The Long Car Ride: Parshat Eikev
#parsha #parshateikev #dvartorah #thelongcarride #goingtocollege #parentsandworries #parentsandchildren #parentsalwaysworry #enteringthepromisedland #warnings #moses #moseswarns #allthoseteachings #teachyourchildren #goingtocollege #thejewishpeople #moses #deuteronomy
Hi!
First of all, please know that this is a reprint post from August, 2020. This was written a few months after COVID shut down the world while I was saying kaddish for my mom, Irma Gershkowitz, Z"L. At that point I was fortunate to connect with the Zoom minyan at Congregation Kehillath Israel. I had begun writing this blog, Words Have Wings, to memorialize my mom and to process the eleven months of reciting kaddish.
One weekday morning each week Rabbi William Hamilton or the rabbinic intern would give a short devar torah. In mid August, 2020 Rabbi Hamilton had to leave town for a family emergency and asked the online minyan participants if anyone would like to step in and deliver a d'var torah. that week. I hesitatingly accepted Rabbi Hamilton's challenge and wrote the piece called "The Long Car Ride," which I am reprinting today.
We never know how our lives will be changed by something we say or do. In this case, writing that devar torah changed my life for the better. It set me on the road to challenging myself each week to find one small thought on each parsha and publishing it here on this blog, Words Have Wings. Here we are on post 482. Wow! I am forever indebted to Rabbi Hamilton and Congregation Kehillath Israel for encouraging me to learn, to write and for listening every week to these posts.
During these weeks of comfort between Tisha B'Av and Rosh HaShannah, I hope we hear good news soon.
Kol tuv,
Leann
A quick review of the Parshat Eikev from ReformJudaism.org
Moses tells the Israelites that if they follow God's laws, the nations who now dwell across the Jordan River will not harm them. (7:12–26)
Moses reminds the people of the virtues of keeping God's commandments. He also tells them that they will dispossess those who now live in the Land only because they are idolatrous, not because the Israelites are uncommonly virtuous. Thereupon, Moses reviews all of the trespasses of the Israelites against God. (8:1–10:11)
Moses says that the Land of Israel will overflow with milk and honey if the people obey God's commandments and teach them to their children. (10:12–11:25)
The Longest Car Ride
Parshat Eikev finds us in the midst of Moshe's final speech to the Israelites. His speech is a mix of impassioned warnings, angry denouncements and encouragement and chock full of warnings of what could happen if the Israelites fail to obey the rules that they have been given at Sinai. The tone of Moshe, his long speech and his many worries reminds me of a parent speaking to her children on the long ride to the teen's first semester at university. I envision the parent sitting with their child in the crowded car. Excitement and anticipation fill the close confines of the car. We see the parent gripping the steering wheel. After all, this is the parent’s last opportunity to review all of the parental teachings with their beloved, but sometimes difficult adolescent before she is dropped off at the dorm and begins life on her own.
Just imagine that car ride. The windows of the car are closed, there is no escape. The child is itchingto leave home to learn and live life to the fullest while meanwhile the parent is terrified to lose control. The parent has lots to say. She has been practicing this speech in her mind for weeks, no years..... All of the fears that the parent harbors begin to emerge and once they emerge, the soliloquy can go on the entire car ride. "Do you remember when you did this and what happened? Well, learn your lesson and don't do it again! Don’t forget to brush your teeth, make sure to choose the right friends, don't experiment with A, B and C because if you do then surely terrible things are going to happen to you!!!"
The list is long and the consequences keep coming. The parent has a lifetime of worries and warnings bubbling inside and this is it, her final chance! She knows that when she has dropped off her child and the child enters into that dorm room and leaves her parents behind, her child will never be the same child again. Childhood is coming to an end and she will be forever changed. And with those fears in mind the parent doesn’t choose one lesson to impart; instead the list is endless, with examples that go on and on, touching upon fear after fear, lesson after lesson as they make the drive over the river to this place that has been promised and waited for and has been sacrificed for.
So many warnings, so many fears! The parent wonders if they have adequately prepared their child? Can they trust that she will remember the long taught rules when mom isn't there to remind her? Will the child be be ok? The words keep flowing and flowing because the fear of a parent letting their child out into the world is also bottomless.
And what about the budding adult sitting in the car among the pillows, backpacks and sheets? Still with an adolescent brain, hoping to start school, to find freedom and to learn and to experience life to the fullest; How does she hear this long and impassioned speech? If her earbuds are out of her ears, the words wash over her like water. One warning flows into another and the budding college student sits in a haze of words swirling around her like a swirling river.
It’s hard to know just how much child will hear and process because there are so many do's and don'ts, so many warnings, so many "I told you so's" that the words blend together. Does she hear? Can she?
Soon this long car ride will come to a close and the frightened parent will be forced to take the bravest action of her parenting. She will help her child unpack and will make her child's bed, help to organize and finally realize that it is time to leave. Reluctantly she will close the door of the dorm room and leave her child to live her life, hopefully well equipped with life lessons to choose the “right way”. It is the parent’s job to worry and to teach and yes, to warn and exhort and thunder and cajole, but then it is time to let go. It's time to watch and wait and worry and see how these lessons, those long standing lessons, have been assimilated and whether this child will go on and prosper. The jury is out, the next chapters are yet to be written.
It is not because of your virtues and your rectitude that you will be able to possess their country; but it is because of their wickedness that your God יהוה is dispossessing those nations before you, and in order to fulfill the oath that יהוה made to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Know, then, that it is not for any virtue of yours that your God יהוה is giving you this good land to possess; for you are a stiffnecked people.
Remember, never forget, how you provoked your God יהוה to anger in the wilderness: from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you reached this place, you have continued defiant toward יהוה.
Deuteronomy 9:5-7
זְכֹר֙ אַל־תִּשְׁכַּ֔ח
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