For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples on earth the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people. (Devarim 14:2)
Through the centuries we have sometimes demonstrated our appreciation and respect for the blessings and promises of our Creator by actively listening to His instructions in Torah. At other times we have ignored His expressed plan for us as a nation, and suffered the consequences: lost battles and exiles for glaring example.
If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Lord your God and serving Him with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late. You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil—I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle—and thus you shall eat your fill. Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them. For the Lord‘s anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is assigning to you. (Devarim 11:13)
