This week marks the second Shabbat of consolation, following the desolation of Tisha B’av. Last Shabbat we re-experienced the Ten Commandments, and this week we explore Ekev, the consequences of living those commandments.
Like many of my contemporaries, I have an aging, ailing father. As a rabbi who works with hospice patients, I am all too-familiar with the diagnosis of "general debility". The fact that I spend my days working with families who are facing the death of a parent does not provide me with a "pass go" when it comes to my own family. My father is old, fragile and his wonderful mind is faltering. However, his death does not appear to be imminent. He’s comfortable, sitting, as he has since December, in the same room – my old bedroom – in my parent’s house, no longer going outside, or even downstairs. But he has had one goal – one project that has brought light into his eyes and given him the desire to go out. He wanted to see the house that my husband and I have spent the last three years building. My mother worried that by November, our e.t.a. for moving into the house, my father might have lost more ground, urged us to "seize the day" and get him to the unfinished house ASAP.
Sunday was the big outing. How to get him down the home stairs, into the car, up to the new house through a construction site and up and down the stairs of the new house we left to Divine intervention. The long and the short of it, is that it was a wonderful day. He loved the house--being wheeled around in his chair and through the efforts of caregiver, children and grandchildren, love, physical effort, lots of patience and a great sense of humor on my father’s part – we did it. We even celebrated at a restaurant, with ice cream sodas.
ekev – Definition – "on the heels of, as a result of, the consequences of"….
The inner reverberations of our outer actions, is my understanding of this word.
The Chasidic masters offer us keys to developing a spiritual practice. The process of taking a personal inventory, hesbon ha nefesh, can be arrived at in different ways: hittbodeddut is the practice of cultivating aloneness through meditation; hittbonenut is the practice of mindful self-awareness, and one concept that has captured my attention over the years and happens to be mentioned in this week’s parasha,
"umaltem et orlat levavchem" "And you shall circumcise your hearts…". Deut. 10:16
The Chernobler Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Chernobyl, in his work Meor Enayim, writes that one must break through the klippot, (the husks) in order to reveal the Covenant, the inner Torah. An individual must work to reveal his or her own inner self, the holiness that dwells within. The Rebbe says the word et in this verse may be taken to mean "with," indicating that along with the circumcision of the flesh, must go that of the heart.
With each mitzvah, such as brit milah or kibud av v’em (honoring one’s parents), there is the outer action taken and the inner experience that follows. Ekev, on the heels of….
The morning after the house outing, I awoke with a terrible tightening in my chest – I couldn’t seem to take a full breath, a new and awful sensation. "A panic attack", said my friend the therapist, though I didn’t feel panicked in the least. "Your heart is blocked", said my friend the mystic, "it is not being allowed to feel." The images of the day before, of my father’s face, his terror and fragility as we carried him in our arms, backwards, down the stairs, the feelings of sadness, love, and awe were more than my heart could bear at that moment and so, I sealed my heart shut.
I had brought my strength, humor, patience and gratitude to this outing, but I couldn’t do the avodah pnimiut, the inner work, until I was ready. With the words of my trusted friend, the tears began to flow. To feel God’s love and presence, to open ourselves up to awe and wonderment there can be no barriers. We are given this bodied life and our earthly relationships – bein adam l’havero – to practice. Facing the depths of our own love is a terrifying prospect. But without feeling it, we may find ourselves unable to breathe.