Ekev: No One Will Stand Up Before You

“No man will stand up before you, Hashem your G-d will cast fear of you… on all the land upon which you tread.” 

The final pasuk of this week’s parsha reinforces the message which is sprinkled throughout the parsha – that Hashem will not allow any enemy to prevail over us. He will make sure we are untouchable, that Eretz Yisrael, which he promised to Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov – remains our land. This reminder of Hashem’s strength and desire to drive out our foreign enemies may have been said many years ago, before Moshe’s death. But its message rings so powerful and relevant, even today.

We have just emerged from Tisha B’av, a day when we focus on the downfall of our nation. So many of the tragic images and horrific descriptions of Eicha talk about defilement. Yerushalayim is compared to a nidda, everyone has seen her erva/nakedness, she is full of tum’ah/impurity. In the haftara preceding Tisha B’av, we are compared to a zona/harlot. What painful images when compared to the glorious magnet of holiness and beauty Yerushalayim is meant to be. We read in Eicha “naflah ateret rosheinu” (5:16), the crown of our heads has fallen. On Tisha B’av, we mourn our lost glory, we are supposed to be Hashem’s mamlechet kohanim vgoy kadosh, His kingdom of priests and holy nation – but now our glory has faded. We are far from the untouchable nation described in this week’s parsha, a nation that people are scared to touch. But this is who we once were.

One of the many consequences of galut/exile is that we absorb this message. We take in the message from nations around us, from antisemitic taunts, or passively via the media, via the news, via the air outside. You are fallen, you are lowly, you are defiled. We lose even more of our dignity because we choose to let the world tell us how to be. We feel uncomfortable with the pasuk “kol kevuda bas melech penima” “all the glory of the King’s daughter is within.” We don’t really resonate with what it means to be part of the am hanivchar, the chosen people. We lost the Beit Hamikdash, Yerushalayim’s full glory is in ruins. But, as we sing in Lecha Dodi on Friday night “hitn’ari me’afar kumi” “arise from the dust, get up!” Tisha B’av has ended and we lift ourselves out of the dust, off the floor. We are still Hashem’s People. As the parsha reminds us, we were chosen by virtue of being the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. We can’t forget our status. We might be in exile but we are still holy, special people. We have to hold onto our dignity. This is the start of the rebuilding.

Rabbi Orlofsky explains that one thing we can take from Tisha B’av is to know who we truly are. How are we meant to daven for a world with us at its centre, if we don’t even know who we are meant to be? How can we daven for the world to recognise Hashem’ when we don’t yet reflect that? How can we work on our relationship with Hashem if we don’t even know ourselves?

We can only cry over our aspirations for the future, if we know how great we can truly be. We used to be so revered, so G-dly, so lofty. Nations would melt from fright in front of us, nations knew of the purity and greatness of the Beit Hamikdash. This is what we need to hold onto. This is something we can build, and we can start from tonight.

We have to remind ourselves of our true status. We truly are princesses who were exiled from the King’s Palace. 

There is so much hester (hiddenness) and the world is not where it should be. But, we can live with the clarity and nobility of knowing who we truly are. It is the Jewish people, the most precious of nations who will go through an Elul, who will stand through a din/judgement for the entire world on Rosh Hashanah, who will go through a cleansing on Yom Kippur and bask in Hashem’s love on Sukkot. We are the centre of it all. We have to re-align ourselves, back into the picture. 

We must not allow exile to rob us of our identity. If we can go through a Tisha B’av thinking about such holy things, concerned about the loss of Hashem’s House, we must be a holy people. It is not a contradiction to abandon our mourning and emerge from a Tisha B’av. We are emerging, knowing how great we once were, knowing that it is our state of kedusha/holiness or its opposite, that shapes the course of world history. We are emerging kadosh so we can recreate our kadosh past.

We can cry over the destruction of the palace (the Beit Hamikdash) and even feel the pain of the King (the Shechina), but together with that, we need acting like the royalty we are. 

Then we can truly dream of our return back Home in the Palace, modelling dignity, nobility and greatness to the nations. Not because of us, but because of our intrinsic link to Hashem. 

We must not allow exile to rob us of our identity. If we can go through a Tisha B’av thinking about such holy things, concerned about the loss of Hashem’s House, we must be a holy people. It is not a contradiction to abandon our mourning and emerge from a Tisha B’av. We are emerging, knowing how great we once were, knowing that it is our state of kedusha/holiness or its opposite, that shapes the course of world history. We are emerging kadosh so we can recreate our kadosh past.

 If we can tap into our inner dignity, our refinement that has been lost and trampled over the years, we send a message to Hashem, loud and clear, that we are ready to come Home. As we say together in Eicha, chadeish yameinu k’kedem, renew our days as in days of old. This is the true dream on our lips and in our hearts. And if we work towards it, we can be sure that Hashem will restore us to our former glory.