Starting with the first verse, the Torah reading this week can be hard to stomach: “And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, your God, יהוה, will maintain faithfully for you the covenant made on oath with your ancestors ” (Deut. 7:12). Many of us find promises and threats alienating, not representative of the Divine Source of life we experience or aim to connect with. This biblical God is quite different from later characterizations in Rabbinic sources, where God’s empathy and care stand out.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks brings a reading based in history: “Moses, for the first time in history, was hinting at a law of history… If you assume – [Moses] tells the next generation – that you yourselves won the land and the freedom you enjoy, you will grow complacent and self-satisfied. That is the beginning of the end of any civilization. In an earlier chapter Moses uses the graphic word venoshantem, “you will grow old” (Deut. 4:25), meaning that you will no longer have the moral and mental energy to make the sacrifices necessary for the defence of freedom.
Inequalities will grow. The rich will become self-indulgent. The poor will feel excluded. There will be social divisions, resentments and injustices. Society will no longer cohere. People will not feel bound to one another by a bond of collective responsibility. Individualism will prevail. Trust will decline. Social capital will wane.
…Only against this background can we understand the momentous project the book of Devarim is proposing: the creation of a society capable of defeating the normal laws of the growth-and-decline of civilisations. This is an astonishing idea.
What Moses was saying to the new generation was this: You thought that the forty years of wandering in the wilderness were the real challenge, and that once you conquer and settle the land, your problems will be over. The truth is that it is then that the real challenge will begin. It will be precisely when all your physical needs are met – when you have land and sovereignty and rich harvests and safe homes – that your spiritual trial will commence.”
Perhaps in these verses which appear to present a dominating God, our Torah is conveying a deep lesson about the content and purpose of its laws, and about our role in achieving and maintaining freedom.
As Rabbi Sacks concludes, “The real challenge is not poverty but affluence, not insecurity but security, not slavery but freedom.”
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller
Eikev (Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25) Torah Reading Aug.1, 2026
August 5, 2026 by Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller • D'var Torah, Julie Saxe-Taller
Starting with the first verse, the Torah reading this week can be hard to stomach: “And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, your God, יהוה, will maintain faithfully for you the covenant made on oath with your ancestors ” (Deut. 7:12). Many of us find promises and threats alienating, not representative of the Divine Source of life we experience or aim to connect with. This biblical God is quite different from later characterizations in Rabbinic sources, where God’s empathy and care stand out.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks brings a reading based in history: “Moses, for the first time in history, was hinting at a law of history… If you assume – [Moses] tells the next generation – that you yourselves won the land and the freedom you enjoy, you will grow complacent and self-satisfied. That is the beginning of the end of any civilization. In an earlier chapter Moses uses the graphic word venoshantem, “you will grow old” (Deut. 4:25), meaning that you will no longer have the moral and mental energy to make the sacrifices necessary for the defence of freedom.
Inequalities will grow. The rich will become self-indulgent. The poor will feel excluded. There will be social divisions, resentments and injustices. Society will no longer cohere. People will not feel bound to one another by a bond of collective responsibility. Individualism will prevail. Trust will decline. Social capital will wane.
…Only against this background can we understand the momentous project the book of Devarim is proposing: the creation of a society capable of defeating the normal laws of the growth-and-decline of civilisations. This is an astonishing idea.
What Moses was saying to the new generation was this: You thought that the forty years of wandering in the wilderness were the real challenge, and that once you conquer and settle the land, your problems will be over. The truth is that it is then that the real challenge will begin. It will be precisely when all your physical needs are met – when you have land and sovereignty and rich harvests and safe homes – that your spiritual trial will commence.”
Perhaps in these verses which appear to present a dominating God, our Torah is conveying a deep lesson about the content and purpose of its laws, and about our role in achieving and maintaining freedom.
As Rabbi Sacks concludes, “The real challenge is not poverty but affluence, not insecurity but security, not slavery but freedom.”
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller