VORTIFY YOURSELF
Rabbi Yosil Rosenzweig
PARSHAT EIKEV
Devarim (Deuteronomy) 7:12-11:25
Haftorah – Isaiah 49:14-51:3
110820
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I write this week’s “Vort” while sitting Shivah for my mother Helen Rosenzweig – Chayah bat Reb Shmu’el HaKohen – who was taken from this world just a few days ago. A heroine of the Holocaust, a devoted wife, mother, grandmother and great- grandmother, she was a true Eishet Chayil (woman of valor). She was a great influence on so many and excelled in the Mitzvot of serving your fellow man with graciousness and showing hospitality to anyone and everyone that came in contact with her. This week’s “Vort” is dedicated to her life and her memory. Tehi Nishmata Baruch – may her soul be blessed.
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What is the real miracle of our yearning to return to the Land of Israel? Most historians, in writing about the Middle East, deal primarily with the military victories, the wonders of the War of Independence in 1948-49, when the Arab nations outnumbered us 40 to 1. Or the lightning speed of the miraculous Six–day War in 1967, culminating with the extraordinary liberation of holy city of Jerusalem. For me, the central miracle of the return of our people to Israel is that after 1,800 years of exile, the Jews, with their dream still intact, had never forgotten.
How do you keep a memory alive for almost 60 generations? Could it be that the Torah and our over abundant libraries of holy writings could have served this purpose? Or could it have been having a rich culture filled with Sabbaths and holidays did the task? Can we even theorize that the Hebrew language gave us the ability to survive? No, we all know that these components were not enough for all Jews in all ages.
I don’t know if our historic memory is stronger than that of other nations, but if you repeat something every day, at crucial moments during the day, for 1,800 years, it’s bound to enter your psyche. I refer to the prayer said after every meal served with bread, whose source can be found in this week’s portion: “And you shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the L-rd your G-d for the good land He has given you” (Devarim 8:10).
Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals) is only one part of a very special institution in Jewish life: how we eat. We all must eat, but unlike the cultural motto, “You are what you eat,” from a Jewish perspective, it isn’t what you eat – but how you eat, when you eat, where you eat and why you eat.
What makes a person holy? Is it the number of days fasted or hours spent praying? No! Our tradition teaches us that what reveals one’s holiness is their conduct during a meal. The Chasidic sages interpret the teaching, “There is no Kiddush (blessing of sanctification) except where there is a meal,” to mean, “there is no Kiddusha (holiness) except where there is a meal.”
Everyone eats – criminals, animals, “cannibals” but a Jew must be aware of more than just gravy and calorie counting. A Jew must be aware that there are the dietary laws, intended to teach us compassion and lead us gently toward compassion for all life forms. They often stop us from grabbing hamburgers and hot dogs at baseball games and wolfing them down before the curve ball reaches the catcher’s mitt.
If bread is served, we wash our hands ritually, expressing the idea that to be worthy of eating G-d’s food, we should be spiritually cleansed. Should three people feast where words of Torah are not discussed, it is considered as if they’ve just been dining on a dead offering (Ethics of Our Ancestors 3:3), because the source to what becomes our food is HaShem. Therefore, the idea of “just grabbing a sandwich” is a minor dilemma for the spiritually aware.
However, it’s the three major blessings of the Grace after Meals that tell the story of who we are as a people. As long as we live by these words and make them as real as the food we swallow, we are worthy of inheriting and living on this land.
The first blessing (composed by Moshe), begins, “Blessed are You…who nourishes the entire world (‘HaZan Et HaKol’)“ focuses us to recognize that G-d is the source of our sustenance, not a credit card or a lucky reservation. In the animal world, nourishment is the center of reality, but for Jews, we need to understand that “we don’t live by [or for] bread alone” (Devarim 8:3).
The second blessing (composed by Joshua) deals with the land of Israel: “We thank You, HaShem, our G-d, because You have given our ancestors a desirable, good and spacious land…” Which land? Not Egypt, not Babylon, not Russia, not Poland, not Spain, not Germany, not even America. This blessing teaches us that when the food one eats is grown in a land that is not our own; then we will always be subject to the whims of the rulers of those lands. Only food grown in our own land, in our own soil, really belongs to us and gives us true joy.
One of the leaders of the Shomer HaTza’ir movement, Ya’akov Chazzan, tells how he received his most important lesson in Zionism and the fundamentals of beginning an agricultural movement in Palestine, from a Polish peasant while he was still in Poland. As the peasant work the soil, from time to time he would bend down and cup his ear to the ground. Asked to explain, the farmer informed Ya’akov that he was listening to the song of the land. Young Chazzan then cupped his ear and could not hear a thing, with a sly wink the farmer added, “Yankele, that’s not surprising, the only ones who can hear this land’s symphony, are those who own this land.”
