Behar Bechukotai
Summary
These two parashiot are read together when the year is a ‘short’ year and there are fewer shabbatot in the calendar. The Book of Leviticus concludes this week.
Parashat Behar literally takes us back from the Mishkan, (the tabernacle) to ‘behar’ the mountain – specifically Sinai -and presents the laws regarding the sabbatical and the jubilee years. For six years the people are to sow their fields and prune their vineyards, but in the seventh year, the land must be allowed to lay fallow. In other words, it must be given a rest - a Sabbath for the land.
Every fiftieth year is a jubilee year. We are told that the jubilee year is not only to have all the rules of a sabbatical year but also is the time that liberty will be returned to all the Israelites who had sold themselves into servitude during the previous forty-nine years. Property (especially land) is also to be returned to the original owner-families. Thus the clock is reset and the original distribution of land among the tribes of Israel is to be preserved forever.
Parashat Bechukotai, meaning “my laws” begins with both promise and a curse – if the people follow God’s laws and commandments then God will protect and care for them. But if not, then God will punish them, the land will not produce and the people will live in fear, dominated by their enemies. Those who survive the punishment will eventually repent and then God will remember the covenant.
The Book of Leviticus concludes by detailing the different types of gifts that might be brought to the sanctuary, and also the laws of tithing and redemption of tithes. It concludes with the verse “These are the commandments that the Eternal gave to Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.
D’var Torah
The bible is very clear – everything we have belongs to God and is at best ‘on loan’ to us. And we have to treat it properly and with respect. Even the land must be allowed to rest, rather than be worked to produce more and more. Besides giving the land a chance to return to a good condition, the sabbatical year also meant that all people, whether they were rich or poor, would find themselves dependant on what the land produced naturally, as all of them would have to collect and gather the food that was there, rather than the usual experience of the richer ones harvesting a good amount and leaving a proportion in the field for the poor to glean.
This would have been a transformational experience in that the ones who always had food would become aware of the conditions the poor faced all the time, and one imagines that the bible hoped this learning would motivate them to help support the needy.
As we read these last chapters of the book of Leviticus, a book that is primarily about the ritual system and how holiness is created, we become aware of the agenda of social justice that is threaded through it, how the world cannot be made perfect if justice is not available for all. Even during the shemitta year, the year when the land is to rest and recuperate, the obligation for tzedakah for the poor continues – in other words just because you are tightening your belts, you don’t forget the needs of others who rely on the help they get from society in order to survive.
Everything we have belongs to God and is, at best, on loan to us. When we harvest the land we leave food for the poor. When we help a fellow human being who is in financial difficulties we give them their dignity and are not to charge interest on any loan we give. The laws remind us that even the money we have is not ours to use as we please. It is a conditional loan, to be partially used for the benefit of others.
As we look into an uncertain future where politically, socially, financially we know that times will be tough and we will almost certainly feel ourselves to have lost some of the security we felt in earlier times, the message that comes through this part of Leviticus could comfort us a little – and could teach us a lot. We must – even now -continue our obligation to a just society where the gap between rich and poor must be actively narrowed (if not removed) on a regular basis. We must – even now - continue our commitment to tzedakah, to the dignity of our fellow human beings, and to our land. And if we maintain our understanding that each of us has a part to play in bettering the world, and that sometimes that process requires us to start again in a different way, then even now when from the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico to the horse-trading in the palace of Westminster may leave us feeling impotent angry and depressed, we can stop, take stock, and get on with helping to create a healthier and holier world.
Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild