38 | AUGUST 22 • 2024 J
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hat is the real challenge 
of maintaining a free 
society? In parshat 
Ekev, Moses springs his great 
surprise. Here are his words:
“Be careful that you do not forget 
the Lord your God … Otherwise, 
when you eat and are satisfied, 
when you build fine 
houses and settle 
down, and when your 
herds and flocks grow 
large and your silver 
and gold increase 
and all you have is 
multiplied, then your 
heart will become 
proud and you will forget the Lord 
your God, who brought you out of 
Egypt, out of the land of slavery … 
You may say to yourself, ‘My power 
and the strength of my hands have 
produced this wealth for me.’ … If 
you ever forget the Lord your God 
… I testify against you today that 
you will surely be destroyed.” Deut. 
8:11-19
What Moses was saying to 
the new generation was this: 
You thought that the 40 years of 
wandering in the wilderness were 

the real challenge, and that once 
you conquer and settle the land, 
your problems will be over. The 
truth is that it is then that the real 
challenge will begin. It will be 
precisely when all your physical 
needs are met — when you have 
land and sovereignty and rich 
harvests and safe homes — that 
your spiritual trial will commence.
The real challenge is not poverty 
but affluence, not insecurity 
but security, not slavery but 
freedom. Moses, for the first time 
in history, was hinting at a law 
of history. Many centuries later, 
it was articulated by the great 
14th century Islamic thinker, Ibn 
Khaldun (1332-1406), by the Italian 
political philosopher Giambattista 
Vico (1668-1744) and, most 
recently, by the Harvard historian 
Niall Ferguson. Moses was giving 
an account of the decline and fall of 
civilizations.
Ibn Khaldun argued similarly, 
that when a civilization becomes 
great, its elites get used to luxury 
and comfort, and the people 
as a whole lose what he called 
their asabiyah, their social 

solidarity. The people then become 
prey to a conquering enemy, less 
civilized than they are but more 
cohesive and driven. 
 Vico described a similar 
cycle: “People first sense what is 
necessary, then consider what is 
useful, next attend to comfort, later 
delight in pleasures, soon grow 
dissolute in luxury, and finally go 
mad squandering their estates.”
Bertrand Russell put it 
powerfully in the introduction 
to his History of Western 
Philosophy. Russell thought that 
the two great peaks of civilization 
were reached in ancient Greece 
and Renaissance Italy. But he was 
honest enough to see that the very 
features that made them great 
contained the seeds of their own 
demise:
“What had happened in the great 
age of Greece happened again in 
Renaissance Italy: traditional moral 
restraints disappeared because 
they were seen to be associated 
with superstition; the liberation 
from fetters made individuals 
energetic and creative, producing 
a rare fluorescence of genius; but 

the anarchy and treachery that 
inevitably resulted from the decay 
of morals made Italians collectively 
impotent, and they fell, like the 
Greeks, under the domination 
of nations less civilized than 
themselves but not so destitute of 
social cohesion.”
Niall Ferguson, in his 
book Civilization: the West and 
the Rest (2011), argued that the 
West rose to dominance because 
of what he calls its six “killer 
applications:” competition, science, 
democracy, medicine, consumerism 
and the Protestant work ethic. 
Today, however, it is losing belief 
in itself and is in danger of being 
overtaken by others.
All of this was said for the first 
time by Moses, and it forms a 
central argument of the book of 
Devarim. If you assume — he tells 
the next generation — that you 
yourselves won the land and the 
freedom you enjoy, you will grow 
complacent and self-satisfied. 
That is the beginning of the end 
of any civilization. In an earlier 
chapter, Moses uses the graphic 
word venoshantem, “you will grow 
old” (Deut. 4:25), meaning that 
you will no longer have the moral 
and mental energy to make the 
sacrifices necessary for the defense 
of freedom.
Inequalities will grow. The rich 
will become self-indulgent. The 
poor will feel excluded. There will 
be social divisions, resentments 
and injustices. Society will no 
longer cohere. People will not 
feel bound to one another by a 
bond of collective responsibility. 
Individualism will prevail. Trust 
will decline. Social capital will 
wane.
This has happened, sooner or 
later, to all civilizations, however 
great. 
To the Israelites — a small people 
surrounded by large empires — it 

Why Civilizations Fail
Why Civilizations Fail

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

BY JUAN CARLOS FONSECA MATA

