This week’s Torah portion begins with a proposition: “if you obey these rules and observe them carefully, God will…” (and I paraphrase) be good to you. This is the essence of the covenant between the Jewish people and God: in exchange for fealty, we will receive a guarantee of prosperity. To this, I would add the word: Even. As in, even ifeverything goes according to plan, everything may not go according to plan. Try as we might as human beings to control outcomes, life has a way of throwing curveballs at us.
I felt this last August when I visited the Chautauqua Institution to serve as the guest rabbi at the Hebrew Congregation of Chautauqua. I had everything planned and was excited and ready for a restful and beautiful Shabbat at one of the premier educational institutions in the area. Then, in a blink of an eye everything changed. A few hours before I set out, Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times on stage in the Chautauqua amphitheater in front of nearly a thousand people. The scene was horrific and terrifying. Many of the members of the Hebrew Congregation had witnessed the tragedy, and the entire institution was on red alert. As the entire world sat on pins and needles praying for the life of the famous author, all events at Chautauqua were put on hold. As I arrived in the early afternoon that day, we did not even know if services would occur at all. We did end up gathering, not only to pray, but to console and to grieve.
The name of this week’s Torah portion, Eikev, is a conjunction usually translated as “because” or “as a consequence of,” actually comes from the same word as “heel” and is at the root of our patriarch Jacob’s name, Ya’akov. You may remember Jacob came out of his mother’s womb holding on to the heel (EKV) of his twin brother Eisav. I love that the word for “prepare for contingencies” is built into our central namesake’s name, we are, after all, the children of Jacob. Judaism is a religion that has often encountered the unexpected. This Shabbat as I head back to the Hebrew Congregation of Chautauqua, I do so with a heavy heart remembering the events of last year, but also optimistic about a quiet, beautiful Shabbat with an amazing spiritual community.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex