Friday, August 17, 1984 29
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
INSIGHT
AZ/LING DUET
Source of Israel's success
BARRY W. HOLTZ
Special to-The Jewish News
Where does power lie?
Parshat Ekev, as it con-
tinues to unfold the story of
Moses' parting address to
the Israelites, takes up the
question of power in its ul-
timate sense. Here the
meaning of the word is
neither "authority" nor
"politics," but rather the
very source of reality and
the nature of experience.
Moses is attempting to warn
the people — things are, he
tells the Israelites, not the
way they seem.
We look at the world,
Moses suggests, as if it were
under our control. We run
things, it seems. When we
succeed, it is due to our own
wit or talent. When we fail,
it is equally our own fault.
But, Moses warns, that's not
the real story. Behind our
ostensible reality, there is
another force — the power
of divine will, the meaning
that God establishes for our
lives. If you do the com-
mandments, Moses says,
things will come out well —
your crops will prosper,
your enemies will be de-
stroyed. Disease will leave
you and you will flourish in
your land.
Whose victories are
these? To the people, living
off the fat of their land, God
may soon be forgotten. They
can easily come to see them-
selves as the makers of their
own destiny, the ultimate
shapers of their own realty.
But Moses says here do
not forget, do not misinter-
pret what is happenings Do
not slip into saying "My
power and the might of my
hand got me this wealth.
But remember that the Lord
Parashat Ekei):
Deuteronomy
7:12-11:25
Isaiah
49:14-51:3
your God is the one that
gives you the power to get
wealth." (8:17-18).
This is a parasha about
the dangers of. forgetting
the source of one's reality.
"Not for your righteousness
or for the uprightness of
your heart," Moses points
out, "do you go in to possess
the land" (9:5) but because
God has a mission for you. It
is precisely this kind of
forgetting that leads to the
perversion of power and to
the hubris of self-
righteousness.
It is not accidental that
the parasha begins with the
enumeration of what God
can do for the people (and
not they themselves) and
moves into recounting the
story of the Golden Calf. For
it is in the incident of the
Golden Calf that we see the
ultimate forgetting of the
source of the Israelite's reli-
gious life and natural de-
stiny. They worship a god of
their own making, as if to
show that they believed
they controlled their own
destiny and made their own
fate. Moses reminds them of
their punishment, how close
they came to total destruc-
tion becauge they had for-
gotten their true God.
Moses is desperately con-
cerned with what will hap-
pen after he is gone. Who
will remind the people of
God's hidden reality? Pros-
perity brings its own dan-
gers and the worship of a
God without tangible form
is no easy matter. Without
representations God can
remain hidden. To see God
in one's life, Moses seems to
say, is an act of remember-
ing and an act of will.
Remember what God has
done for you, Moses says,
"that you may prolong your
days upon the land."
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