Does God want us to be rich? An article in TIME magazine “Does God want us to be rich?” describes a relatively new phenomenon in the non Jewish world called prosperity theology. The basic idea is that God wants you to be rich. Doing the right religious acts and having the right religious faith is a way to become rich. The reason God has certain religious expectations of you is so that when you do them, you will be rewarded with material wealth.
As crazy as this idea sounds, it’s not totally alien to Judaism. In fact, this Parsha talks a lot about the material comforts that God provided for us in the desert and the promises of a fruitful land that God will bring us into. This Parsha also contains the second paragraph of the Shema prayer, which on the surface, seems to be saying that God will give us material rewards in return for our love and service.
The problem with this theology is that it is implying that God needs us to love God, to serve God by doing the commandments. In order to get the things that God needs, God offers us incentive, prosperity. According to this perspective, the laws are really for God, material wealth is all that the humans really need. We each have something that the other one needs, it’s a tit-for-tat system, if we do something for God, God will do something for us.
But this is not the lesson that this week’s Parsha is conveying. This is not the lesson of Judaism. God does not need us to do mitzvoth, God does not need anything. Maimonides was very clear that God’s true nature is to not be dependent on anything. Furthermore, the Parsha emphasizes that material comfort is not all that is important to human beings. Chapter 8, verse 3 says, “it is not by bread alone that man lives, rather by everything that emanates from the mouth of God does man live.
This theology is emphasizing our dependence on God and not vice-versa. This is an important lesson that can be found throughout this week’s Parsha. We are reminded of the way we sinned against God throughout our travels in the desert, and warned about future times of material success when we might think that we deserve the comfort that we have found, that we shouldn’t forget that it is a kindness from God that we have found comfort and we owe it to him, it’s not because we deserved it.
This week’s Parsha is a really beautiful description of what our relationship with God, as a nation, and as individuals could be. It is a crystal clear response to the age-old question: “what does God want from us?” You don’t have to be bible scholar to see it, Moses says it to us! In chapter 10, verse 12 Moses says, “and now Israel what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear God, to go in his ways, and to love him.”
Easy, right? All you have to do is follow this incredibly long list of esoteric rules and requirements. Maybe if you’re Moses! The Talmud in berachot 33b points out that, “as far as Moses was concerned it was but a small matter, but for the rest of us not necessarily. This statement can be compared to the case of a man who is asked for a large vessel and happens to have one. To him it’s no big deal, because he has one. But if you ask even for a small one from someone who doesn’t have anything then even the smallest vessel will seem like a large one to that person. The point being, for most of us, just following God’s laws, loving God and walking in God’s ways is much easier said than done.
But perhaps this is true only if we do these things from the perspective that they are a burden which we need to do in order to receive our reward from God. That is not the perspective that this week’s Parsha is trying to convey.
The lesson the Torah is trying to leave us with is that it is for our own sake that we do mitzvoth, the mitzvoth themselves are good for us, it’s not for the material reward. Judaism is not a prosperity theology. The next verse, verse 13 says “to keep God’s commandments for your benefit. Upon this Nachmanides comments: “God does not require of you anything which is for His good, but it is only for your good, as is implied in Job where he says, if you are righteous, what have you given God, what has he received from your hand? But everything is purely for your benefit.”
When the Parsha talks about our benefit, it’s not talking about material comfort. Material comfort is only a possible outcome from our actions. It is not the reason to do mitzvoth, nor is it a guarantee for happiness at all. Reward and punishment according to most opinions in Judaism is not about material rewards, and we may not ever see the reward or the punishment in this lifetime, it’s a concept. It’s a belief that God is fair.
The reason to fear and Love God, to walk in God’s ways and to do God’s commandments is because that is the way we connect to the true source of life and lead a meaningful life. Truly dedicating our lives to loving, fearing, emulating and serving God is a beautiful experience, we all know that there is an intangible feeling that we get when we make an effort to connect on some level. In the long run we believe that the more you put in, the more you get out of it.
It’s difficult to maintain this connection on a daily basis, let alone to do it all day every day. So the end of the Parsha gives us some practical suggestions on how to at least begin the effort to do what needs to be done. At the end of the Parsha, and it is also part of the second paragraph of the Shema, we read you should teach your children to speak about them. Rashi gives educational advice about the necessity to Torah at all ages. It starts at the very beginning of their lives, but when does it end? The Talmud in kiddushin asks the same question. It tells a story of an elderly man who used to teach his grandchildren. That doesn’t really answer the question, because after all he’s still teaching children. Except maybe the Talmud is telling us that even the elderly man who was still teaching his grandchildren was still learning as well. He was partaking in the education of the next generation, his responsibility never ends.
The Shema says you should be talking about Torah when you are home, when you are out of the house, when you rise up and when you lie down. Many commentators have explained this as the means to achieve a true love of God. The way to do that begins with education, both for us and for the next generation.
There is a classic debate about whether loving God is a commandment, because the torah uses commanding language when it says to love God, but love is a feeling, not an action. Can you really command love? The sefer Hachinuch, a medieval book of Jewish law by an unknown author says that it is absolutely a commandment. You can’t command the feeling, but you can command the person to at least try, to focus their thoughts and attitudes on loving God. The best way to influence your thoughts and attitudes about Judaism and God is to be continuously learning and educating ourselves, that is how we can bring about the feelings of love for God. Similarly with the next generation, children need to be modeled this behavior, beginning with their earliest experiences through their most impressionable years as teenagers that Judaism isn’t just something we do sometimes, but it’s a part of who we are. Everything we do, we do in a Jewish way.
This is how we can begin to influence our people and our community to do what God requires of us. I’d like to encourage us all to think about 3 things that we can do starting today. Think about how we can enhance our love of God through the effort we put into our own continuing education, think about some ways we can have influence our community, and think about how we can commit ourselves to the education of the next generation of Jews.
Only then can we begin to fulfill the words of the verse, “and now Israel what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear God, to go in his ways, and to love him.”
