Parsha Eikev – Jewish Teachings & Torah: The Mission Adam Never Finished

0:00 A wealthy businessman is dying. He calls his three closest friends, a doctor, an accountant, and a rabbi, to come and see him in his home. He says the following. He says, I've been told my whole life that you can't take your wealth with you, but I want to prove people wrong. And he hands out three envelopes and he says, In these envelopes is a hundred thousand dollars. And he says to his friends, At my Lavoye, my funeral, please throw these envelopes in the grave as they're lowering me in, and in that way I'll be able to prove people wrong that I can take my wealth with me.

0:36 The day of the Lavoya comes, they're lowering the body, and the doctor throws the envelope in, and the accountant does the same. Then the rabbi gets an opportunity and he also puts the envelope in. And they're walking away after the Lavoya. And the doctor turns round to his friends and he says, Friends, I've got a confession to make. And they say what? He says, Look, I only threw in$80,000. He says, It seems such a shame I could do so much with that other$20,000 for Sadaka for charity. He said, I took it out.

1:10 The accountant turned round and he said, Well, actually, I only put in$50,000. He said, It seemed ridiculous to waste good money. The rabbi turns around to the other two and he says, Gentlemen, I'm ashamed. This is our friend. He asked us to put in$100,000. Why wouldn't you do what he asked? Fulfill his wishes. And the doctor and the accountant look at the rabbi. They say, Really? The rabbi says, Yeah, I put in all a hundred thousand. And they look at him suspiciously, and he says, Okay, I wrote a check.

1:47 It's an interesting idea to ask people, what is holiness? What does living a holy life mean? I think people might talk about going to Shaw and Davening, putting on to fill in, keeping Shabbat, keeping kashras. And of course, all of those things are indeed holy. But would anybody mention a Tuesday morning? Would they mention when they are walking around the supermarket? Or at work, or paying an invoice. Pasha Akev is a really interesting Pasha. Because it really comes to teach us what living a holy life is, what holiness is.

2:36 It's something I'd like to explore and see if we can discover a conclusion and what that means for how we live our lives today.

2:48 Sapasha Akev starts in a really interesting way. Because Marshe turns around and says, This shall be the reward when you listen to the Mishpatim. And the question is, why does Marsheh say the Mishpatim? After all, we have three types of mitzvah in Judaism. We have Mishpatim, which are the social laws. They're the laws that many societies have in some form or other. And so things like don't murder and don't steal and be honest in business, be fair in business, these are Mishpatim. But then we also have Ada.

3:26 Aidot are the testimonies. So we keep Shabbat as testimony to the fact that Hashem created the world. And we keep Pesach as testimony to Yitziatz Mitzraim, the coming out of Egypt. And we keep Shavuot as testimony to Matan Torah when we were given the Torah. And we keep Sukkot as testimony to how Hashem looked after us in the Midbah. And then we have Chukim, the decrees. And these are the mitzvot that we don't really understand. I mean we have some beautiful explanations for some of these mitzvot, and they may well all be true, but ultimately we only keep them because Hashem told us to.

4:05 So mitzvot like kashrub, mitzvot like shatnats, not mixing wool and linen, mitzvot like shaking Lulav and Etrog. These are the chukim. So why doesn't Moshe say, This shall be the reward when you listen to the Mishpatim, the Adar and the Chukim? Or he could say, This shall be the reward when you listen to the mitzvot, the commandments, just an all-encompassing word that includes all three. Why is Mosheh specific? This shall be the reward when you listen to the Mishpatim. The Malbin tells us that the Mishpatim are fundamentally different from the other two, Adot and Hukim.

4:47 See, Adot and Hukim are really laws between man and Hashem. And of course, you get a reward in Alamhaba in the world to come for keeping those mitzvat. But he says mishpatim are different. Because mishpatim are fundamentally laws between man and man. And again, you get rewarded in Alamhaba for keeping those mitzvat because they're mitzvat like the others. But says the Malbin, you also get reward in this world for keeping the mishpatim. Why does he say that? He says, because in general, the way that you behave with others is the way that they behave with you.

