This week’s torah portion is actually a double portion: Behar-Bechukotai. In the first portion , “Behar” (meaning “at the mountain”) we learn about the laws of “Shmitah”- a ruling that requires that the land lay fallow every seventh year.
Just as we human beings observe a Shabbat every seven days after working for six days—God asks that the land be farmed and harvested for six years, but on the seventh year, it is allowed to rest.
After seven cycles of shemittah, the fiftieth year (7 x 7 = 49, it's the year following the 49th, so it's the 50th), is called yovelor thejubilee. It is also a year of rest for the land, but in addition to that, all servants go free, and all property returns to its original owner. That means that whenever somebody buys a plot of land he knows he will only keep it until the year of yovel when the land will go back to the original owner.
In Bechukotai ( “In my laws”), the Israelites are told that if they follow God’s commandments they will have enough food to eat, rain will come to nourish their crops, there will be peace and safety in the land, they will defeat enemy armies, and God will always be with them.
The portion then concludes with severe warnings: if the people do not follow God’s commandments, they will be punished. The words of Torah do remind us, that regardless, God will always be with us.
I have a lot of difficulty with the theology presented in this Torah portion: God rewards when commandments are followed and God punishes when the mitzvot are not followed. For a nascent society like the Israelites, perhaps this sort of stern parent theology worked. It most likely served to keep a recently freed from slavery people in line and law-abiding.
It goes without saying that the doctrine presented in the Torah is not palatable for many of us: the good are rewarded and the bad are punished, as we all know good people who have suffered terribly and evil people who seem to be rewarded. So what are we to make of the precepts as presented in this portion?
My teacher, mentor, and friend Rabbi Richard Levy (of blessed memory) addresses this in his High Holiday prayerbook “On Wings of Awe.” Rabbi Levy approaches these words in the torah not from a didactic and foreboding place, but rather from a place of love and compassion. He writes:
If we can hear the words from Sinai,
then love will flow from us;
and we shall serve all that is holy
with all our intellect and all our passion
and all our life…
But if we turn from Sinai’s words
and serve only what is common and profane,
making gods of our comfort or power,
then the holiness of life will contract for us,
one world will grow inhospitable…
Let us honor the generations that came before us,
keeping the promises or those yet to be.
Levy tells us that we can only do the best we can- to hear the words from on top of the mountain and serve the Almighty as best as we can. We need to hear these ancient words and understand what they mean for us in our own lives at our own time.
As we come closer and closer to Shavuot—the time of the giving of the law to the people- take a moment to listen: hear the words from Sinai, acknowledge the commandments in your heart, embrace what you are able to do, and teach them diligently to the next generation.