Parashat Ekev - Fifth Aliyah
Read the biblical text and try to understand it on your own, before reading the commentary.
There are passages in the Torah that feel like a reset button for the heart. The fifth aliyah opens with a sharp, almost minimalist question, and from there builds a whole ladder.
What is actually being asked of us
“mah Adonai Elohecha sho’el me’imakh” (What does Adonai your God ask of you, 10:12). Not endless lists, but one axis of life: “ki im leyir’ah et Adonai Elohecha lalekhet bechol derachav ul’ahavah oto vela’avod et Adonai Elohecha bechol levavcha uvchol nafshecha” (only to be in awe of Adonai your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him and to serve Adonai your God with all your heart and with all your soul, same verse). Four components: awe, walking, love and service, and alongside them the keeping of the commandments “letov lach” (for your own good, 10:13).
Rashi stops precisely at the opening word, “ve’atah Yisrael”: “Even though you did all of this, His mercy and His affection are still upon you” (Rashi on Deuteronomy 10:12). This short list is spoken after the calf, after the shattering of the tablets, and after all the rebellion counted in the previous aliyot. And on “ki im leyir’ah” he brings a teaching that is not his own reading but that of the sages: “And our rabbis derived from here that everything is in the hands of Heaven except the awe of Heaven” (Rashi on Deuteronomy 10:12). Its source is Berakhot 33b, in the name of Rabbi Chanina, where it is derived from this very verse.
The great horizon and the intimate choice
Facing this simplicity stands an immense horizon: “Hen l’Adonai Elohecha hashamayim ushmei hashamayim” (Behold, to Adonai your God belong the heavens and the heavens of the heavens, 10:14), the earth and everything in it. And within that grandeur, one intimate choice of the fathers and their descendants. The double picture creates a delicate music of divinity and human touch: an exaltedness without end, and a love that decides to stay close. From this is born a responsibility that distinguishes between an awe that frightens and an awe that gives birth to walking and to love. See Deuteronomy 10:14-15.
Circumcising the heart
At the center of the passage lies a sharp call: “Umaltem et arlat levavchem ve’arpechem lo takshu od” (And you shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and stiffen your neck no more, 10:16). This is the language of delicate surgery, removing hardened layers so that living blood can flow. The Torah does not ask only for correct deeds but also for a softer tissue of the heart, one able to respond to truth, to justice and to kindness. It is a move that seeks to break the stiffness of the neck and to replace it with an inner readiness for ongoing change.
A greatness that obligates toward the margins
Facing the private movement of the heart, a foundational picture unfolds: a God great, mighty and awesome, “asher lo yisa fanim velo yikach shochad” (who does not show favor and does not take a bribe, 10:17). And precisely for that reason, immediately in the following verse: “Oseh mishpat yatom ve’almanah ve’ohev ger” (who does justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the stranger, 10:18). Greatness does not distance one from the margins, it obligates one toward them. And the command that follows rests on our own existential memory: “Va’ahavtem et hager ki gerim heyitem be’eretz Mitzrayim” (And you shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt, 10:19). In this way justice becomes part of the national biography rather than an abstract principle.
The following verses place life on an axis of cleaving, service and bearing the Name. Not a paralyzing fear, but an awe that knows how to serve and to cleave. And the memory of history enters again: “Beshiv’im nefesh yardu avotecha Mitzraymah” (With seventy souls your fathers went down to Egypt, 10:22), and from them a people became as numerous as the stars of the heavens.
Living witnesses
The beginning of chapter 11 tightens the core: love and continuous keeping, and a living knowledge that does not rest on secondhand testimony. Moshe reminds the wilderness generation that they saw with their own eyes the strong hand, the signs and the deeds in Egypt and at the Sea of Reeds, and the earth that opened its mouth and swallowed Datan and Aviram. “Ki eineichem haro’ot et kol ma’aseh Adonai hagadol” (For your eyes are the ones that saw all the great work of Adonai, 11:7). Living witnesses carry a living responsibility. And so the call to keep the whole commandment takes on a practical dimension: in order to be strong, to come, to inherit, and to lengthen days on a land that is “eretz zavat chalav udvash” (a land flowing with milk and honey, 11:9). Ethics here is not a spiritual ornament, it is a condition for the existence of a society and of a land.
The fifth aliyah offers a straight ladder: a heart that opens, social justice, and cleaving. Whoever distills their life down to the four components of the opening verse, awe, walking, love and service, finds that the rest falls into line around them.