Eikev: Who is You

Last week, I wrote about  some of the problem posed by the verse: 

לֹ֣א אֶת־אֲבֹתֵ֔ינוּ כָּרַ֥ת  . אֶת־הַבְּרִ֣ית הַזֹּ֑את כִּ֣י אִתָּ֔נוּ אֲנַ֨חְנוּ אֵ֥לֶּה פֹ֛ה הַיּ֖וֹם כֻּלָּ֥נוּ חַיִּֽים׃ It was not with our fathers that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here today. 

The problems include the lack of prior agreement and punishment   for the  sins of ancestors. 

This week we have the opposite problem 

וִֽידַעְתֶּם֮ הַיּוֹם֒ כִּ֣י ׀ לֹ֣א אֶת־בְּנֵיכֶ֗ם אֲשֶׁ֤ר לֹֽא־יָדְעוּ֙ וַאֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹא־רָא֔וּ אֶת־מוּסַ֖ר .. אֶת־גׇּדְל֕וֹ אֶת־יָדוֹ֙ הַחֲזָקָ֔ה וּזְרֹע֖וֹ הַנְּטוּיָֽה׃

Take thought this day that it was not your children, who neither experienced nor witnessed the lesson of the LORD your Gd— His majesty, His mighty hand, His outstretched arm;

The trivial solution  for both verses is that Moshe really is talking exactly to that, long gone, generation who had sojourned in the desert and now come to the Promised Land. These two verses, taken together, close that loop. 

But the  ode that I recite twice daily ( to stay in compliance with the instructions within it)  and follows immediately after the outline of events to remember includes

וְלִמַּדְתֶּ֥ם אֹתָ֛ם אֶת־בְּנֵיכֶ֖ם  and teach them to your children. 

The generation that Moses addresses in  this book is tasked to spawn a tradition.  They will teach their children  and, presumably, those children will teach their children. A theoretically endless intergenerational transmission ( with the message degradation that accompanies all transmissions)

In last week's parsha, the analogous command was 

וְשִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ Impress them upon your children

This word שִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם (shinantom), often translated "teach" is clearly derived from  shein, tooth.  To my modern ear, it sounds  like the vampire bite that changes a civilian into a creature that lives on the blood  of others.  A bite that turns the bit into a biter.  A rabies-like contagion passed on by chomp.  It evokes the first  bite that altered the human genome, eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge. 

This weeks parsha evokes those early days with its second word, Eikev. Here it is translated  "as a consequence", perhaps "on the heel(s) of."   It introduces the transactional tone that saturates the parsha: Do the commandments and reap the reward. 

 In its first use, eikev is the heel attacked by the serpent. 

ה֚וּא יְשׁוּפְךָ֣ רֹ֔אשׁ וְאַתָּ֖ה תְּשׁוּפֶ֥נּוּ עָקֵֽב   I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your offspring and hers; They shall strike at your head, And you shall strike at their heel.”

The heel, the eikev,  is the target of the tempter. The serpent prevents the fulfillment of the mission.  The heel is the eternal site of vulnerability. 

Eikev is a very important word.  The name Jacob, Yaakov, who is renamed Israel, is overtly derived from eikev.  At birth, Yaakov grabbed the heal of his nemesis  brother Esau in their imagined, and subsequently real,  battle for firstborn.   Yaakov receives the blessing of the firstborn.  Esau's reaction  reveals another meaning of eikev: 

וַיֹּ֡אמֶר הֲכִי֩ קָרָ֨א שְׁמ֜וֹ יַעֲקֹ֗ב וַֽיַּעְקְבֵ֙נִי֙ זֶ֣ה פַעֲמַ֔יִם אֶת־בְּכֹרָתִ֣י לָקָ֔ח וְהִנֵּ֥ה עַתָּ֖ה לָקַ֣ח בִּרְכָתִ֑י וַיֹּאמַ֕ר הֲלֹא־אָצַ֥לְתָּ לִּ֖י בְּרָכָֽה׃ [Esau] said, “Was he, then, named Jacob that he might supplant me these two times? First he took away my birthright and now he has taken away my blessing!” And he added, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?”

He is named YaaKov ( the name contains eikev) because he eikeved,  "supplanted" me.  He heeled me? He consequenced me? The easiest translation of this word וַֽיַּעְקְבֵ֙נִי֙  is: He Jewed me. The target of the serpent and the target of the Jew are the same. They use a low , almost forgotten ,spot to foil a great mission...(like the Totalitarian state).  They turn their enemies' ambitions back at them, sometimes winning the battle and  earning their (intergenerational) hatred. 

These two parshioth box us into saying that Moshe, the man who lived 3500 years ago was talking to his contemporaries.  To make the Torah relevant, we can posit that The (eternal) Moshe, the voice of the author of Deuteronomy, indeed speaks to only one generation - the generation of the reader, our generation. It lays upon us the obligation to receive the ancestral and parental tradition  and transmit it ...along with our own experience, the Divine interventions that we have seen. 

The generation of the man Moses had seen what was done to Pharaoh and his army, all the miracles done in the desert, the earth opening to swallow the secessionists Dathan and Aviram , etc.  I received the Treblinka rebellion and the atom bomb, the State of Israel, electronics and  television.  I saw people go to the moon, major advances in cancer and heart disease, AIDS and COVID, a  world that could feed eight billion people,  and recombinant Beyond Beef (a food that my ancestors did not know).  I am witnessing a rise in nationalism using the technology and internet that I hoped would unify the world; a time when the educated see that the world is too complex for human understanding, and the ignorant insist on the truth of absurd convictions that serve to  oppress. Every generation was deluded. Are we merely more aware of the impossibility of enlightenment?  

All that is left: Do the commandments and reap the reward.