Underfoot

On Wednesday morning I touched the mezuzah on my way out and didn't realize I'd done it until I was already in the car. Hand up, fingers to the doorpost, fingers to my lips, keys out, door locked. The whole thing took two seconds. I was thinking about traffic on 85 and whether I'd remembered to send a message, and somewhere between the doorknob and the ignition my hand had done what it does every time I leave the house.

I sat in the driveway for a second and thought about that.

This week's parsha is Eikev — the word usually gets translated as "because" or "if." But eikev also means "heel" — the bottom of the foot, the part that touches the ground. Rashi picks up on this. These are the mitzvot a person might trample with their heel, he says. The small commandments. The ones that seem minor, easy to skip, not worth the effort on a busy morning.

וְהָיָ֣ה ׀ עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֤ת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים֙ הָאֵ֔לֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם וְשָׁמַר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ לְךָ֗ אֶֽת־הַבְּרִית֙ וְאֶת־הַחֶ֔סֶד אֲשֶׁ֥ר נִשְׁבַּ֖ע לַאֲבֹתֶֽיךָ׃

And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, the ETERNAL your God will maintain faithfully for you the covenant made on oath with your fathers:

— Devarim 7:12

The big commandments are easy to remember. Don't murder. Keep Shabbat. Honor your parents. Those come with weight, with drama, with obvious consequences.

The heel commandments are different. Touching a mezuzah on the way out the door. Saying a bracha before a glass of water. Returning a lost object. The things that structure a life without announcing themselves.

Moses, still standing on the eastern bank of the Jordan, still speaking to a people he will not cross over with, describes the land they are about to enter:

כִּ֚י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ מְבִֽיאֲךָ֖ אֶל־אֶ֣רֶץ טוֹבָ֑ה אֶ֚רֶץ נַ֣חֲלֵי מָ֔יִם עֲיָנֹת֙ וּתְהֹמֹ֔ת יֹצְאִ֥ים בַּבִּקְעָ֖ה וּבָהָֽר׃

For the ETERNAL your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill;

— Devarim 8:7

Wheat and barley. Vines, figs, pomegranates. Olive oil and date honey. A land where you will eat without scarcity, where the rocks are iron and the hills hold copper. It is one of the most sensory passages in the Torah — not a list of laws, not a warning, just a description of abundance so specific you can almost taste it.

And then, right after the abundance, a command:

וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ וְשָׂבָ֑עְתָּ וּבֵֽרַכְתָּ֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ עַל־הָאָ֥רֶץ הַטֹּבָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָֽתַן־לָֽךְ׃

When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the ETERNAL your God for the good land given to you.

— Devarim 8:10

This verse is the source for birkat hamazon — grace after meals, the blessing Jews say after eating bread. It is the only blessing in the Torah that is explicitly commanded. The blessing before eating? The rabbis derived that one from logic: if you bless when you're satisfied, how much more should you bless when you're hungry and in need? But the Torah itself only commands the one after. Eat. Be satisfied. Bless.

The commandment is not for the moment of hunger, when every bite matters and gratitude comes easy. The commandment is for the moment after — when you're full, when the edge is off, when it would be simplest to push back from the table and move on without a word. The blessing exists for precisely the moment when you are most likely to forget.

A heel commandment, in other words. The kind you step right over.

In Chicago last week, a group of parents moved forward with plans to open a new Jewish high school inside city limits. They have a building under contract and the local Jewish federation behind them.

The project grew partly from concerns about Jew-hate in the public and private schools — a school board president forced to resign over antisemitic social media posts, a lawsuit against an elite prep school where the band allegedly played the Nazi anthem.

But the bigger draw, parents said, was something simpler: they wanted a Jewish high school their kids could reach without a ninety-minute commute. No march. No viral moment. Just families looking at what their children needed and starting to build it.

That is a heel commandment. The kind of work that doesn't make [usually] a headline, doesn't photograph well, and will outlast most of the things that do.

Moses knew what he was doing when he put the land description and the blessing in the same breath. The abundance is real — the springs and the wheat and the copper in the hills. And the forgetting is real too. He spends the next several verses warning about exactly that: you will build houses and settle in, your herds will multiply, your silver and gold will increase, and your heart will grow haughty and you will forget. The blessing after eating is a guardrail. A small practice to hold the whole structure in place.

Later in the parsha, Moses asks the question that sounds enormous but turns out to be surprisingly small:

וְעַתָּה֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל מָ֚ה יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ שֹׁאֵ֖ל מֵעִמָּ֑ךְ כִּ֣י אִם־לְ֠יִרְאָ֠ה אֶת־יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ לָלֶ֤כֶת בְּכׇל־דְּרָכָיו֙ וּלְאַהֲבָ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ וְלַֽעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃

And now, O Israel, what does the ETERNAL your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the ETERNAL your God, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve the ETERNAL your God with all your heart and soul,

— Devarim 10:12

What does God ask? Only this. Walk the paths. Love. Serve. The Talmud notes the absurdity — "only this?" As if it's simple? — and concludes that yes, for Moses, it was.

Which, somehow, is not a boast. It is an observation about what practice does to a person. The things you do every day stop feeling enormous. They become the floor you walk on. They become the heel.

In Chicago, a group of parents signed a lease. In kitchens and dining rooms everywhere, Jews will push back from Shabbat dinner later tonight and sing birkat hamazon — the long version, the grateful version, the one that takes several very full blessings to say what could be said in a sentence: thank you for the food.

The small commandments bear the weight. That's the whole parsha.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham