Partners with the Divine - 8/14/25

In the beginning, God creates the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 2:15, God places humanity there with the charge to tend this garden in partnership with the Divine. Yet, this first creation does not endure as intended—human curiosity and impulse override the agreement, and Adam and Eve are banished from Eden.

Not long after, human violence and corruption overtake the world, and God sends a flood, beginning anew with Noah and his family—a second creation, almost entirely from the ground up.

In the Book of Exodus, God begins again, this time not with the whole of humanity, but with a people—the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel. God frees the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and the desert becomes a kind of womb, a space of incubation. Here, God nourishes the Israelites with manna and, as this week’s Torah portion, Ekev, reminds us, ensures that their clothing does not wear out over the course of forty years (Deut. 8:4).

In this third creation story, the Land itself becomes central. The Promised Land is not like Egypt, with soil watered by the Nile. Instead, it is a land flowing with milk and honey, rich with the seven species—wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates—yet dependent on rain, which comes only at the will of the Divine. Once again, as in Eden, the people are partners with God in sustaining the natural world. But unlike Adam and Eve, whose partnership was defined by a single prohibition, the Israelites enter with a rich tapestry of teachings and mitzvot to guide their lives.

The story of our people is told in cycles of creation and destruction, rupture and renewal. Parshat Ekev is one of those moments of renewal—an invitation to the Israelites to begin again in partnership with God as they enter the Land.

I believe that this partnership did not end with the Torah. It continues—in the ways we care for our environment, in the commitments we make to one another, and in the structures we build for just and compassionate living. Between the new interfaith environmental task force spearheaded by a BHT member and the community-building work we are undertaking together, we have real opportunities to live out this human–Divine cooperation in our own time.

Do you see yourself as a partner with the Divine in this world? What is the nature of that partnership for you? When have you sought it out—and when have you felt it succeed?

-Rabbi Hannah Wallick