Parshat Behar-Bechukotai
Rabbi Dov Linzer
The parsha of Behar, which the Torah emphasizes was given at Mount Sinai, deals with the laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years. We are forbidden to work the land of Israel every seven years and must allow all to eat its produce. Every fifty years, on the Jubilee year, we are commanded to free the slaves and to restore each person to his ancestral plot. The parsha of Bechukotai enumerates the great rewards that will be bestowed upon us if we fulfill the commandments, and the tragedies and sufferings that will befall us if we abandon them.
The Hebrew idiom equivalent to “what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?” is “what does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai?” This question about our parsha demands attention. Why does the Torah emphasize that our parsha was given at Mount Sinai? Moreover, what is the relationship between Behar and Bechukotai? In addition to being usually combined for the Torah reading, there is an internal connection as well. In Bechukotai, the exile of the Israelites is foretold for them having abandoned God and not observed the Sabbatical laws and that when we are in exile, the land, being empty of people, will reclaims its lost Sabbaticals. Why is this one mitzvah so central?
Most of us tend to think that the purpose of the Sabbatical year is to help the poor, to allow them to eat their fill of all the produce. The Talmud, however, indicates that the poor actually fared better in a non-Sabbatical year. When the land was tilled and planted the poor were given gifts from the crops, as is portrayed in the story of Ruth. During the Sabbatical year, however, nothing was planted and the only produce to eat was that which grew on its own. There was a lot less to go around and poor and rich competed for it alike. The purpose of this year cannot be to provide the poor with food!
We begin to understand the meaning of the Sabbatical year when we pay close attention to the Torah text. The Torah calls the year a “Sabbath unto God.” It actually uses the word “shabbat” as a noun and verb seven times in the first paragraph of the parsha. The phraseology of our parsha is similar to the commandment of Shabbat as well: “Six years you shall work and on the seventh year it shall be a year of rest [shabbat] for the land.” The Sabbatical year, then, is a Sabbath of years and its import must be analogous to that of the Sabbath of days. What is the significance of Shabbat? To remember God as Creator, to leave our involvement with and enslavement to the physical world, and to focus on God and the spiritual world. When this is done on a weekly basis it has the benefit of being regular but the drawback of being short-lived. How much of the Shabbat experience stays with us during the week? One minute after Shabbat is over we are back on the phone and computer, immersed again in our daily activities. When do we have the opportunity to immerse ourselves in God’s world, to change our direction and to grow in meaningful ways? This is the purpose of the Sabbath of years. In an agricultural society, it was a year that people would take off from work and, hopefully, dedicate to God. It was a “Sabbath unto God.” We read in Deuteronomy that this year concluded with a public Torah reading for the entire Israelite nation. It is a year in which we demonstrate that it is not wealth or land that matters, but God. In this year crops were not planted or harvested, and although the poor did not have as much food, everyone shared in an important lesson: rich and poor are equal before God.
The Torah emphasizes that these mitzvot were given at Mount Sinai. We were freed from slavery to serve God, to stand at Mount Sinai. To reject the Sabbatical year is to reject Mount Sinai, it is to choose a material world over a spiritual one, to accept enslavement to materialism and reject the freedom that comes from serving God. This choice will ultimately lead to our being exiled from the land. If we cannot remember what is truly important, if we enslave ourselves to the land, God will free us from this enslavement until, lacking our material prosperity, we finally return to God.