The Torah’s Theory of History

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Sacks. Welcome to Madlik. My

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name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark and shed some light

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on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we

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host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform

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and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a

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source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show

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notes. This week’s parsha is Eikev, and we’ll explore how

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the Jewish story is neither a circle nor

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a straight line. It is history that rhymes.

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Somehow, Rabbi, I feel like we’ve touched on this before, but

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I couldn’t resist. It’s a good topic.

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I don’t know if we have or we haven’t, but it’s a really good topic. Let’s take it away.

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And it’s rare that I stop on the second word of the parsha and go,

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“That’s it. That’s what we’re going to talk about.”

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The parsha is called Eikev because it usually gets named after one of

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the early words in the parsha. And our parsha

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begins, “V’haya eikev.”

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V’haya has a

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sense of future focus, and eikev is

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enigmatic. So the Metsudah Publications

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translation translates it as follows:

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“In the future, as a consequence of your heeding

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these laws and your guarding and fulfilling them, Hashem,

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your God, will guard for you the covenant and the kindness

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that He swore to your forefathers.”

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Everett Fox translates it,

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“Now it shall be…”

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Again, it’s a word that speaks about the future,

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because that’s how he translates eikev—

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“because of your

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hearkening to these regulations by keeping and observing them,

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Hashem will keep for you the covenant of loyalty

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that He swore to your fathers.”

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So if you look at

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Targum Yonatan, the Aramaic translation

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of the Torah,

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it says, “V’haya halaf”—

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“in the future,” “as a consequence,”

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“in exchange for.”

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Rabbi, I think when I sell my chametz,

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or when I got married and wanted to transfer the value of my ring,

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there’s something called chalifin, is there not?

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Yes. That is correct. You learned about that in yeshiva.

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It’s an exchange.

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You hold up a token or a handkerchief,

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and you make a symbolic exchange.

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I’ll explain how chalifin works.

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It’s an exchange, but not an equal exchange.

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You give me your chametz and I give you my pen.

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Your chametz could be worth $10,000. The pen is worth fifty cents.

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But symbolically it shows that we’re serious,

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because we’ve exchanged the pen.

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So chalifin means to exchange.

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Targum Yonatan therefore understands

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the verse as a consequence or exchange for

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your heeding these laws.

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There really is a sense of quid pro quo,

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of causal relationships.

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Rashi says…

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“If you will hear the heel.” Eikev

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also means “heel,” the bottom of your

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foot. If even the lighter commandments, which a

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person usually treads on with his heels,

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which a person is inclined to treat lightly, you will hearken to

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them. So now the plot thickens,

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because there’s another problem besides the first two words

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of this verse. The other problem is

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that it says mishpatim. It doesn’t say mishpatim v’chukkim.

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So they’re trying to figure out: What is this consequence?

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And Rashi goes—you know you have an enigmatic word

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when we go out of the lane, so to speak,

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and say, “No, no, no. Eikev has nothing to do with quid pro quo or

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causal relationships or a

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trade. It has to do with a body part—your heel—and

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it has to do with, as a consequence of your

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keeping even the lowly commandments, which you

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might tread upon.” We’re really—I don’t know if you can call

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this peshat or midrash—but definitely it’s an inkblot test.

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People are coming at it with different theories.

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Yeah, well, I mean, it’s so great because it’s the first word.

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It’s the word after which the parsha is named. We

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have no idea what it means, and that

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means it’s going to get fun. So Ibn Ezra

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says eikev, “because,” has the same meaning as

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eikev, “reward forever.” He brings a

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verse from Psalms that says, “Natiti libi

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la’asot chukecha le’olam eikev.” I am

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resolved to follow Your laws to the

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utmost, forever. And in the translation that

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Sefaria gives, it’s uncertain. The Hebrew is uncertain.

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So now it means

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some sort of reward, but kind of a

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destiny—a kind of reward

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clearly in the future. You know, the Psalm that

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he quotes is translated as “the utmost” or “forever.”

