• Grace or Gratitude? Understanding God’s Gifts in Love and Merit

    Last week’s parsha began with Moshe beseeching God to let him cross into Israel, “V’etchanan el Hashem,” “I pleaded with God at that time, saying…Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan…” Rash”i comments that the word va’etchanan (to plead or beseech) means to request…

  • Moving Forward with Imperfection

    In his reminiscence of the Jewish peoples’ forty years of travel through the desert, Moses says in this week’s Torah portion, Eikev: “God said to me, ‘Carve out two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain; and make an ark of wood. I will inscribe on the tablets…

  • The Danger of Partial Judaism

    In this week’s Torah portion, Ekev, Moshe continues his words of strength and warning to the Jewish people to ready them for their  entry into the land and their start as a nation.   In the last verse of last week’s parsha Moshe tells them to guard the, “mitzvot, the chukim and the mishpatim.”  The…

  • Manna and Responsibility: Balancing Self-Reliance and Divine Gratitude

    In this week’s torah portion, Ekev, the Jewish people stand on the eastern bank of the Jordan River about to enter the land of Israel and Moses speaks to them as he does throughout the whole book of Deuteronomy, reminiscing about the past 40 years and giving the Jews words of rebuke and strength for…

  • Exile, Manna, and the Journey to Self-Realization

    In this week’s torah portion, Ekev, Moshe reviews some of the people’s time in the desert over the last 40 years and speaks several times about the mannah they ate in the desert.  When Moshe speaks about the mannah though, he connects it in our parsha, more than once to pain. “Remember the long way…

  • From Manna to Harvest: Remembering God in Our Success

    It all begins with an idea.

  • How Humility Shapes Our Relationship with God

    This week’s parsha, Ekev, begins with Moshe’s words of warning to the Jewish People:  V’haya ekev tishmaun, “And it will be, ekev, (“since” or “because”) you will heed these ordinances and keep them, that the Lord, your God, will keep for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers.”   The word…

  • A Contrast Between the Mayans and the Jews

    This past week Sara and I were in Mexico touring the Mayan ruins; royal houses, city centers, ancient ball courts, and temples, spanning over a thousand years from the 5th century BCE until the 10th century CE. Though there is not much rain during half the year and these ancient cities were not generally built…