5:29 Of course, there are exceptions, but in general that's true. And he says, therefore, if you keep the Mishpatim, you're fair with people, you're generous with people, you love your neighbor, you help people, you do the right things. He says, in general, people will behave back the same way. And therefore, there's an instant payoff with the Mishpatim. What this comes to explain to us is that the Mishpatim are fundamentally about the way we live in everyday life. And this is the reason Moshe is talking about Mishpatim at the beginning of the Pasha, because he's setting the tone.

6:08 Because Akhev primarily is come to answer a question. How do we as Jews turn the physical world into a place where Hashem is present? Because the purpose of Jews Judaism is not to escape the physical world, it's to reveal Hashem within it. It's not about escaping the ordinary life, but making ordinary life holy. This is what Pashat Akhev is all about. Of course, the question is why are we living in such a physical world or such a physical existence? How come the world is like that? And therefore, Pashat Akhev becomes so important.

6:50 And therefore, to understand the context of Pashat Akhev, we have to go back and look at creation and understand where we've got to and where Pashat Akh fits in. So it's a Gomorrah in Brachot in 55 Ahmad Alif. And it also says a very similar thing at the beginning of Seifi Yetsirah Sefi Yetsira is an early book of Kabbalah that a lot of people attribute to Adam Harishon. Some people say it was written by Avram Avinu. There are other opinions as well, but it's an early book of Kabbalah. And they both say the following thing: that the building blocks of creation were the Alephbet, the letters of the Aleph Bet.

7:33 And we're told at the beginning of chapter 5 of Pirke Avot that Hashem created the world in ten statements, in ten utterances. And of course, he created therefore the world with speech, with language, of which was the Alephbet, the building blocks. Safiyy Yadsirah wants to call them the 22 letters of foundation. How does that work? So I want to show you with the Aleph. And take an Aleph. How is an Aleph written? So an Aleph is actually made up of two yuds, one at the top right, one at the bottom left, and then above in the middle.

8:09 That's how you write Aleph. The yud at the top right represents ten, yud is ten. It represents the ten sephirot, the ten emanations of Hashem, and he emanates through the ten statements of creation. So it represents those things and how they manifest in the spiritual world. The bottom left yud is also the ten sephirot, the ten emanations of Hashem, the ten statements of creation, but how they manifest themselves in the physical world, in the world in which we live. And the vav in the middle, the vav in the middle connects the two, connects the physical world with the spiritual world.

8:56 We call the vav the vav ha chibur, the vav of connection. And of course, what does vav mean in Hebrew? It means and. And is a connecting word, and connects two ideas or and connects two words. Links two things.

9:17 That's how it works. And if you want to understand something, you have to go back to the first time it was used in Torah. So you say, when is the first time a vav is used in Torah? It's used in the very first pasuk. Because what does it say in the very first pasuk? Bareshit bara elokim et hashamaim v et ha'arets. So the vov is used to do what? Connect Hashemim and Aretz. Bareshit bara elokim et hashamaim v et haarets. Connecting heaven and earth. That is what the vov does. We see that. And then what's interesting is the gumatria of vov is six, and it features in the sixth word of the Torah.

10:06 And then how do you write va'et? Va'et is Vav, Alef, Tav. In other words, the Vav connects the entire Aleph Bet from Alef to Tov, the 22 letters of foundation.

10:24 All goes together.

10:28 It's Gomorrah in Hagigah in 12 Ahmed Aleph. The Gomorrah tells us that when Adam Harishon was created, he reached from the earth to the skies, from earth to the heavens. And of course, what's the Gomorrah trying to tell us? It's not trying to tell us that Adam Harishon was millions of miles high. That's ridiculous. What it's trying to tell us is when Adam Harishon was created, there was a link between the physical world and the spiritual world. He reached between both because there was a link between the two.

