinu. There, the word is שמן, the standard word for all things fat. Here, the word is דשן, which, though it is used for “fat”, is also used in contexts of holiness. What remains of the offerings consumed upon the alter is called “deshen”, and in several places, the root is employed in contexts of praise, most notably (to me) in the Song of Shabbat (Tehillim 92:13-15) “A righteous man shall grow like a palm, like a cedar in Lebanon shall he stand tall, planted in Hashem’s house, in the courtyard of our G-d shall they grow, they shall bud and flower in old age, fat (desheinim) and fresh/moist shall they be.”    (see also Tehillim 36:9)


For, it cannot be that it is a law of nature that partaking in the blessing that is this world, this life, this consciousness, this personhood – this taking and consuming of life – only produces cursed results. Rather, WE choose whether we merely grow fat by insisting on incorporating (literally) blessings – שמן  - or we grow fertile – דשן  - by allowing them to pass through and pass on. The attempt to take absolute possession of and to identify entirely with that which is not really ours to begin with – that ITSELF is the turning aside which breaks the verse off from the flow of divine blessing. Rather, let us partake and release, enjoy and thereby enable the Giver to give fully, allowing life to flow throw us, enhance us, and then move on to enrich other realms – let us grow with the flow.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The One (People) Who Must Not Be Named

Just as Balak brings Bil’am to consider his enemy from various vantage point, likewise does Parashat Balak allow us to view ourselves from the vantage point of others. The main story in Balak is of a single piece, and Am Yisrael appear only as foils for the central story – the interaction of Bil’am with Hashem. What is curious is that not only does Am Yisrael not appear as a real character in the story, we don’t even get a mention. Every time Balak or Bil’am refer to Am Yisrael in the non-visionary passages, they employ indirection: “this people”, “my enemies”, but never Yisrael. It almost feels that they are avoiding speaking the name, one which Bil’am, at least, employs so beautifully in his prophetic speeches. Now, recalling that this story of the interaction of other nations with Am Yisrael is being told in the Torah, I think the message is this: Yisrael is our name in the context of our covenantal interactions with Hashem, just as Hashem’s real name is used only in the conte...
1 comment
Read more

My G-d, a Navaho?

--> Shabbat Shirah, it’s time to sing. Standing on the edge of a Red Sea that has returned to its roiling nature, drowning the fleeing, terrified Egyptian charioteers, Am Yisrael is ecstatic and, with Moshe, breaks into song. They sang in unison a song that welled up from a prophetic vision of redemption that, our sages tell us, outstripped even the visions of Yechezk’el and Isaiah, both of whom “saw” Hashem enthroned on high. The song so permeated the very fabric of being that it is introduced with the imperfect mood of the verb – Az Yashir Moshe… “Then Moshe will sing”, as though the song is every ringing in the background of our Jewishness. So what did they sing? Pure poetry, and therefore, as difficult to feel confident in parsing as it must be even to attempt to imagine what they were feeling at that moment. And yet, we reprise it every day in our morning prayers, as part of Pesukei D’Zimra. Every verse of this song is fit for deep reflection; I’ve chosen...
1 comment
Read more

The Mishkan as an Instance of Tzaddik

I was speaking last night with Yonatan Neril, a student at the yeshiva with a keen interest in exploring the nexus between Torah and environmental consciousness. We were discussing a seminar he will be giving, G-d willing, in the Bat Area in the next few months. He wanted to present Ya'akov Avinu as a model of environmental consciousness, focusing on two episodes of his life as depicted by the Midrash. The first is the famous image of Ya'acov at the Yabok, preparing for the encounter with Esav and, having crossed his family safely over the river, goes back for pachim ketanim , little flasks, seeming worthless given the danger hovering over Ya'acov, yet, as we are told, the righteous prize their few possessions, since they attest to the fact that they have studiously avoided theft. Variants of that Midrash tell us that the contents of those small vials was olive oil from the branch presented by the dove to Noach and preserved during all the intervening generations. The o...
Post a Comment
Read more