Cause and Effect
This week’s Torah portion, Eikev, contains the text that comprises the second paragraph of the lengthier Shema prayer within the traditional liturgy. The early Reformers excised this passage from our prayerbook, chafing at its more transactional theology of divine reward for fidelity to the commandments, and by extension, divine punishment for a rejection of them. Indeed, this more fundamental sense of reward and punishment, cause and effect, seemed too simplistic for the more rarefied approach to faith that Reform Judaism sought to convey.
But perhaps there is another way to look at this passage that speaks to our current moment—one that reflects a more refined view of Jewish principles. Our adherence to the commandments—our striving to create a more just, more compassionate, better world—helps us to forge a society replete with blessings, less emerging from divine decree, and more from the product of our hands and hearts. In essence, we create our own “heaven” or “hell” on earth based on our use or abuse of free will. God is not the dispenser of fate, but rather empowers us to realize the highest expression of faith.