11:01 When Adam and Hava eat from the Eightzadat, we're told in the Gomorrah that Hashem puts his hand on Adam and diminishes his height. In other words, what the Gomorrah is now telling us is the link between the physical and the spiritual is now broken. And that manifests in a number of ways. But let me give you a couple of examples. When the physical and the spiritual are truly connected, we don't have to work for anything. In Ganadin, Adam and Chava had everything they needed from a food perspective.

11:34 They didn't need to do any work. Once the physical and the spiritual are disconnected, now we have to work. Adam is told he'll eat bread by the sweat of his brow. Now he has to work. Similarly, when the physical and the spiritual are completely connected, the nashamah, our soul, can stay in our bodies indefinitely. But once the physical and the spiritual are disconnected, the nashamah could no longer stay in the body indefinitely. And therefore, Adam Harishon introduced death into the world. Because a consequence of the rupture between the physical and the spiritual was that the Nishamah couldn't be in an indefinite period inside the body.

12:19 And therefore, what we see is the Akef, the heel of the Alef. We say the heel because the lowest point of a human being is the heel, and we call that the lowest point. So the heel, the Akef of the Alef was ruptured. The yud has has how Shem manifests in this world was ruptured from the Vav. It was disconnected. There's now a disconnect between the physical and the spiritual.

12:58 What are we told about Yaakov? He comes out the womb grabbing on to Azev's Akhev, his heel. And in fact, Yaqov himself is named, the name Yaakov, Arkov, is named after that incident of grabbing the heel. That's how significant it is. Why? Because Yaakov and Aesov were twins. They were supposed to have a symbiotic relationship. Aesav was the physical one. He was meant to be the physical leader of Klali Shrael, leading them into wars and taking the physical and refining it from a physical perspective.

13:37 Yakov would then be given that and he'd be able to elevate it to the spiritual, be the spiritual leader of Klali Shrael. That was the symbiotic relationship. But Asav was not up to the job because Asav couldn't see the physical as a means to an end. He saw the physical as an end in itself. There was nothing else. That is why when Yaakov buys the Bukora from Aesav, what does Aesav say? I'm going to die anyway. What does that mean? We're all going to die anyway. It doesn't mean I'm going to die as in I'm going to lose my life at an old age.

14:15 That happens to everybody. When he says I'm going to die anyway, he means there's nothing else. There's nothing beyond this world. This is the physical world. There's nothing spiritual. So I'm going to die anyway. What do I need Olam Habab for? What do I need the Bukhorah and all the responsibility of being the firstborn for? What's the point? And that's why he sells it to Yaakov. And so Yaakov at that point has to take on not just his own mission of the spiritual mission, but also the physical mission.

14:44 He now has to be the link between the physical and the spiritual and connect the two and not do it together with Aesov who's not up to it. Rifka, of course, already knows all this. Because Rifka feels it in the womb, these brothers fighting. And she inquires of Hashem, why is it like this? And Hashem tells her she has two nations inside her. She has Yaakov, she has Yisrael, of course, they're the spiritual. And then she has Asaf, Adom, Rome, which is base physical, the world we live in today of Rome, the base physical.

15:21 And we see that when Yaakov comes out the womb, he's grabbing on to Asaf's Akhev, his heel, because that's an allusion to the fact that eventually Yaakov, Yisrael, we will overcome. We will be victorious, the spiritual world will out, the physical will be elevated, Hashem will be acknowledged through the world. That is the illusion because he's grabbing, controlling the heel, the lowest point, the base physical. That's what it represents. Of course, this defines Yaakov's in most of his life or much of his life, this linking of the physical and the spiritual.

16:02 And we see that in many aspects. But let's take Yaakov's dream. Yaakov has his famous dream, but what's the ladder that he sees in his dream? The ladder is the Vov. The ladder is the connection between the physical world and the spiritual world. And very famously, the angels ascend up to Shemaim before they descend down from Shema'im. And of course, the question is why? If the angels are based in Shemaim, surely they should come down the ladder first and then go up the ladder. But they don't. They start going up and then they come down because they have to repair the connection between the bottom yud and the Vav.

