Parashat Ekev

This is a speech posted with permission from one of my Bar Mitzvah students for this week’s spiritual message from Rabbi Cantor Risa Askin: Parashat Ekev.

"It shall come to pass, if you shall give heed diligently to my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in its due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, and your wine, and your oil." (Deuteronomy 11:13 -14)

Whew, it has been a hot August! It felt hotter than usual. And so far, it does not seem to be getting better. Is there global warming? It sure feels like it. The key question, divisive in our nation right now, is whether human behavior is the cause of global warning. Most scientists say yes. Many politicians and businesspeople say no. I personally agree with the scientists. But I am interested in the deeper philosophical question. Philosophers argue, can we ever know, truly know, the cause of anything? The key issue in Ekev, my bar mitzvah portion, is causation. Do events cause other events? Does our behavior cause certain consequences? The word Ekev literally means "heel." This became the basis of Jacob's name Yaakov, who was holding onto the heel of his brother Esau at birth. We say in English that certain events "follow on the heel" of other events. There is causation in the world. The Torah reading begins, "Therefore it shall come to pass (Ekev), if you give heed to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the Lord your God shall keep with you the covenant and the mercy which he swore to your fathers; He will love you, and bless you, and multiply you" (Deuteronomy 7:12 - 13). In other words, our actions cause certain results. What we do has consequences.

The great British empirical philosopher David Hume strongly disagreed. He said we can only know what we can see directly with our eyes. And we can never see that anything causes anything. He said that sometimes events are correlated, but we can never make any claims about causation. Perhaps people who smoke have a higher rate of lung cancer than those who do not smoke, there may be a correlation, but Hume would say that we cannot claim that smoking causes lung cancer. If Hume lived today, he would deny that human behavior causes global warning. I teach my philosophy students that if we follow Hume, we can make no claims about causation. Not every philosopher agrees.

Immanuel Kant claimed that he wrote his great book Critique of Pure Reason in reaction to Hume. He said that reading Hume "woke me from my dogmatic slumber." In a nutshell, Kant claimed that we human beings see the world in terms of causation. Causation is part of how the human mind organizes itself to understand how the world works. Kant, although not religious in a classical sense, would agree with the Bible. Events cause other events. Our behavior has real consequences. On a very deep level, as I tell my philosophy class, I think Kant got it right. We humans look at the world and see causation. Our daily prayers drive this point home in a serious way. Every morning and every evening Jews recite the second paragraph of the Sh'ma, taken from this week's portion. The paragraph teaches that if we obey God's commandments and hearken to Gd's voice, God will give us the weather we need to grow crops. Gd's commandments are related to our understanding that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. If we treat the earth properly, the earth will treat us properly. Our behavior has consequences. Over the years I have wondered about this second paragraph of the Sh'ma. Unlike the first and third paragraph, we tend to mumble the second paragraph very quickly, which allows us to ignore it. Then I heard a Rabbi Askin give an environmental explanation for this paragraph that made sense to me. If we treat the earth properly, the earth will treat us properly. Our actions have consequences. Causation exists in the world.

We need to see the world as a place of causation, where what we do causes events to happen. I will let the scientists and the politicians argue about whether humans cause global warming. Meanwhile, I believe we need to act as if such causation exists. We need to act to protect the earth with the prayer that our actions will make a difference. I wish you all a Shabbat Shalom