We Don’t Live by Bread Alone

Last updated on: August 1, 2018 at 9:20 pm by Hebrew College

We Don’t Live by Bread Alone 2018-08-01T21:20:24-04:00 Hebrew College

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Parashat Eikev (Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25)

By Rabbi Daniel Klein, Rab`10, MJEd`10

“In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”
(Paul Haggis’ Crash)

With these opening lines, the movie Crash captures a truth about the human condition – we need each other. For practical, emotional, spiritual reasons and more, we are meant to be in relationship. The Bible expresses this idea in the opening verse of the Torah when God declares, after continually proclaiming the works of creation to be “good,” that for the singular created human being, it is “not good to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

In fact, says modern science, we need to be with others for our health. According to Shankar Vedantam on his podcast Hidden Brain, numerous studies have shown that people with “strong social relationships had about a 50 percent lower mortality risk than those with weaker ties.” He refers to a study by BYU researcher Julianne Holt-Lunstad that concludes, “Those with weaker social relationships had a greater risk of death than people who were physically inactive or obese. Let me put that another way. Spending time building and nurturing your friendships might be just as important to your health as eating right and exercising.”

We are meant to be in relationship and as Crash depicts, we are so often isolated and desperate to be with others. In modern society, loneliness and isolation, being trapped in our metaphorical cars on the LA freeway of life, has become, according to the Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the previous surgeon general, an “epidemic” as various studies show that anywhere from a quarter to nearly a half of the population reports being lonely.

Parashat Eikev, our parasha this week, is preoccupied with the human tendency towards isolation. The frame in the parasha is on the ever- present danger of being ensnared in the fallacy of autonomous self-sufficiency, and the resulting disconnection from God that occurs.

Deuteronomy 11:13-17, which is part of the second paragraph of the shema and comes towards the end of this week’s parasha, captures this idea. These verses are commonly read to be a statement of reward and punishment. If we follow God’s commandments and love God, then there will be rain and the land will produce an abundance of food. If instead we turn away from God and worship other gods, we will experience devastating repercussions through insufficient rain and food production.

However, it is not a stretch to read the Hebrew as being a comment on human hubris – that if we follow God’s commandments and love God, and if there is rain and the land produces food, be careful lest we go astray and worship other gods. In this reading, it is not about reward and punishment, but about the human tendency to be seduced by our sense of control and power, particularly when our lives are going well. When this happens, we mistake ourselves for the world. We lose sight of our interdependent existence, forgetting how so much of our lives comes to us as a gift.

In this apostasy, we not only lose God, but we create the conditions to lose other people because we naively think we do not need them. In our delusions of grandeur and self-sufficiency, we create the conditions for loneliness. As the parasha says, “Humans do not live by bread alone but by all that comes forth from God’s mouth” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

Physical sustenance may be necessary for us to survive, but it is insufficient for us to thrive. We need more.

One of the ways to escape this all too human trap is to take seriously the second part of this verse;i.e., that a nourishing life is dependent, at least in part, on our awareness that we are not fully in control of our lives.

As Lewis Hyde writes in The Gift Must Always Move, we are “lightened” and “enlivened” when we know that “our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom.”

But more than that, we are lightened and enlivened, according to an ancient rabbinic teaching, when we participate in this gift-giving – when we imitate God. When the Torah says in various places that we should cleave to God, as it does in our parasha (Deuteronomy 11:22), it means, according to rabbis in the Talmud, that we should cleave to God’s qualities: just as God is compassionate, so too should we be compassionate; just as God clothes the naked, so too should we clothe the naked; just as God visits the sick, so too should we visit the sick (see, for example, Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 14a).

Says the Maggid of Mezritch, God’s compassion is actually manifest through us – we are the channels for Divine compassion to come into the world. Our imitation of God’s compassion is the performance of, or merging with, God and God’s compassion.

Maybe more than awareness of the ways in which we are recipients of our lives, we need to be agents of other people’s experience of compassion, of the gift of being alive. Such gift-giving can propel us out of the internal isolation of our own false autonomy and into substantive encounters and relationships with others – into a life of meaning and nourishment.

Daniel Klein is a 2010 graduate of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, where he serves as Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Life.

Interested in a possible career in the rabbinate? Read Rabbi Dan Judson’s article “Jewish Lessons on Meaningful Work.“ Rabbi Judson is Dean of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College.

Seventy Faces of Torah

shabbat

Previous Post

July 24, 2018

Shabbat and the Persistence of Slavery

Next Post

August 7, 2018 Blessing, Curse, and the Freedom to Choose

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2026 March 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz