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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.
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