Parashat Ekev, Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25

Second Haftarah of Comfort Isaiah 49:14-51:3

Ekev is often translated as “because,” or “as a result of.” How do we justify and ground our actions? What is our Why? What is our Because?

The answer that Deuteronomy repeats over and over again: We do things because God commanded them, and therefore, things will go well for us.

Lived reality is not always as straightforward. We may feel compelled or obligated to do certain things, but we cannot always hope that the result will be rewarded or even acknowledged. And still, we persist in doing things a certain way. We continue to believe in their worth, in their value. At Camp Newman it is a sacred ritual to hike up the hill to a Magen David installation on a rock and shout from the top of your lungs: “I love being Jewish!!” At camp, the answer to the question, Why do you love being Jewish? feels self-evident: Look around you – an entire summer community dedicated to joyful Jewish experience – what’s not to love?

In our everyday, it is sometimes more difficult to answer the question: Why do you love being Jewish, against a backdrop of ever intensifying anti-Semitism? What keeps you coming back to Temple, to Jewish community, to doing Jewish things?

These are questions at the core of our community Shabbat on the Beach tonight that we are celebrating together with our friends from Temple Shalom and Temple Menorah. We have sent around these questions for you to reflect on and, if you feel like it, to share your answers with me in advance or with the folks at the beach tonight.

Over the years, I have written many poems inspired by a weekly parsha, and I have two written during Ekev. One I shared with you last year, now, here’s a new one that I began as a draft in Jerusalem, but finished only recently.

Ekev 5782

I always return to Jerusalem as if walking through my poems

Mount Zion is just another hill among the many roses

inscrutable palm trees

sturdy in California chill, Judea heat

Constant clatter in the sea breeze, the khamsin, awakes ghosts

of haunted canyons

I still walk the same strawberry fields, the same squares

groping for places I cannot find

where my smile and gaze still linger like pomegranate seeds

The gate shut loud, its echo called me back

The bus dashed over the hump, I was jolted

— one wrong block misleads you months and years

I went wrong when I stayed on Hebron

instead of merging onto Beth Lehem

the sunset over Betzalel like a red magnet over Wilshire

Gan Sacher stretches into the Valley of the Antelopes

Every day I question the sky-rise over Agrippas

I shed hair each day I circle the walls in obsession and despair

To the swallows bored by my poetics I shout and whisper

We will walk these shores forever

The wind has already carried us away

like the avocado stand, the pomegranate vendor

When it is neither day nor night, in open fields and next to fences

I sink to my knees, amidst pools of lights and calls to prayers

Shabbat Shalom, and see you at the beach!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch