My massage therapist knows: I have a stiff neck. Very literally. Almost always.
And in this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Eikev, Moses tells the people:
וְיָדַעְתָּ, כִּי לֹא בְצִדְקָתְךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לְךָ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַטּוֹבָה הַזֹּאת – לְרִשְׁתָּהּ: כִּי עַם-קְשֵׁה-עֹרֶף, אָתָּה.
Know that it is not because of your righteousness that your God הי is giving you this good land to possess; for you are a stiffnecked people (Deuteronomy 9:6).
So perhaps it’s not just my excessive computer and phone-using lifestyle or my penchant for holding stress in my upper body that gives me a literal stiff-neck. Perhaps, it’s from being Jewish!
I say this cheekily but also with surrender. To be k’she oref, stiff-necked, is to also be part of a legacy of a people who have been stiff-necked for a long, long time.
But is this being stiff-necked a bad thing or a good thing?
The simple meaning of this verse is that God chooses us as a people and gives us the land despite our being stiff-necked.
And later in the parsha (Torah portion), Moses instructs us to get rid of our stiff necks:
וּמַלְתֶּם, אֵת עָרְלַת לְבַבְכֶם; וְעָרְפְּכֶם – לֹא תַקְשׁוּ, עוֹד.
Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more (Deuteronomy 10:16).
Moses wants the people to become less hardened of heart and of neck so that we can love God and love the stranger as God loves the stranger, teaching:
כִּי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם – הוּא אֱלֹהֵי הָאֱלֹהִים, וַאֲדֹנֵי הָאֲדֹנִים: הָאֵל הַגָּדֹל הַגִּבֹּר, וְהַנּוֹרָא, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-יִשָּׂא פָנִים, וְלֹא יִקַּח שֹׁחַד. עֹשֶׂה מִשְׁפַּט יָתוֹם, וְאַלְמָנָה; וְאֹהֵב גֵּר, לָתֶת לוֹ לֶחֶם וְשִׂמְלָה. וַאֲהַבְתֶּם, אֶת-הַגֵּר: כִּי-גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם, בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.
For your God הי is God supreme and Lord supreme, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing food and clothing. You too must love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).
It seems that it is hard to love God and to love the stranger while being so stiff-necked. Being stiff-necked gets in the way.
But also, God chose to be in relationship with us, to give us Torah, to bring us to the land, very well knowing that we are stiff-necked. For anyone who has ever entered an intimate relationship or friendship hoping that someone would change, only to be disappointed as time went on that the person didn’t change, I imagine that God also knew that despite Moses’ hopes that the people would soften, God already knew that we would stay stiff-necked.
Not only that, our stubbornness might have been the very quality that got us into trouble with God over and over in the wilderness. While at the same time, it may have been the very reason that God was drawn to us in the first place.
The Torah reminds us in our parsha that God was drawn to our ancestors, that God loved our ancestors:
רַק בַּאֲבֹתֶיךָ חָשַׁק יְהוָה, לְאַהֲבָה אוֹתָם; וַיִּבְחַר בְּזַרְעָם אַחֲרֵיהֶם, בָּכֶם מִכָּל-הָעַמִּים – כַּיּוֹם הַזֶּה.
Yet it was to your ancestors that God was drawn out of love for them, so that you, their lineal descendants, were chosen from among all peoples, as is now the case (Deuteronomy 10:15).
And what did God love about our ancestors, specifically about Abraham?
The Piecezner Rebbe, guiding his community from the Warsaw Ghetto, teaches that God loved Abraham because Abraham was confident and strong in his own righteousness, that he demonstrated his persistence, his dedication, and his resilience. That is, God loved Abraham specifically because Abraham was stiff-necked!
The Piecesnzer Rebbe writes in Eish Kodesh:
Being stiff-necked is one of the best attributes. One who is not stiff-necked flip flops—one time, they hold like this, and another, they hold like that…Especially when they are tested, they may not be able to endure, God forbid. This is not the case for someone who is stiff-necked…In fact, the more one is stiff-necked, the more one will be able to withstand difficulty.
Being a stiff-necked people is only bad when the attribute is used for evil and one becomes involved in evil matters. This is true of all good qualities that can be used for evil.
We follow in a long lineage of stiff-necked ancestors and perhaps we can embrace our metaphorical stiff-necks.
So let us not be so stiff-necked that we cannot turn and see the world around us. We need enough flexibility to be affected by the pain of others, to reflect on our own privilege and responsibility, and, as this week’s parsha teaches, to love God by loving the stranger. Our stiff-necks are not an excuse for selfishness or self-righteousness.
Instead, let us be more like Abraham, our ancestor who stubbornly believed in one God even when it was lonely, and who fought over and over with God in order to save the righteous people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Like Abraham, we should be stubborn about who we are and what we believe in, about our morals and our purpose on this earth, and about our clarity that there is divine presence in each and every human being. Let us use our stiff necks to help us get through hard times and to do good – together.
Shabbat shalom,
Rav Leah