Moshe’s poignant farewell to a generation poised on the brink of Eretz Yisrael – the parshiyos of Eikev and Ki Savo – confront us with two timeless warnings. They are not abstract theological debates but urgent prescriptions for the human heart, especially in times of abundance. Yet, in our community, these verses have too often been twisted into sources of guilt, division, and misunderstanding. One verse has been weaponized to demand perpetual happiness, as if the Torah were a self-help manual punishing honest sorrow. Another has been deployed to dismiss human effort, as if the chayalim (soldiers), engineers, and innovators who safeguard the Jewish nation were mere puppets on a divine string.
These misreadings are not
harmless. They erode the very bitachon they claim to uphold, fostering
either toxic positivity or fatalistic passivity. Worse, they divide us – frum
from “less frum” – at a moment when Klal Yisrael needs unity more
than ever. Let us return to the pshat, the plain meaning of the text,
and rediscover the Torah’s elegant balance: profound, joyful gratitude to
Hashem amidst the celebration of human achievement. Only then can we build a
community that honors both the beis medrash and the beis hachayal –
i.e., practical engagement with the world.
The Tochacha’s Misread Mandate: You Must Be Happy
All the Time
We begin with a verse that has
haunted countless baalei teshuvah, anxious parents, and weary spouses:
Devarim 28:47, nestled in the stark prophecies of the Tochacha: “Because
you did not serve the Lord your G-d b’simcha u’vtuv levav meirov kol – with
joy and gladness of heart from the abundance of everything....”
In popular parlance, this pasuk
has morphed into a divine ultimatum: “Serve Me with joy – or else.” Speakers
thunder it from the bimah, books quote it in bold italics, and
well-meaning rebbeim remind us that sadness is a sin, as if Hashem expects us
to paste on a smile through illness, loss, or the daily grind of parnassah.
How many of us have internalized this as a personal failing – guiltily
whispering, “I should be happier; why can’t I just choose simcha?”
This is not the Torah’s intent. It
is a tragic distortion, one that ignores the critical words at the verse’s end:
meirov kol. As Rashi explains succinctly, “When you had plenty of
everything and it was easy to serve Him with joy – you did not.” The Ibn Ezra
adds: “Because goodness was multiplied for you from every direction, you should
have served Him joyfully – but you did not.” The Sforno and Ramban echo this: The
Tochacha’s curse falls not on fleeting moments of human sadness but on
the profound ingratitude that festers when life overflows with blessing.
Consider the context. The Tochacha
unfolds in a litany of consequences for covenantal betrayal: exile, famine,
defeat. Verse 47 is the pivot – the root sin beneath the branches of
punishment. “Serve Me with joy” is not a blanket command for constant euphoria,
which would be psychologically impossible and foreign to Tanach’s honest
portrayal of grief (such as Moshe’s implied pain in Devarim 1:9-10 and David’s
lament in Shmuel II 1:17). Nor is it a rebuke for serving Hashem amid hardship;
the Ramban contrasts it explicitly with avodah out of fear, or yirah.
No, the sin is specific: meirov
kol. When the vineyards yield their fruit unbidden (as promised in Devarim
6:11), when the enemies fall silent, when the tables groan with abundance, then
you must serve with simcha – not because joy is a magical force field against
curses but because gratitude is the natural, expected response to unearned
bounty. To serve grudgingly or indifferently in such times is to take Hashem’s
gifts for granted, turning blessing into a mere backdrop for mechanical
mitzvos. It is the quiet arrogance of forgetting the Source amid the plenty.
This misreading breeds unnecessary
guilt in our community. A mother exhausted from endless shemiras Shabbat,
a father wrestling parnassah in a volatile economy – they hear this
verse and wonder, “Am I failing in my avodah because I’m not perpetually
buoyant?” The Torah offers no such yoke. It invites, instead, a vigilant heart:
In prosperity’s glow, let simcha flow as hakaras hatov, gratitude. And
in the shadows? Weep freely, as our ancestors did, secure in Hashem’s chesed.
Kochi Ve’otzem Yadi: The Peril of Arrogant
Self-Sufficiency
Turn now to an even more
ubiquitous misquotation: Devarim 8:17–18, from Parshat Eikev, “Beware
lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me
this wealth.’ Rather, you shall remember the Lord your G-d, for it is He who
gives you the power to make wealth.”
This pasuk is a rhetorical
favorite in debates over national security, economic policy, and even personal
success. It is invoked to chide the overly confident: the entrepreneur who
boasts of his “self-made” empire, the politician who credits policy alone for
prosperity. Yet, like the Tochacha verse, it is routinely wrenched from
context, reduced to a simplistic binary: “Don’t take credit – it’s all Hashem.”
The full chapter shatters this
caricature. Moshe addresses not secular skeptics but the dor ha’midbar –
the generation that witnessed the Yam Suf’s parting and the glow of the ananei
kavod, the Clouds of Glory. They, of all people, knew miracles. Yet Hashem
warns: Upon entering the Land, you will inherit cities you did not build, wells
you did not dig, vineyards you did not plant (8:9–10). Life will feel normal.
Harvests will follow rains; victories will be due to strategy. And in that
normalcy, the heart’s whisper will tempt: “Kochi ve’otzem yadi.”
The sin is not healthy pride in
effort; Tanach celebrates that abundantly. Bezalel crafts the mishkan
with divinely inspired genius, yet his name shines as the artisan (Shemot
31:1–5). Mishlei lauds the diligent hand that “rules” (12:24) and stands before
kings (22:29). David trains his mighty men with tactical precision (Divrei
HaYamim I 12) but attributes triumphs to Hashem (Tehilim 18). The Torah forbids
only the delusion of total self-attribution: erasing Hashem as if your
intelligence, health, timing, and societal stability sprang from your own ex
nihilo genius.
The antidote? Immediate verbal
remembrance: “It is He who gives you the ko’ach – the capacity – to
achieve.” Human agency is real, celebrated, and essential. But it is gifted,
fragile, and contingent. To pretend otherwise in success is to court
haughtiness, the root of every Tochacha curse.
Two Phases of Prosperity: Transition and Steady-State
Gratitude
These two verses are not isolated
admonitions; they form a matched pair of teachings, guarding the soul through
prosperity’s arc.
Devarim 8 marks the transition:
the breathless arrival from midbar to metropolis. You cross the Yarden,
conquer the first cities, taste the first vintage. Exhilaration surges – “We
did it!” – and the Torah interjects: Now remember. Now thank aloud.
Anchor the victory in the Giver before pride calcifies. It is the tefillah
of the moment, the Hallel of breakthrough.
Devarim 28, by contrast, sustains
the steady state: years in, when abundance is routine. The initial thrill
fades; barns fill predictably, borders hold securely. Complacency creeps – not
the boastful “kochi” but an indifferent “meh.” Here, the mandate
deepens: Serve b’simcha, with sustained gladness, meirov kol.
Not forced cheer but cultivated gratitude – the daily bentching
that lingers on the Source, the Shabbos zemiros that echo unearned
bounty. It is the avodah of permanence, preventing blessing from becoming
banality.
Together, they chart a rhythm: explosive
thanks at the threshold, joyful fidelity in the home. Both demand action – verbal,
communal, heartfelt – lest success erode emunah (faith). Moshe,
ever the realist, knows our wiring: Prosperity seduces precisely because it
feels earned. The cure? Habitual hakaras hatov, binding heart to hand.
A Familiar Refrain
This ancient wisdom feels urgent
amid today’s debates about drafting chareidim. On a recent “Halacha
Headlines” podcast, I heard articulated a position echoed in many chareidi
circles. Discussing exemptions for bnei yeshivah, the speaker explains,
“We are very much believers that everything that happens in this world
doesn’t only happen on a physical plane but on a spiritual plane also, and
perhaps a spiritual plane is more important even in the physical plane. And,
therefore, the physical survival of Medinas Yisrael is not only dependent on a
physical material army but also on people who are sitting and learning
Torah. Learning is the foundation of the existence of this world.” He
credits the Israeli victories to siyata di’Shmaya, a tremendous amount
of spiritual help from Hashem, funneled through the lomdei Torah, the beis
medrash playing a complementary role to the tank’s steel. Historically,
he notes, whenever Klal Yisrael went out to war, there was an
equal number of people sitting and learning Torah as people on the front.
He then pivots to the divide: “Unfortunately,
a good portion of the population here in Eretz Yisrael are not believers. They
believe in kochi v’otzem yadi, that it is physical might that makes a
difference.” This worldview, he argues, sees yeshiva bachurim as “not
contributing” towards that physical might, fueling cries of inequity: “My
children are on the front lines... and your children are sitting in a beis
medrash, somewhere far from harm.” But, the speaker counters deftly, not
all soldiers face combat; cooks, communicators, even band members sustain the
force. An army can’t function without all of them. So too, he posits, with the
spiritual corps: Lomdim perform a different but essential role in the
totality of what’s needed.
The False Binary: Frum vs. Non-Frum,
Believer vs. Skeptic
With respect for this speaker’s
sincerity – and the undeniable merit of Torah learning – this framing inverts
the pesukim’s thrust. Devarim 8 is not Moshe rebuking irreligious
farmers in Chevron; he is warning the miracle-steeped generation entering the
Land. The temptation to the “kochi” mindset strikes believers when
natural success eclipses overt nissim (miracles). Moshe fears not the chiloni’s
tank but the frum Jew’s complacency: “We learned, we davened, and look,
it worked – naturally.” The Torah anticipates religious triumphalism, not
secular hubris.
To cast “kochi” as a chiloni
pathology misses the mark. A number of the medinah’s architects – Zionist
pioneers, many frum or from frum homes – invoked Hashem amid
their labors. Today, an increasing number of soldiers recite tehillim in
the foxhole, engineers daven for precision in their code. They embody the pasuk’s
balance: exercising gifted ko’ach while remembering the Giver. The
binary – considering frum lomdim as sole spiritual guardians and
non-frum soldiers with their guns as the sole protectors – flattens a
nuanced Torah into caricature. It risks the very haughtiness Devarim decries: assuming
that our avodah alone secures the nation while dismissing our brothers’ physical
service as illusory.
Gratitude
If this chareidi view is
correct – if 1967’s lightning conquest, Entebbe’s daring raid, Iron Dome’s
intercepts are raw nissim via lomdei Torah – then Devarim demands
a response. Not quiet nods, but explosive, institutionalized hakaras hatov.
Post-Yam Suf, Pesach’s Seder is eternal. Post-Purim, the Megillah’s reading is
annual. Why no parallel for our more recent generations’ miracles?
After 1948’s resurrection, 1967’s
miracles – outnumbered armies routing coalitions – why are there no new commemorative
days to grace chareidi calendars? No bracha-laden Hallel on Yom
Ha’atzma’ut in yeshivos? No takanah binding bar mitzvah boys to thank
Hashem for IDF valor. When sirens wail over Bnei Brak and harm veers, loudspeakers
blare “nes!” When David’s Sling downs a barrage over Yerushalayim – silence
or, perhaps, a vague kollel credit, but no new rite. “Our yeshiva boys in our
institutions produced the decisive spiritual force that saved the nation,” we
say. Fine, but no ritual? Not even a celebratory new seder of limud?
This is the irony: The Torah’s “kochi”
sin is a sign of un-thanked abundance. Yet here, claimed miracles yield no
steady-state simcha – no special tefillos, no communal seudos todah.
The pilots train relentlessly, haunted by the next salvo; their humility is
built in. But to attribute all to unseen merit without visible praise? That
whispers, “Our learning suffices – autopilot engaged.” It is the steady-state
ingratitude Devarim 28 warns against, pride rebranded as piety.
A Unified Path: Honor the Hands, Thank the Heart
I believe the Torah charts
integration: Honor the chayal’s courage, the officer’s cunning, the
engineer’s ingenuity; these are manifestations of Hashem’s koach in
action. Celebrate their risks, their 80-hour weeks, their code that saves
lives. As Mishlei urges, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand
before kings” (22:29) – and before Hashem, with pride tempered by praise.
Then, weave in the thread: “It is
He who gave us this power.” Thank aloud – for minds sharpened by Torah, for a
nation where Jews innovate freely, for victories blending steel and siyata
d’Shmaya. Let lomdim join soldiers in joint tefillos; let
yeshivos host chayalim for Shabbos zemiros of todah (thanks).
In both transition’s thrill and steady-state’s calm, let simcha bind us – not
as mandate but as magnet.
Moshe’s vision was of a Klal
Yisrael where prosperity humbles, unifies, and elevates. May we live it: working
with all our gifted might, thanking with all our joyful heart. Only then do we
truly serve meirov kol – and truly thrive.
