Here is something I have noticed about myself, and maybe you will recognize it. I pray a lot better when I am scared.

When something is actually wrong, when I need something badly, I am all in. Focused, humble, meaning every word. Then the thing works out, and within about a day (sometimes less) I am back to mumbling through bentching while half my brain is already on my email or I’m focused on my WhatsApp messages.

Eikev is a whole parsha about that. And what surprised me is that it does not treat it as a small character flaw. It treats being full and comfortable as one of the most spiritually dangerous places a person can stand.

Bless when you are full

We already know the line, even if we did not know it lived here. ואכלת ושבעת וברכת. Eat, be satisfied, bless. It is where bentching comes from.

But look at the timing the Torah picked. Not bless when you are hungry and scared and desperate for help. Bless when you are full. Which is a strange moment to ask for gratitude, because full is exactly when you feel like you need nobody.

Hungry people daven on their own. That takes no commandment. The mitzva is aimed at the other moment, the one where the plate is cleared and you are leaning back in the chair and gratitude is nowhere near the top of the list.

And then the part nobody quotes

Then Moshe keeps going and it gets sharp. Watch yourself, he says, because when you have eaten and you are full, and you have built the nice house and moved in, and the herds got bigger and the account got bigger and everything you own quietly multiplied, that is when your heart lifts up and you forget.

Not the empty stomach. The full one.

Which is backwards from how I actually run my life. My plan, if I am honest, has always been: get to enough, then relax. Once the money is handled, once the kids are settled, once the pressure........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)