Imagine celebrating your 40th wedding anniversary, and your wife stands up to make a toast.
She smiles and says:
“Don't think for one moment that I married you because you're handsome, kind, thoughtful, romantic, intelligent, hardworking, honest, funny, or compassionate.”
You're beginning to sweat...
Then she continues:
“No. I married you because every other guy I met was even worse!”
And just when you're trying to process that, she adds:
“Now that I've gotten that off my chest... let's go celebrate. I'm still in love with you!”
You'd probably respond:
“I'm not so sure I'm still in love with YOU!”
Yet, believe it or not, this is almost exactly how this week's Torah portion Eikev begins.
Forty years after leaving Egypt, standing at the threshold of the Promised Land, Moses tells the Jewish people:
“Don't think for a moment that G-d is giving you this land because you are righteous.”
These verses raise a fundamental question.
If the Jewish people are not receiving the land because they deserve it, and the Canaanites are losing it because they are even worse, where is the justice?
And if the answer is G-d's promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, another question follows.
Why should a promise made centuries earlier continue if their descendants repeatedly fail?
What exactly makes the Jewish people worthy of an eternal covenant?
That question lies at the heart of Judaism.
This is also the secret of genuine self-esteem.
Modern culture often tells us: “You're perfect just the way you are.”
Judaism says something deeper.
You are infinitely valuable because you were created in the image of G-d.
But you were never created to remain where you are.
G-d loves you exactly as you are, but He loves you too much to leave you there.
He believes in your ability to grow, to change, to rise higher tomorrow than you are today.
The Rebbe once told the story of Reb Gershon Ber of Pahar.
Every single night, before going to sleep, he would quietly say in Yiddish:
“Tomorrow will be much more beautiful.”
Not because tomorrow would be easier.
Not because tomorrow would be free of struggle.
But because tomorrow would be another opportunity to become closer to the person G-d created him to be.
That is the story of the Jewish people.
We are not the nation that never falls.
We are the nation that never stops getting back up.
We are not chosen because we are perfect.
We are chosen because we carry within us Abraham's spiritual DNA, the ability to search for truth, to return, to repair, to grow, and to keep moving forward.
That is why G-d continues to believe in us.
And if G-d never gives up on the Jewish people, then none of us should ever give up on ourselves.
Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), the first man to conquer Mount Everest, failed on his first attempt.
Shortly afterward, he spoke in England. Looking at a giant picture of Mount Everest, he pointed at it and declared:
“Mount Everest, you beat me the first time. But I'll beat you next time. Because you've grown all you're going to grow... but I'm still growing.”
A year later, he stood on the summit.
That is Moses' message.
G-d is not asking us to be perfect. He is asking us to keep growing.
Our failures do not define us; our willingness to rise again does.
Every mountain in life is an opportunity, not to prove how strong we are, but to become stronger than we were before.
The mountain has reached its limit. We haven't.
One of the great Chassidic masters, the Chidushei HaRim, explains these verses brilliantly.
Had Moses said that G-d chose us because of our righteousness, we might think that when we fail, the covenant ends.
So Moses says the opposite:
“Do not think it is because of your righteousness.”
The covenant is not based on our perfection-it is based on G-d's eternal promise.
That means every Jew, in every generation, no matter how far they may have fallen, remains part of that same eternal covenant with Hashem.
The nations lost the land because they normalized evil. The Jewish people, by contrast, never stop asking: How can we become better? How can we grow?
That is our spiritual DNA.
More than 3,300 years ago, Moses taught us that our mission does not depend on being perfect. It depends on remaining faithful to our calling.
As long as darkness exists, our mission remains unchanged: to bring more Torah, more mitzvos, more truth, more kindness, and more holiness into the world.
Let's continue Abraham's mission, Moses' vision, and together bring the world to its ultimate redemption. Amen.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky