by Rabbi Avi Billet
8:2 – Moshe reminds people that in the undertaking of the responsibility of mitzvos, they must remember the entire journey of the Bnei Yisrael through the wilderness – 40 years – which was “to cause you difficulty, to test you, to know what is in your heart, whether you will observe the Mitzvos or not.” Ralbag posits that this was a test of grit, to see - after all these years - how committed they were to Torah.
Testing them consisted of there not being water, or no meat, nor vegetables, nor legumes. No garlic, no onions, nor whatever else they may have wanted – all they had was manna.
All of this was to show the ability of God to sustain an entire nation, essentially, on bread alone.
That is the substance of the next verse (8:3) which notes the diet of manna, while also essentially framing survival as “not by bread alone” - that while it looks like bread alone, it’s really the will of God. This, Ralbag argues, was meant to be a training ground for all time that God is watching, and that His efforts on our behalf are meant to not only help strengthen their faith, but to regulate and set the tone for future faith and trust in God.
Continuing, Moshe tells the people to know in their heart that “As a father disciplines his son, God disciplines you.” Ralbag indicates that Moshe is pointing to the “potches” the people have gotten from God at different points in direct response and correlation to their negative activities. He suggests that the parent who responds immediately to a child’s rebelliousness is demonstrating that “what you just did caused that response” so the child will recognize it and take the necessary rebuke. Generally God operates “slow to anger,” but in the wilderness He operated with this kind of immediacy, because the people needed to be trained to recognize ill-turns and to make every effort to right their wrongful behavior, to learn in order to be successful in the land. Essentially, while Moshe paints the picture of their wilderness experience in detail, Ralbag takes each point and magnifies it into the wonderous act that it was, rather than just a stop on a trail: Exodus. Survival in the wilderness. Home of snakes and serpents. A place where people die of thirst. Where He drew out water from rocks. He protected them from scorpions. He gave them food that no one had ever seen before and no one had seen since.
And the test was through their survival WITHOUT the normal foods they’d expect… how will you conduct yourselves vis-à-vis the mitzvos when you see this miraculous kind of living?
Someone who lives intentionally, who thinks things through, who wants to see design and purpose in one’s existence, finds what to latch on to that makes life meaningful.
Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg – of Kids Kicking Cancer – trains children with cancer to help overcome their fears of their experience through teaching them martial arts. He has seen children overcome amazing challenges, and has known many children who have died, including his own daughter (of leukemia) back in 1981.
He has said, “The greatest tragedy is not the death of a child. Some of these children have impacted the world so powerfully, that light is forever. The greatest tragedy is to be with someone who is 95 years old and dying, and they don’t have a clue why they lived.”
Eikev is always two weeks from Elul, which means exactly 6 weeks from Rosh Hashana, since the first day of RH this year is a Shabbos. So perhaps it is a good time to ask ourselves why we live? Our Sages contemplated this question in a number of places. There are several passages in Koheles which touch upon this quandary.
Koheles 4:2-3: “I see the merit of the deceased who have already passed, more than the living who still have their lives to live. And even better than both are those who have never been, who haven’t seen the evil done in this world.” AND 2:17-19: “17So I hated the living, for the deed that was done under the sun grieved me, for everything is vanity and frustration. 18And I hated all my toil that I toil under the sun, that I should leave it to the man who will be after me. 19And who knows whether he will be wise or foolish. And he will rule over all my toil that I have toiled and that I have gained wisdom under the sun; this too is vanity.” AND 6:2-6 –“2 A man whom God gives riches and property and honor, and his soul lacks nothing of all he desires, and God gives him no power to eat of it, but a strange man eats it; this is vanity and a grievous sickness. 3Should a man beget one hundred [children] and live many years, and he will have much throughout the days of his years, but his soul will not be sated from all the good, neither did he have burial. I said that the stillborn is better than he. 4For he comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness his name is covered. 5Moreover, he did not see the sun nor did he know [it]; this one has more gratification than that one. 6And if he had lived a thousand years twice and experienced no pleasure, do not all go to one place?”
Consider the “famous” debate between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel - Eruvin 13b. “For 2 ½ years they debated over whether it was better to have not been born or better to have been born. [interestingly it doesn’t say who said which way…] And they concluded that it’s better to not have been born, now that a person is here, he should either examine his deeds or feel out his deeds – במעשיו יפשפש. They responded ”ימשמש במעשיו
Rashi says יפשפש means look at the deeds one has already done, check ones Aveiros, confess them and do Teshuvah. ימשמש means feel out the loss of not doing the deed vs the reward of fulfilling the deed. Consider the reward even if the reward will be long in coming against the punishment, even if the punishment will be sometime in the very distant future.
But more to the question of understanding the discussion, Tosafos implies that the reason it might be better to not have been born is due to all the challenges in the realm of sin that a person must endure. Tosafos HaRosh suggests the conversation is hypothetical, particularly since at the beginning of life we have no idea which direction a person will go and Tosafos concludes that “the righteous, praised is he and praised is his generation.” Which certainly suggests that the existence of the righteous is of great merit. – Both for this world and the next.
To Rabbi Goldberg’s comment, perhaps the righteous know very well why they live, which is why they don’t face that existential tragedy of wondering why they lived.
Maharal directs the conclusion of Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel: If it is better to not have been created, an argument can be made that one need not respect one’s parents, for they are responsible for the disservice of a person’s existence. If we’re better off not having been created, then thanks but no thanks!! But he rejects the question because the Gemara concludes that now that we’re here, we should make the most of it. If a person therefore says that being created is terrible, a person is not appreciating what opportunities exist for us in this world. And the first thing is to demonstrate appreciation and goodness towards those who brought us into this word.
AND WHAT IS THAT GOODNESS? WHAT IS MAN’S PURPOSE?
“A person must accept the will of God that He wanted the person to exist, and therefore the person must nullify his own will to the will of the Holy One Blessed is He, and to do all that God wants of Him… this is obvious.” The real reason for this question is because we often tend to view death as a punishment and so if someone dies without having sinned, that person may have been better off not having been born.
The “Daf-Al-HaDaf” compendium suggests the reference in the Talmud of “better for an Adam (person) to not have been born” may actually be referring to Adam who, through Chava’s influence, brought death to the world. Which in a way means that the יפשפש במעשיו means that a person should make very good decisions in life.
Koheles 11:6-10 - 6In the morning, sow your seed, and in the evening, do not withhold your hand, for you know not which will succeed, this one or that one, or whether both of them will be equally good. 7And the light is sweet, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun. 8For if a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many; all that befalls [him] is vanity. 9Rejoice, O youth, in your childhood, and let your heart bring you cheer in the days of your youth, and go in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these God will bring you to judgment. 10And remove anger from your heart, and take evil away from your flesh, for childhood and youth are vanity.
Surely the last verse of Koheles reminding us that our job is to fear God and keep his mitzvos - כי זה כל האדם - this is what the human’s purpose is. The original Adam failed, in a sense, in fulfilling his original purpose of maintaining Gan Eden and creating an almost perfect existence for his progeny. We don’t know anything about him after the expulsion from the garden, except the births of his children, and the death of Hevel. We can argue that his existence came to be about his children – and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as one knows that that is the purpose of a person’s existence.
The parsha also posits two pesukim which give another answer – and that is what God asks of us (10:12-13). The answer here is a mostly Man-God relationship…”Fear Him to walk in His ways, love Him, serve Him with all your heart and soul, observe his Mitzvos and laws for your betterment.”
Micha (6:8) asks the same question and his answer is “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord demands of you; but to do justice, to love loving-kindness, and to walk discreetly with your God.”
What Moshe was telling the Bnei Yisrael through giving them the history lesson of the Exodus and the wilderness is that while life can be challenging, God is there watching over you. Sometimes you see it clearly. Sometimes you don’t see it clearly.
But your job is to realize that He is always there. And that your mission in life is to please Him – in the sense that He put you here for a reason. Each person may have an individualized job of what to fulfill in this world, but in the end, we all have very similar tasks before us. We ask God daily in our Shmoneh Esrei – “Bless us our Father, together as one, with the light of Your countenance, because through the light of Your countenance You’ve given us the living Torah, loving kindness, righteousness, blessing, mercy, life and peace.”
May we be blessed to recognize and tap in to our purpose as defined for us in these texts, so we can assure ourselves that when our time comes, while people will be sad that we will be gone, our mission will have been achieved – and we will never have to wonder why we lived.
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