16:43 They have to go up and repair that before they can then come down. They have to reconnect. So they ascend and then they descend. Yaakov in his dream has a vision of Hashem. Because, of course, what makes the Avot the Avot? That Hashem makes a covenant with Avraham, he renews it with Yitzhak, and he renews it again with Yaakov. After that, we have the Shevatim, we have the nation of Israel being born, and then the covenants just assumed. What makes the Avot the Avot is that Hashem makes that covenant with Avraham with Yitzhak and with Yaakov.

17:21 So Yaakov is dreaming, and Hashem comes to him and gives him the promises of the Brit of the covenant. And he says, you know, your descendants will have Eretz Israel. You'll have numerous descendants, you'll have progeny. And then, of course, the nations, the families of the world will bless themselves through you, through the Jewish people. When Yaakov wakes up, he says, Surely Hashem was in this place, and I didn't know. He realizes he's at the place of the connection of the physical and the spiritual.

17:53 This is his tough kid. And he makes a nedder. And what does he say in the neddah? He says, if Hashem will guard him on the way, give him bread to eat and clothes to wear, and returns him in peace to his father's house, then this, this is the matseva, this pillow that he's poured oil on as a tribute to Hashem. This Metseva will become a Beit Elokim, a house of Hashem. Let's unpick this Nedah, this vow that he makes, because it's so important. What why does he say if Hashem gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear?

18:30 Seems a kind of mundane thing for one of the Avot to be talking about in a nedeh. Why? Because he's acutely aware that he's just slept at the place where the physical and the spiritual meet. This is his tough kid. And he needs to repair the damage done by Adam Harishon. And what's Adam's punishment? Part of the consequences of what happens to Adam is we now have to work for our bread. It doesn't just grow. So he says, if Hashem will give me bread to eat, and why clothes to wear? Because what happens when Adam and Hava eat from the eight sadat?

19:06 We're told in the Torah they were naked and they're ashamed, they have to cover themselves. Why are they suddenly ashamed? Because the spiritual and the physical have been disconnected. They're no longer aligned. So when the spiritual and physical were aligned, their bodies reflected their spirituality. There was no embarrassment. But now they lived in a world where the physical concealed the spiritual, their bodies concealed spirituality, and they looked at themselves ashamedly and they had to cover themselves because we now have to cover our physicality to reveal our spirituality.

19:42 And so Yaakov, who's this is his tough kid, he says, gives me clothes to wear because he needs to reveal the spiritual. It's part of his tough kid, it's part of what he's got to do. And then he says, Then this place will be a Beit Elohim. And of course, he's talking about the Beit Hamid Dash, which will be built in the very place where heaven and earth meet, where the physical and spiritual are connected. That's why he says this will be a Beit Elohim. This vow is directly related to his tafkid of repairing this link between the physical and the spiritual.

20:20 Make sense, therefore, the Gomorrah in Tanit in Five Ahmed Bet. The Gomorrah in Tanit in Five Ahmed Bet says that Yaakov Avinu never died. If Yaakov Avinu's entire mission was to link the physical and the spiritual, and death came into the world because of the disconnect, because the Nashama could no longer stay solely in the body for indefinitely, then the idea that Yaakov Avinu never died is almost an allusion to saying he succeeded in his tafkid. He succeeded in that linking of the physical and the spiritual.

20:56 There's one other pasuk which is very important to understand, which is in Pasha Toldod. When Yaakov goes and takes Esaf's brach, and he's with Yitzhak, and Yitzhak kind of tells him to come closer. And Yitzhak says the following The voice is the voice of Yaakov, but the hands are the hands of Asaf. And the midrash in Bareshit Rabbah on that says the first voice, it says, The voice is the voice of Yaakov, the hands are the hands of Asaf. The first voice of Yaakov is when we're weak, when the Jewish people aren't doing our tough kid, when we're not being the koenym of the world, when we're not raising the physical to the spiritual.

21:41 And when we fail to do that, the voice is weak, the voice of Yaakov is weak. Then the hands of Asaf dominate. But the second voice, the second voice is when we're strong. The second voice is when we're fulfilling our tough kid, being the cohenim of the world, raising the physical to the spiritual. Spiritual and then we dominate over Asaf. That's the second voice and hands. Comes along the Vilna Gon and he points out something incredible. And you can go and have a look at the Pasuk in Told. The first call is written Kuf Lamud without a Vav.

22:21 The second call is written Kuf Vav Lamud. The connecting vav. In other words, the first call when Yaakov's voice is weak, when we're not doing our tafkid as Jewish people, then Asaf dominates. But the second call is when you have the connecting Vav. The link between Shemaim and Aretz. You've made that link, and then Yaakov's voice is strong and dominates over Asav. We understand all this. Let's go back to our pasha Akh. And let's have a look. All the way through Akh, Moshe points out the rewards for keeping the mitzvot, which are physical rewards, and the punishments for not doing so.

23:10 And although he starts the pasha with mishpatim, because this is primarily about the physical world, and Moshe is setting the tone as he goes through the pasha and he talks about keeping all the mitzvot, he uses that word mitzvot, which of course encompasses all the commandments, and he often uses mishpatim and and hukim. So he's trying to encompass all the commandments as well, because of course we have to keep them all. But all the way through Pasha Akiv, if you have a look, we're told about the physical rewards for keeping the spiritual laws because there is a link between the physical and the spiritual.

23:48 That is what this Pasha is all about. And then Moshe talks about the man, right? That Hashem gave us the man and we can't eat on bread alone. Why is he saying that? Don't think your success is your success. Yes, you'll go in and work and you'll grow crops and you'll be successful in business. But understand the lesson of the man. It all comes from Hashem. And therefore, of course, it's no coincidence that a few Persukim later, what are we given? The mitzvah of Birakat Hamazan, of grace after meals.

24:21 Because that is the acknowledgement. We sit down and we eat and we're satiated and we're full in our stomachs. And at that point, we realize and remember and acknowledge that we may have gone to work and we may have earned the living and we may have gone to the supermarket to buy the food. But ultimately, all of this is a bracha. All of this comes from Hashem. And Birkat Hamazon is a derita mitzvah, a mitzvah from the Torah to make sure that we acknowledge where things come from. That when we're partaking of a base physical activity, eating, which we need to survive, that we acknowledge that that physical activity has primarily a spiritual element because it all comes from Hashem.

25:05 And then in this week's Pasha, it's no coincidence. Moshe says, and ma, what does Hashem want from you? And the word is used, ma, what? And the Gomorrah in Menachot 43 Ahmed Bet says, Don't read ma, read mea, which means a hundred. So then it will read a hundred Hashem wants from you. And the Gomorrah brings down and says, we have to make a hundred brachot a day, and that's where we are as Jewish people. We have to make a hundred brachot a day. It's in Orachaim of the Shul Hanarach that we should make a hundred brachot a day.

25:41 Why is that in this week's pasha? Because brachot are our way of taking base physical and raising it up to spiritual. It's one of the mechanisms that we have. We're the only religion in the world that has a brachah after we go to the toilet. We take a base activity, maybe the most base of activities, of going to the toilet. And when we come out the toilet, we make a bracha. We acknowledge that physical base activity has a spiritual element. It comes from Hashem that he enables us to function properly.

26:15 And of course, we make a brach before food. And look at the morning brachot that we say every day when we get up. We thank Hashem for sight and for clothes and for giving us the physical strength and spiritual strength and for all our needs. Brachot are a way of taking the physical world we interact with and raising it up spiritually. That's why it's this week's Pasha that gives us the mitzvah of saying a hundred brachot every single day. Then, of course, we have the second paragraph of the Shema.

