Torah of Character: Ekev - From Past to Future

Abstract

Prospection is the ability to think about, imagine, and plan for the future. Depressed people tend to get stuck in past experiences and, as Martin Seligman and Anne Marie Roepke describe in the book Homo Prospectus, they also exhibit faulty thinking about the future. Cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology interventions target ruminative thinking about the past and amplify optimistic thinking about the future. This week’s parsha highlights the positive and negative aspects of prospection. The opening word of Parshat Ekev, for example, is not its namesake, Ekev, but Vehaya – “And it shall be (Vehaya), if (ekev) you listen to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep the covenant and love with which He made an oath to your fathers” (Deut. 7:12). One midrash explains that the word vehaya generally connotes happiness, while the word vayehi (and it was) denotes pain and sadness (Bereishit Rabbah 42:3).