This week's Torah portion, and a full moon in the sky, have led me to pose our opening question. In a Torah reading where so many promises and threats are woven together one needs to stop and ask, "What, perhaps, is God afraid of in His/Her relationship with people?" or subsequently, "What are human beings, perhaps, afraid of in their relationship with God?"
I'm drawn to this question by virtue of an observation that is made in chapter 28, verse 47:
"Because you would not serve the Lord, your God, with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things / may'rov kol"
It appears that this verse is claiming that it is actually the abundance that we have been blessed with that is what steers us away from God.
Time and again we are asked to answer for ourselves what are the moments in life that bring us close to God. Where is it that we share moments of intimacy with the Almighty? When is it that we find ourselves turning to the presence of God? Does our strife bring us close to God or push us to run in the opposite direction? Does the abundance of our lives bring us one step closer to God, asking, "What is that God is expecting of us to do with the gifts that have been bestowed upon us?" or perhaps, as the pasuk alludes to, it pushes us towards indifference and a sense of comfort in which God's presence is absent?
The uniqueness of the phrase 'may'rov kol / for the abundance of all things' is striking because of other places where 'kol / all things' appear earlier in the Torah. I will mention two:
"And Avraham was old, advanced in age, and God had blessed Avraham with all things (ba'kol)" (Breisit/Genesis 24:1)
It is here, with the recognition that Avraham has all things, that he sends his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Yitzchak. Could we say, that the recognition of having 'all things' brings to the foreground that which we are truly missing? Avraham has everything, but that everything points to what his life is lacking - a partner for his son Yitzchak, so Yitzchak too can experience 'joyfulness and gladness of heart'.
Their offspring will also use this phrase to account for all that he has. In Ya'akov's encounter with Ei'sav, Ya'akov beckons Ei'sav to take all the gifts that he has bestowed him with. He says:
"Take I pray of you, my blessing that is brought to you; because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough / kol" (Breisit/Genesis 33:11)
Here 'kol' is translated as 'enough' based on the readings of the medieval commentators. It is translated in such manner to juxtapose it with the arrogance that Ei'sav speaks with only two verses earlier, when his says that he has 'rav / abundance.
Returning to our verse in our parsha it appears that it is not necessarily having all things that is the culprit in distancing us from a sense of gratitude, but rather the element of abundance that can be dangerous, the element of 'rav', the challenge of having 'rov kol'.
The Mei a'Shiloach, the Ishbitzer rebbe (1800-1854), picks up on this tension when he explains what appears to him to be a redundancy in the verse that also appears in our parasha:
"And all these blessings will come to you and overtake you" (D'varim/Deuteronomy 28:2)
Clearly, he questions, if the blessings have come to you, then they also overtake you. Unless, as he poses, 'will come to you' and 'overtake you' are saying two different things
The Mei Ha'Shiloach suggests that it is human nature that when we experience graciousness and abundance in our lives we inevitably change. There is fear that comes with this change. Will we still be the same people that we were, or will, God forbid, this wealth corrupt us and our earlier values? It is in response to this fear that the Ishbitzer rebbe says, 'Do not fear, when these blessings come upon you they will overtake the 'you' that you always were! Do not be afraid that these blessings will distance you from God or the good that you have done in the world!'
It seems to me that we share with God the fear of "for the abundance of all things / may'rov kol." From God's perspective there is fear of an abundance that is too much. There is fear that in God's will to grant us with 'the abundance of all things' S/He will give us more than we can assimilate into our lives, and will cause us to turn from God. From our perspective there is fear of change. The fear that we will no longer be able to recognize ourselves as servants of God while surrounded with 'the abundance of all things.'
As the full moon shifts us this Shabbat towards Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur I find myself thinking of another word that we use in the English language for 'all things' - the word 'belongings'. There is an element of ownership that comes with the word 'belongings' - our belongings are things that belong to us by virtue of our owning them. But it is this time of year that begs us to look at this word differently. As we turn from taking inventory of the year that we are concluding and turning to the world of prayer to usher in the new year we are asked to think about 'belonging' not as what we own, but rather what are we longing for!
To 'belong" is to 'be-in-longing'. When a person can identify where they belong, to whom they belong, to who they are in longing and also, what belongs to them, then their life has been transformed. We greet the new year with special prayers because praying is being able to stand in the presence of the Master-of-the-World and say, "Ribbono Shel Olam, Master-of-the-World, I belong to you, and I am in-longing for you. I believe that You long for me, and are in-longing for me."
When 'belongings' take upon themselves the voice of ownership, then indeed there can be a reality of 'too much'. But, when 'all things' / 'belongings' take upon themselves the relational voice of 'longing' then these are moments that can only bring us closer to our Creator.
May we sit in this Shabbat and enter into the year to come with the courage to share our 'be-longings' with each other and find our way to serve God with 'joyfulness and gladness of heart.'
Shabbat shalom and shana tova!