Deuteronomy Cycle Four Ekev

Ekev 4

Sometimes the Heart of God just happens to us. Then, even given our humanity…our fears and grief, the peace and joy…the Heart breathes into our blood and pulse. The breath catapults us to a place where two becomes one…two tablets (Rashi), two feelings, light and dark, big and small. It fills us with a fine light, natural, symbiotic. It brings us to our knees in tears. Suddenly our bodies become transparent. The soul message rushes through our skin, our bones. The way to know God, we realize, is to be open and vulnerable, to be entered.

How can we do this? Well, we can try to listen to the still small voice. Rbbi Jonathon Saks in the Koren siddur says the patriarchs and prophets did not see God. They heard Him. We even listen if the whole process hurts, if the listening itself might vibrate into the dark, to the doubt, to the fear. We accept the connection between what we listen to and our behavior, and the rest of the universe, and God. We have faith that we will be able to learn from the process. And we have faith we will listen as a people and therefore be able to follow the mitzvoth.

This is what leads us to a piece in our liturgy that we find in Ekev. It’s actually a part of the Sh’ma and rarely chanted (in some denominations) and sometimes cut from prayer books altogether. If you indeed listen to my commandments with which I charge you today, to love the Lord your God and worship Him with all your heart and all your soul, I will give rain in your land in its season….and if you go astray…and worship other gods…then the Lord’s anger will flare against you and He will close the heavens so there will be no rain….

Literally this seems to say that we, as a people, bring about our own suffering. If bad things happen to us, it is because we’ve acted knowingly in hurtful ways, flaunted our egos against the radiant reflection of God, messed up. The literal alone though can’t really bring Torah to its true height. Perhaps that’s why the Rabbi Saadia Gaon said our nation is only a nation in virtue of its Torah and that our collective fate depends on our collective faith (Saks, Koren Siddur, p. 100).

I personally think that if we look at this piece carefully it’s about accepting all that we listen to so that we can penetrate into the center of the listening, to that still small voice, to a place of release and acceptance. It’s obvious that we aren’t always listening to the exact radiant word-of-God. And it’s obvious that we aren’t always not.

To continue, the message is to accept both kinds of listening and thereby to know what follows from them both….and be able to discern one from the other. The message is to know that our ephemeral intangible understandings bring us closer to God not just by being perfect but by being able to discern…and create boundaries.

The stronger the boundaries the more powerful our release and the more resonant that still small voice.

How to apply this to today? When something bad happens don’t just slip into the it happened for a reason mode. Look carefully at how you can fix and turn it, bring organic growth to the break-in-peace. Use the darkness to help mold the vessel that holds the light. Help others do the same. The vessel does not exist if we all don’t see it. Know how to listen. Know what is best spoken to be heard. Feel the still silent voice. Transmit the still silent voice. Know who you are.