We said this blessing in Alexandria, in Venice, in Casablanca, in Warsaw, for a land we had never seen but which we knew was the only land where we’d be able to hear the Ya’akov Chazzan Symphony.
The third blessing (composed by King David) deals with the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Why? The rocky soil of Jerusalem is not known for its wheat fields, yet, it too is crucial to hearing our symphony. Even in your own homeland, feeling as earthy as any Polish farmer with his ear to the ground, if your eyes don’t seek out the glory of Jerusalem, the living symbol of the Eternal One, then your destiny might be annihilated, as described in Devarim 8:19 – 20. The third blessing teaches us to go well beyond earthly symphonies. Indeed, we have little choice because the Torah makes it clear that tilling this soil also depends on our spiritual perfection. The blessing of rebuilding Jerusalem instructs us not to limit ourselves to reaping one kind of crop while forgetting about the ultimate crop.
These three blessings are biblically ordained. Over the course of millions of meals, we could have gotten fat and lazy, but the Grace after Meals was a constant reminder that the day would come when we would again eat our own bread, from our own fields, baked in our own ovens. As Jews, we do not simply eat to sustain ourselves, but to become more connected to the roots of our humanity and our ultimate purpose – to sanctify our earthly endeavors and to walk in HaShem’s ways.
“To G-d belongs the earth and everything in it” (Psalms 24;1). And as His partners in the ongoing experience of creation, we are duty bound to sanctify the soil, to use it not abuse it, and to use it for a higher purpose. If we could but see the soul in the soil, then we could also come to hear its sounds and enjoy its symphony.
My mother Aleha HaShalom, was a Koch Lefel – she was a kitchen utensil – she made the kitchen work for her. The food you ate at my mother’s table, the delicacies that were served at Shiva houses or at Hadassah bazaars (she wasn’t even a member) were made for the purpose of partaking in G-d’s gifts of life. Our Shabbat and festival tables were surrounded by family and guests. Her Passover Seder table presented the flavor of a European Jewish culture that was slowly fading from memory and at the same time incorporated the miracles of that recent Passover when she, almost her entire family and her new husband walked out of the gates of their own Egypt and celebrated their liberation as a G-dly act.
When my son Benji was born my mother catered his Brit in Sefat. His Sandek and one of the most honored of the guests was my Chassidic Rebbe, Rabbi Aharon Leifer ZTz”L who originated from the city of Baniah in Romania, which was very close to my mother’s hometown of Visu. The night before the Brit, in addition to all the other delicacies, she and my father A”H also handmade 300 gefilte fish – and when the Rebbe tasted it, he said it tasted like his mother’s fish, Ta’am Gan Eden – the taste of the Garden of Eden. Rebbe Leifer wasn’t speaking of the taste – he was speaking of the love and the soul that went into the fish. He wasn’t talking about recipes, he spoke of formulas for elevating the food from being mearly tastey, to feeding the souls of all who sanctified to being sanctified by this food.
My mother was 95 years old when she passed away. That means that she was 31 years old when she was liberated from the horrors of Nazism. She represented an era of Judaism that is only remembered by very few remaining survivors. An era of great European Torah personalities, spiritual role models and scholarly works that would have been forgotten by an entire generation if it wasn’t for this handful of Jews transplanted all over the world and their refusal to give up the wonders of their culture.
Helen Rosenzweig was not a great scholar, nor a brilliant teacher, but with considerable grace she taught Judaism to hundreds of Jews at her Shabbat table. She came from a long line of Mitzvah-spreaders who used the table to bring Holiness to the world. Her grandfather, Yehuda Leib Berger A”H, used the third meal of Shabbat to feed the poor people of Sighet. They ate his holy food, then sang the holy songs around that table that even inspired gypsies who gathered outside the window. When he left this world, the community asked his family to bury this Mitzvah man using the wood from their table for his coffin.
My mother’s table is no longer with us, and she hadn’t cooked a meal in years because of her condition, but I believe that every crumb of her nut-cake, every flake of her apple strudel, every morsel of her Chremzlach, or Pitcha, or Rogoh Krumpli, or the myriad of dishes that she made all screamed: “And you shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the L-rd your G-d.”
Bagels and lox never saved one Jew from assimilation and no Jew ever made Aliyah to Israel because they liked falafel. But tens of thousands of totally assimilated Jews of all ages and from all over the world, may have once been invited to a Shabbat or festival meal and found that it kindled sparks in their souls that suddenly began to burn. With great pride our family, our children and some of our grandchildren have cherished memories of holy meals that drew attention to our heritage, encouraged our love for the land of Israel and for the people of Israel, and linked us to an uninterrupted chain that spanned 110 generations.
My mother was a Yiddisheh Mama in every sense of the word and she is already missed by hundreds and thousands of Jews who once sat at her table, or the table of her children or grandchildren and tasted soul food from above.
Tehi Nishmata Baruch – may her soul be blessed.
Shabbat Shalom,
Reb Yosil
Vortify Yourself 