Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Eikev, in which - like most of Deuteronomy - Moses reminds the people of all they have learned in the last 40 years, the commandments they have been commanded to observe, the times they fell short, and what will happen once they cross over into the Holy Land if they neglect God’s commandments again without Moses there to intercede for them anymore. Among the commandments and promises of blessings and curses, this parasha contains one of the repetitions of what we know as the Shema and V’ahavta. 

In the chapter for Parashat Ekev in Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari writes: “Although the words of the Shema and the V’ahavta, which we receive in this Torah portion, are commonly used to describe the practice of laying tefillin, for me they resonate with the practice of wearing a chest binder.  For me a chest binder signifies part of my relationship to my body and my gender, in much the same way as a tallit katan [tzitzit worn under the clothes] is a daily reminder of my relationship to God.  By integrating these two practices, I have created a new ritual object that deepens my understanding of my gender, my Judaism, myself, and my relationship to the divine.  The tallit katan chest binder is a way for me to mark my body and sanctify my gender….Wearing a tallit katan chest binder is simultaneously observing and reclaiming Jewish tradition.  It is reclaiming what observance looks like on the heels [ekev means heel] of feminist Jewish thinkers who have challenged me to do it differently and inspired me to accessorize along the way.” 

In the first half of the parasha, the focus is largely on the concepts of blessings and curses, the consequences of our adherence to God’s law. While our halacha for saying a blessing over the act of fulfilling a mitzvah is not explicitly stated in the Torah, it is derived from this parasha (among other passages in Deuteronomy with similar themes). The rabbis taught that deriving pleasure from anything in this world without saying a blessing over it is akin to stealing from God and that performing a commanded act without saying a blessing is as though one has not fulfilled the commandment. Furthermore, the rabbis state that one should say 100 blessings a day. It’s possible a traditionally praying Jew might get there just by blessing everything they eat, reciting the Amidah three times a day, saying the Asher Yatzar after going to the bathroom (especially if they’re Ashkenazi and eating Shavuot leftovers), and so on. But it’s likely that to get to 100 every day, we probably would have to get creative and bless the joys in our lives in more personal ways. 

Rabbi Fornari demonstrates one possibility for such a personalization of our daily blessings, by taking something that already exists in our tradition and reimagining it in a way that feels more meaningful, that better appreciates the complexities and nuances of the world God has made. Much of codified halacha is binary, but God’s creation is not, and the meandering arguments of the Talmud make clear that the binarist distillation of Jewish law was meant to be a tool to give structure to our community, not a tether to bind ourselves with. When the specifics of the thousand year old codes no longer give shape to our lives, better to expand and develop the framework than to give it up entirely. Pulling together threads of our tradition, like the fringes of the tallit, we gather pieces of ourselves, and put our souls together as a reunified piece, a larger Holy Whole. “Hear O Israel, the divine abounds everywhere, and dwells in everything. The many are One,” as Marcia Falk offers in her Book of Blessings. 

May you find ways to make the old new, and establish the new as old, ritually secure and comforting. May you find abundant joy in the world, and remember to bless each gift of your life. May you weave together your personal Judaism and relationship to the divine out of the many offerings of our traditions, and may that bring you wholeness and peace, true Shalom. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.