26:50 And you say, what is the fundamental difference between the second paragraph of the Shem'ah and the first paragraph of the Shema? Because in many ways they're very similar. And one of the fundamental differences is that the second paragraph of the Shem'h has reward and punishment, which the first paragraph doesn't contain. And why? Because again it's parshat Akhev. What we're doing is linking our physical reality with our spiritual commitment. We're told that we have to love Hashem and keep the mitzvot.

27:23 And if we do that, we'll get rain. But what is rain? So rain is literal rain, of course, but rain in the Torah is also sustenance. Rain is not just rain, although it is, but it's bigger than that. Rain in the Torah is signifies sustenance in general. So, in other words, it's loving Hashem and keeping them its vod, which then there's a physical reward, which we get sustenance. We do get rain as well. We get sustenance that we need. And then it goes on to say about commerce. Wine, oil, and grain and cattle.

27:59 These weren't merely foodstuffs. This is what we traded in. We traded in wine and grain and oil and cattle. Because if you love Hashem and you keep the mitzvot, then also you'll be successful in commerce as well. These things are linked, the second paragraph of the Shema links our spiritual behavior and commitment with our physical reality. That is what Pasha Ekef is all about. Of course, you can't mention Pasha Ekef without mentioning Eritsi Shrael because it is front and center of the Pasha talking about Eritsi Shrael.

28:35 Rav Shloma Walba from the Mir says the most amazing thing. He says living in Eritsi Shrael is a higher madragah than even Torah. So how can he say that? And he says the following: He says it only took 49 days for us to be ready to receive the Torah. But it took us 40 years to be ready to go into Eritz Ishrael. Because when we received the Torah, we were still living a life of miracles. We had the Anane Haqavod, the clouds of glory protecting us in the midbar. The man was falling every day, so we had food to eat.

29:21 We had Miriam's wells, so we had water to drink. We had clothes that grew with us and stayed fresh. We were living a life of miracles. It's easy or easier to have Emun when you're living a life of miracles, when you're surrounded by miracles and being openly protected by Hashem all the time. And now we're going into Eritz Israel and we're going to have to grow our own food and make our own clothes and practice politics and have an army and get involved in all the mundane physical activities of running a state and being self-sufficient.

30:00 And then we've still got to acknowledge Hashem, still keep all the mitzvot, still live a life of Emuna. That's much, much harder. And of course, this is one of the sins of the Maruglin. Because one of the ideas is that they just didn't want to do it. They wanted to stay in their bubble of spirituality and not go into Eritch Ishrael and have to confront the mundane. But that's not Judaism. Judaism is to confront Hashem's world, the physical world, to raise that world, to make it spiritual, to uncover Hashem's presence in the world and reveal it.

30:36 That is our mission. That is what we're supposed to do, to elevate the physical to the spiritual. That's why we're told in this week's Pasha, Moshe says to us, the eyes of Hashem are on Eritch Ishrael from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. In other words, just know that just because you're going into a land where you have to grow your own crops and make your own clothes and have an army and be involved in politics and all the mundane, Hashem's presence is there. Hashem is with you.

31:06 You have to live a life of Emunah, elevate the physical, reveal Hashem. That's the whole point of having Eret Sisrael.

31:18 And so we have this whole idea of Akef, where we elevate the physical, where we understand what it is to live a holy life. Today's challenge is the same challenge that Moshe Rabbeinu was saying to Klali Srael when they're on the verge of going to Eretz Ishrael. Not living as though the physical is all there is.

31:50 And nothing to do with Hashem. Thinking food is just food. Thinking business is just business. Thinking that the mundane aspects of life have nothing to do with Kaddusha. But they do. Kadusha is in the supermarket. Kaddusha is when you're paying an invoice. Kaddusha is when you're walking down the street, as well as the obvious activities of going to shul and keeping Shabbas and putting on to fill-in. Judaism is not about escaping the world. It's about revealing Hashem inside it. Every bracha, every honest business still, every act of kindness, every meal, every human interaction is an opportunity to repair Adam's broken aleph.

32:43 This is the mission that Adam began. This is the mission that Yaakov inherited. And Pasha Akef comes to tell us that this is our mission to this very day.