Parasha Ekev : The Power to Change the World

I want to start out this evening by giving you a quiz. Don’t be nervous, it is not a quiz that you needed to study for before you came to services!  You won’t be graded; it will not go on your life transcript.

Where does the saying, “A drop in the bucket” come from?

Where does the saying, “There is nothing new under the sun” come from?

Where does the saying, “Man does not live by bread alone” come from?

Where  does the first saying, “a drop in the bucket” come from? It goes back to Prophet Isaiah in the 6^th century BCE.   The Prophet Isaiah uses the term when reassuring the Jewish people of G-d’s power over Israel’s enemies: “Behold, the nations are as a drop of the bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance……”

The world weary author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, traditionally identified as the wise King Solomon, writes that “There is nothing new under the sun.”  

The phrase, “Man does not live by bread alone”…. comes from this week’s Torah portion. Its meaning is that human beings certainly need food, clothing, and shelter to survive, but we need more than to satisfy our basic physical needs to truly be alive. We are social beings, so we need others for nurturing, for companionship, and for protection in order to thrive. But the Torah tells us that we need even more than that. “Man cannot live by bread alone,” states the Torah, but that is only the first part of the verse, the famous part. The verse continues, “But on all that comes forth from G-d’s mouth as well he will live.” The verse comes to teach us that there is a spiritual component to life without which a person is truly not “alive”.   

This truth is contained in the very word for “Life” in Hebrew – Hayyim. The word consists of four letters. The middle two letters are “Yuds”, which spell the name of G-d. This teaches that if we put G-d at the center of our lives, we can better face challenges in our lives without despair, without feeling defeated, alone or overwhelmed. With G-d at the center of our lives we are better prepared to move forward with a sense of purpose and meaning, with the knowledge that although our lives are little more than a “drop in the bucket” in the grander scheme of things, our lives  matter  a great deal and have  profound significance.

Perhaps the most famous exponent of “Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone” in the 20^th century was the psychiatrist Victor Frankl.  Frankl was deported from his home in Vienna to the Theriesenstadt Concentration camp in 1942. After two years there, he was sent to Auschwitz, and then to Dachau. He endured great suffering, but discovered that even under the most painful and dehumanizing conditions, life held the possibility of yielding meaning and purpose. He observed that those who were able to find meaning in their suffering had a greater chance of surviving the horrors of camp life. In his book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl described a type of psychotherapy which he called Logotherapy. The therapy is based on Frankl’s belief that a person’s striving to find meaning is the single most powerful motivating force in their lives. It is more powerful than the “bread” in our lives – our chasing after power, after money, after status, after pleasure. He is thought to have coined the term “Sunday neurosis” which afflicts those who live without a sense of greater purpose. He describes the symptoms of this malady as a sense of boredom, apathy and depression that occurs when the workweek has concluded, when the pursuit of material gains must cease. It is then that a feeling of emptiness surfaces in the individual as they struggle to understand the purpose of life outside of acquiring things.

What does it mean to put G-d at the center of our lives? Does it mean to come to synagogue every week, or to pray every day, or to keep kosher, or to celebrate the Jewish holidays, or to light Shabbat candles or to don tallis and tefillin each morning?  All of these rituals are a means to an end, but they are not ends in themselves. All of these practices reinforce important values and connect us to one another, and in this way they are important. But the essence putting G-d at the center of our lives is the place to where these rituals point – the love and connections that we have for one another. There is nothing new under the sun – we find meaning and purpose in life through those we love and those who love us, through those to whom we lend a helping hand, through those to whom our lives have made a difference because we have been here. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived – that is to have succeeded.”

In his “Laws of Repentance” Maimonides writes that a person should view himself as if his or her deeds are perfectly balanced between those that are meritorious and those that are sinful. If a person has more positive deeds than negative ones, he is judged for the good. If the negative outweigh the positive, he is judged for the bad. Maimonides asks us to imagine that the entire world is similarly balanced. Should we sin one more time, we tip the balance to the negative and assure our destruction and the destruction of the world. Should we do a mitzvah, we tip the balance to the positive and assure our salvation and the salvation of the world. Thus, every deed we perform has cosmic significance. Each one of us has within us the power to change the world for the better – the world of our families and friends, our communities, our workplace.

Shabbat Shalom