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Very, very interesting that all of this baggage

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or nuance is being piled onto this

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one word. It’s fantastic. This is a

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fantastic word. So in

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Sefaria, you can click on any word and a dictionary comes up.

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So in that dictionary, eikev means consequence,

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gain, reward, end; as an adverb, as a

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consequence, because, consequently. So there clearly is

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this causal relationship, this reward

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for proper behavior. It’s

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future-oriented. When you say a causal relationship, it’s

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something that goes from now to the future. Clearly,

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there’s a lot in this one word. And now we’re going to

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go to a Ramban, Nachmanides, that

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I found to be just a

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kind of journey through this word, connecting all of

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these different meanings that started me thinking:

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What is history? What is Jewish history? And I think, as we read through

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it, maybe you’ll also have that same feeling. So

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Ramban says eikev means “because.” So also,

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“Eikev—because of the fact that Abraham hearkened to

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My voice.” So he quotes a use of the word

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in Genesis with Abraham. Rashi says, “If you will hearken

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even to the lighter commandments, which a person usually treads

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upon with his heels, those commandments which a

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person is inclined to treat lightly, then God will

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keep His promise to you.” And the commentators have said that the meaning of the

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word eikev is that, in the end, there will be a

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reward. So that was kind of like the last, Ibn Ezra.

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Similarly, “In keeping the ordinances of God,

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eikev rav, there is great reward.” So he

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quotes another verse. The verse here is thus stating:

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“And the end, the ultimate consequence of your hearkening to the

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ordinances and of your observing them, is that God shall keep the

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covenant and the mercy, and He will love you.”

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So I love this “ultimate consequence.” We are looking at

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the arc of history. And so Ramban now says, “This is

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correct, for in the sacred language, the beginning of anything is

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called rosh, ‘head.'” As it is said, rosh,

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the beginning. Rosh Hashanah is now around the corner.

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That’s the head of the year. So also, the leader of the

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generation is called the head of the people. The head of the

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yeshiva is called the Rosh Yeshiva. That was—I

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put that in; Ramban did not. Similarly, the

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conclusion of any matter is called eikev, “heel,”

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as the sacred language adopts these figurative expressions

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from the human body. And thus, the head of the people—

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That’s very interesting. And the heel is the end,

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right? That actually is fantastic, isn’t it? So now

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he is linking what Rashi said, which I said was taking

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a left turn off the highway. And

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Ramban is saying, “No, no, no. There is something there”—that the

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heel is a body part that is used for the

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end. So we do have this kind of time

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element to eikev. Scripture also speaks, says

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Ramban, of the head and the tail. Of course, we all know that

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from Pirkei Avot. And Onkelos rendered the word

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eikev as chalaf, “in exchange for,” like

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chalef, “in return for your service.” Onkelos

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thus made it an expression of something roundabout—the

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end result of a series of events—derived from the

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verse, “V’haya he’akov lemishor—the crooked shall be

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made straight.” That is, the circuitous road that goes

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roundabout will become a straight, level path. So

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before we get to that unbelievably profound

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verse in Isaiah, because we already mentioned Rosh

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Hashanah, now we’re going to have to mention Simchat Torah—

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hakafot, when we dance around. So

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what our rabbi is taking from chalifin is not

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simply an exchange. It’s a circle

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through which it flows. Right. It’s a perpetual

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exchange. It’s like the—what is one of the

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Newtonian laws? That energy is conserved.

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The metaphors are just piling

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in, each becoming more fascinating than the other. But

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yes, let’s get back to the verse in

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Isaiah: “The crooked shall be made straight.”

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Again, this is a wonderful short story by

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Agnon that you all have to read. But basically,

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what it’s saying is that, at the end of days, all

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these circuitous pathways that we’ve taken, all

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these detours that we’ve taken, all these compromises that we

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might have made—everything will be straightened out.

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Again, Isaiah is talking about the end of days. So

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now you can see why I’m reading history, and I’m

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reading an insight into Jewish history from here.

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Ramban continues. He uses other

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metaphors for hakafah, eikev, and being

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surrounded. He says, “The verse here is thus stating, according

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to Onkelos, ‘And it shall come to pass that the

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effect caused by your hearkening to the ordinances

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and your performing them will be that God will keep His covenant with

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you.'” “He has explained it well,” says Ramban about Onkelos.

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A similar expression is biglal, “for the sake of this thing,”

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which means “on account of,” from the word v’galelu,

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“and they rolled the stone.” If you hear the word gilgal (reincarnation) in

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there, you’re not off the mark. And he

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says these are expressions of rolling and circling.

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Therefore, they called Jacob Yeshurun, from the root

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yashar, “straight” and “upright,” because the

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opposite of the deceitful one is he who is upright.

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So now we’re getting into the moral arc of

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history. Right. It’s different. A circle is

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different from being upright. You said a circle is more

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about this perpetual movement.

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Upright is more about there being a direction—and this is

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upright. I’ll go one step further.

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We started by talking in the introduction about the

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Greeks, who thought everything was cyclical. Everything just

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repeats itself. And maybe the rationalists, like Descartes and others,

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who looked at history and said everything was a straight line.

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Here I am going to take a little bit of liberty

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with “deceitful” being the opposite of

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yashar, in the sense that it’s not straight—

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that it wiggles. It goes serpentine, if you will, from

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that great movie called The In-Laws. It’s not

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direct. It can be deceitful, but it can also

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be the ugly truth of the way

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we plod through life. And that, I think, is the dichotomy

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that Ramban is now adding to the baggage. Similarly,

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the end part of the foot is called eikev, as it is said, “And his

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hand seized b’eikev, the heel of Esau.” So now we’re bringing it

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back home. Jacob grabbed

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Esau’s heel, and that’s why he got his name. But his name

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is also, in a sense, because he was

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deceitful—he bought the birthright, and so forth and so on.

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Yeah, I mean, that heel—and Ramban is always well known

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for that. What’s the connection between

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“V’haya eikev tishme’un,” the beginning of this week’s

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Torah portion, and the story of Esau and

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Jacob, and holding on to the heel? It’s the same

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Torah. It’s the same story.

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Thanks. And now, back to our podcast.

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So I’m going to make an argument that all of these

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words and concepts are being thrown

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into the cholent of Jewish historiography.

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In other words, what appears straight can sometimes

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be crooked. What appears aimless is going toward some

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future.

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What seems unintentional is intentional.

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He’s bringing a lot into this.

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And I do believe, though, that he feels that

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eikev, if you look at it even in our verse, is

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saying: Because, through better or worse, through thick or

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thin, through direct or indirect progress, you have kept those

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commandments and have reached this point in history, God will be

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loyal to you. Right. So he says, “So

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also is the expression, ‘They came upon him ba’akifin,'”

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meaning with circuitous and subtle arguments. The word

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akeivin—as these two letters, the bet and the peh, were considered

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interchangeable. So he’s really bringing it full circle. If you think that the

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arc of history has a morality to it, what

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ultimately he is, I think, intoning is the fact

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that you get to the end. It’s not quite “the ends justify the means,”

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but it is the fact that, to get to the end,

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it’s not always a straight path. And the straight path might

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not get you to the end, but the circuitous route

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that is the history of the Jewish people will get you

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there. I just find it a totally amazing

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Ramban. Well, I’d say—and of course, it’s true—

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Ramban lived through a very difficult period in

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Spain, when the Jews were challenged.

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He participated in a famous disputation with a Christian in

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1263. He understood the

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circuitousness of Jewish history. And

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we’re not going to get into it—we’ve covered it so many times before—but

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Ramban is the one who also championed ma’aseh avot

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siman la-banim—that what happens to previous

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generations gets repeated later.

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Rabbi, you and I heard a lecture from Shai Held

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this past Erev Pesach, and he said something

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from Tehillim (Hallel) that really had my mind spinning. In

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Tehillim, we say, “Mah lecha hayam ki tanus, haYarden

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tisov le’achor?” What is with you, sea,

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that you flee? That means the splitting of the Red Sea. And the Yarden, the

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Jordan, turned backward when the Jews were entering the Promised Land.

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So even the splitting of the Red Sea was a kind

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of prequel to the splitting of the Jordan. So really,

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Jewish history does repeat itself. But each

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time, it’s a different and unique situation. Yeah, very good. And I

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think that’s what he meant by ma’aseh avot siman

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la-banim. So, I mean, to give you that

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60,000-foot review of history in

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terms of what I think the consensus is, the Greeks—especially

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Plato, the Stoics, and Polybius—held a cyclical

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view of history, while the Hebrew Bible is distinctive in insisting

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that history moves forward toward a goal: creation,

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covenant, redemption. What is unique about the Torah is not simply

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that it combines linear and cyclical time, but that

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recurring historical patterns occur within a purposeful

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historical journey. And I am going to be

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arguing that, in this one Ramban, you kind of find

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it all. Yeah, well, that’s why Ramban is so great. You know, he

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is kind of a collector of material, but he also

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has a strong point of view himself. So

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recently I’ve been rediscovering—or discovering—Jonathan Sacks,

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because I think that we on Madlik tend to bring in

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contemporary thinkers and such, and I think Sacks does as well.

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This is what he writes in his introduction to

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Covenant and Conversation: Genesis. He says, “According to

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many anthropologists and historians, a quite new and

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different form of time was born in ancient Israel. Often this is

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called linear time. I prefer the phrase covenantal

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time. The Hebrew Bible is the first document to see time

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as an arena of change. Tomorrow need not be the same as

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yesterday. There is nothing given, eternal, and immutable

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about the way we construct societies and live our lives together.

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Time is not a series of moments traced on the face of a watch,

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always moving, yet always the same. Instead, it is a

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journey with a starting point and a destination, or a story with a

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beginning, middle, and end. Each moment has meaning, which can

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only be grasped if we understand where we have come from

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and where we are going. This is time, not as in

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nature, but as in history.” So

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this is a thought very similar to Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi:

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that the Jews, because they saw time

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differently, actually made history differently.

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It was a living history. History was a

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part of memory and really

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a part of our ritual. Another example

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that is brought—I saw something by Ismar Schorsch—and he says:

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Take mo’ed. Ohel Mo’ed is a Tent of Meeting.

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But what he says is that Judaism

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replaced nature with history. So mo’adim used to be

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agricultural holidays based, in fact,

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in nature, in the material world, and Jews

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made them into history. So Passover

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became the Exodus story. Shavuot, which is the first

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grain harvest, became the giving of the Torah. It’s a

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fascinating way of looking at how we treat history.

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Of course. But it’s history as memory. It doesn’t

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matter whether the sea split. That’s not what it’s about.

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It’s about the fact that we remember that the sea split.

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And as I said in the beginning, we use that as a

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paradigm and a lens to understand what’s happening to

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us in the present. And it becomes a

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part of our present

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vocabulary. And I think that’s a little bit of what happens at the Seder, when we

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have to say that we must see ourselves as though we

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left Egypt. But we are still “we” — So I want to

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introduce our listeners to a thinker from the

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1700s called Giambattista Vico,

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whom I came across through Isaiah Berlin. And

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he saw history not as a straight line of progress,

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but as a dynamic, spiraling journey. What he called it

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was corsi e ricorsi, a dance of

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rise and fall, creation and decay. And he

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really was unlike the Enlightenment thinkers, who believed

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in inevitable progress. Vico thought history

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advances through recurring patterns—not circles,

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but spirals. And what intrigued

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Isaiah Berlin was, first of

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all, that every age has its own way

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of evolving. You never go back to where you started at the

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beginning, even though there is this cycle, and that’s what makes it

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a spiral. And then the other thing that

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is fascinating—as an aside—he (Vico) said all of this

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applies to everybody except the Hebrews. And most

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people think that he (Vico) was protecting himself from the Roman Catholic Church.

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It was such a radical idea that, of all the people he

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spared from history as a spiral, it was the Jews. And

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I’m arguing that that’s exactly who he was talking about.

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That’s amazing. But anyway, what Isaiah

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Berlin loved about it was that it

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00:25:01.126 –> 00:25:04.059
challenged monism—

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the idea that there is only one single objective truth or perfect

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system for how human beings should live. Isaiah

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00:25:12.025 –> 00:25:15.214
Berlin was terrified of monism because he believed it

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inevitably led to authoritarianism and utopias

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00:25:19.077 –> 00:25:22.250
that justify violence. So there’s a little bit of

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00:25:22.362 –> 00:25:25.776
relativism here, but what it’s saying is that every nation

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00:25:26.433 –> 00:25:29.863
goes through its own corso e ricorso. In

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the case of the Jewish people, we have

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Creation, we have Genesis, we have

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the Exodus. We take these concepts, these

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00:25:41.035 –> 00:25:44.690
benchmarks, and we recycle them and recycle them,

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and we move forward without leaving them

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behind. And he found that to be

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extremely insightful. But what I could

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not really believe were the

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00:25:59.630 –> 00:26:02.868
two kinds of theories that Vico had.

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One was called the verum factum principle. It says

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that humans can truly understand society and history

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00:26:10.611 –> 00:26:14.266
because we made them ourselves, whereas only God

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00:26:14.362 –> 00:26:17.199
can fully understand the natural, physical world.

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00:26:18.049 –> 00:26:21.319
Isaiah Berlin felt that he really was creating

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00:26:21.351 –> 00:26:25.038
sociology, economics—the human sciences, so to

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00:26:25.038 –> 00:26:28.693
speak. And what Vico was arguing is

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00:26:28.725 –> 00:26:32.300
that, through verum factum, we humans

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00:26:32.572 –> 00:26:36.355
can understand human history better than anything else. Yeah, that’s

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00:26:36.355 –> 00:26:39.914
right, because we live it and we make it. It is truly

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ours. And I think that takes that eikev

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00:26:43.297 –> 00:26:46.583
concept, where it’s a part of the human body, but

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00:26:46.663 –> 00:26:50.446
it’s something through which we can truly understand how we

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00:26:50.446 –> 00:26:54.245
meander through history, taking a left turn and a right turn. The

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00:26:54.373 –> 00:26:58.221
other thing he argued for was fantasia. Vico argued

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00:26:58.221 –> 00:27:01.892
that, to understand the past, we cannot use mathematical formulas.

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00:27:02.228 –> 00:27:05.915
We must use active, empathetic imagination—fantasia—

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00:27:06.220 –> 00:27:09.810
to enter the minds of past cultures. Berlin saw this as

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00:27:09.923 –> 00:27:13.642
the true birth of modern social science, cultural

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anthropology, and genuine historical sympathy.

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It’s just truly amazing. The second thinker that

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00:27:21.769 –> 00:27:25.440
Berlin loved was Herder, and Herder did talk about the Jews.

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00:27:25.937 –> 00:27:29.784
Herder was a Lutheran minister and

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00:27:29.784 –> 00:27:33.503
was German. He argued for the emancipation of the Jews, but he

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00:27:33.631 –> 00:27:37.478
also argued for the return of the Jews to their promised homeland. Because,

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00:27:37.478 –> 00:27:40.989
again, he saw that every society does not need to become

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00:27:41.230 –> 00:27:44.788
universal. It needs to find that which is particular

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00:27:44.788 –> 00:27:47.962
about it—those prisms,

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00:27:48.475 –> 00:27:52.130
that mythology—and build upon it. And

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00:27:52.867 –> 00:27:56.266
language was very important to

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00:27:56.394 –> 00:28:00.225
Herder. And if we’ve proved anything today by using one

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00:28:00.321 –> 00:28:03.511
word, eikev, and looking at all the baggage that it has,

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00:28:03.944 –> 00:28:07.471
we’ve proven the point that different words can trigger

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00:28:07.471 –> 00:28:10.885
different results. But I think, really,

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00:28:11.222 –> 00:28:14.684
there is something unique about the Jewish

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00:28:14.845 –> 00:28:17.890
vantage point on history. And I think it’s

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self-fulfilling. It truly is our best

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00:28:21.177 –> 00:28:24.671
guarantee that, as our verse says,

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00:28:25.248 –> 00:28:28.807
eikev—because we have remained

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00:28:28.855 –> 00:28:31.484
loyal to this evolving

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00:28:32.077 –> 00:28:35.331
historical narrative—we will survive.

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Right. God will keep His promise to us.

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I just love this insight that humans can

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00:28:43.202 –> 00:28:46.841
understand history better than anything else because we live it. I

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00:28:46.841 –> 00:28:50.672
mean, it’s fantastic. I mean, you really end here

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00:28:50.672 –> 00:28:54.167
with Yerushalmi again. It’s really Yerushalmi’s notion

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00:28:54.439 –> 00:28:58.094
that history is what you live. It’s not what happens

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00:28:58.206 –> 00:29:01.957
to you, but how you live it. And it gives

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00:29:01.957 –> 00:29:05.708
us a whole new, I think, toolkit for when

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00:29:05.885 –> 00:29:09.427
we study our texts—how we go through that

463
00:29:09.427 –> 00:29:13.034
layered approach of commentary and commentary and commentary. We’re

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00:29:13.178 –> 00:29:16.801
actually looking at concepts that were

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00:29:16.930 –> 00:29:20.546
created and meant something in one age, and will mean

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00:29:20.643 –> 00:29:24.324
something else in another age, and will mean something

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00:29:24.661 –> 00:29:28.261
still more for our children’s children. And we need

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00:29:28.293 –> 00:29:32.053
to take the time, as Vico argued and Herder

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00:29:32.133 –> 00:29:35.975
argued, to understand what it meant in all of those different periods,

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00:29:36.313 –> 00:29:39.646
to be able to process it,

471
00:29:40.097 –> 00:29:43.881
to be inspired by it, and to be guided by it. And that,

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00:29:43.897 –> 00:29:46.826
at the end of the day, is this kind of chalifin

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00:29:46.843 –> 00:29:50.560
and these hakafot and all

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00:29:50.560 –> 00:29:54.200
of these wonderful words and language that we came

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00:29:54.200 –> 00:29:57.560
across today. Fantastic. This is really, really

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00:29:57.560 –> 00:30:01.120
good. We’re ready for Eikev in Westport. We’re ready

477
00:30:01.120 –> 00:30:04.720
for Eikev. We’re ready for Rosh Hashanah, for Simchat Torah. We

478
00:30:04.720 –> 00:30:08.520
can go on vacation. What do you mean? We’re ready to sell

479
00:30:08.520 –> 00:30:12.260
our chametz. Fantastic. Shabbat shalom, everybody. This is

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00:30:12.260 –> 00:30:14.960
great. I look forward to next week. Shana tovah.

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00:30:16.299 –> 00:30:18.933
Shabbat shalom. See you all next week.

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Here’s a question I invite you to consider: If

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history truly does rhyme and is created by people

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rather than impersonal forces, what role does each of us

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play in writing the next chapter? I’d love to hear from you.