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Drash
for Shabbat Behar-Bechukotai The last two readings in the Book of Leviticus deal with many laws, also with the results of observing them or breaking them. During a leap year these two sections are read in two weeks, otherwise they are combined, as they are this year. Many of the mitzvot detailed here have an interesting common element, namely the number 7. Shabbat is the seventh day, and that commandment - one of the Big Ten -- is repeated here, as it is some dozen times in the Torah. Seven Sabbaths total to 49 days, which we are now counting during this season between Passover and Shavuot, known as the Sefirah (Counting) time, and the 50th day is the Shavuot holiday when we received the Torah at Mount Sinai. That's the daily count. Then there is the yearly count: the seventh year is to be the Sabbatical year, the year of shemita, when the land rests. No plowing, no seeding, just let the land lie fallow for the whole year. The Torah established the principle of land conservation far ahead of the rest of the world. In Israel today packaged food is frequently labeled "Not made with shemita products." Seven cycles of shemita, or 7 times 7 years, lead to the 50th year which is the Jubilee. In biblical times, as our Torah portion states, both land and people returned to their original status. If a field or a house was sold, it was not sold permanently - only until the Jubilee year, and then it had to be returned to its hereditary owner. The only exception to this rule was for houses in walled cities. Similarly, if individual Jews couldn't pay their debts, and had to sell themselves into indentured servitude, it was only until the Jubilee year, and then they went free. Here we read the words made famous on the Liberty Bell: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants." Debts were cancelled too. In a later century, the sage Hillel modified this law with a document called a prozbul which ruled that what the individual could not do, the court could do. So debts were collected by the court in Talmudic times. And in modern times, Chief Rabbi Kook prevented starvation by a legal fiction in which he "sold" the entire country to the Mufti of Jerusalem for a year, thus circumventing the Sabbatical year. More recently the Israeli Rabbinate decided that since Jewish farmers were not at the subsistence level any more they could afford to observe shemita. And it never applied outside of Israel. Indentured service applied to fellow Jews. Slavery too was recognized, and here the Torah sets severe limits on how slaves were to be treated. Rabbi Hertz' commentary points out that compared to slave laws in ancient Greece and Rome, the Hebrew slave - and even the alien slave - had a good life in Biblical Israel. Our second and final Torah portion contains a statement of cause and effect. What kind of security and prosperity we can create by observing the mitzvot, and what disasters await us if we despise them. These disasters are detailed in a list of warnings called the Tokhakha, and they make grim and graphic reading. Defeat, starvation, exile. Sadly, the Tokhakha played itself out in Jewish history more than once. We conclude the Book of Leviticus with a series of rules on tithing and contributing. The wonderful 16th Century commentary called the Kli Yokor ("Vessel of Value") suggests that this section immediately follows the grim warning section in order to remind us of Jacob, who in time of trouble vowed to give a tithe. Thus Jacob surmounted his troubles -- because he kept his word. Not so with later generations, says the Kli Yokor. People tend to have second thoughts about the pledges they make while they are suffering, and they quit giving. Then, look out! Perhaps the outstanding feature of this double portion of laws is the Seven theme. From the very beginning of our Torah - the seven days of Creation - to the Seven Blessings recited now for every Jewish bride and groom, that number measures our time, our tradition, our faith. This week as every week, we will divide our Torah reading into 7 aliyot. This week and every week, let's celebrate the 7th day! Shabbat Shalom.
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