Our Relationship to God
May 10, 2010 By Lisa Gelber | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
As I chanted this verse from the end of Parashat B’har, over and over again, in preparation for reading Torah, it suddenly occurred to me how clear the Torah is about our relationship to God as slaves. Not so many weeks ago, we focused on our enslavement in Egypt. Think back to the Passover seder, where we sang Avadim Hayinu (We Were Slaves). Not to God; rather, l’Pharaoh b’meetzrayeem (to Pharaoh in Egypt). We know the story, and can name the oppressor. So if we were slaves to Pharaoh, and then God took us out of bondage—out of the narrow places, the straits of Egypt—what are we to do with this idea of our enslavement and servitude to God?
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Shemitah, Freedom, and Covenant in the Face of Assimilation
May 9, 2014 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Behar
Parashat Behar opens with the commandment to observe the sabbatical cycle (for six years, one may plant crops and work the land and then, in the seventh year, the land must rest—what is known in halakhic terms as shenat shemitah, “the year of release”); shemitah or “release” is observed today in the Land of Israel.
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Freeing Today’s Slaves
May 13, 2011 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Behar
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” These words from our parashah (Leviticus 25:10) are famously inscribed upon the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and they have resounded as a message of hope for the oppressed throughout the world. Yet our parashah also contains a darker message that endorses slavery, just as America has paired proclamations of liberty with cruel practices of slavery and discrimination throughout its history. In the same chapter of Leviticus, we read that non-Israelite residents of the land may be acquired as permanent slaves, and may be kept “as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all time.”
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The Promise of Security
May 1, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
Parashat Behukkotai opens with a dramatic quid pro quo.
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A Little Black Mark
May 15, 2015 By Rachel Bovitz | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes a personal practice that involved daily focus on 13 moral virtues. Franklin’s memoir, translated into several languages in the late 18th century, became widely influential, reaching even Eastern Europe, where Rabbi Menahem Mendel Lefin of Satanov wrote Heshbon Hanefesh, published in 1808. Rabbi Lefin included justice and most of the other virtues in Franklin’s list when he created his 13 primary middot (moral virtues) to be focused upon in mussar practice (the Jewish approach to cultivating these virtues). Rabbi Lefin’s definition of tzedek (justice) paraphrases a classic Talmudic teaching attributed to Hillel: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.”
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Yom Yerushalayim—Inhabiting the Land
May 1, 2013 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai | Yom Yerushalayim
Our double Torah portion opens with God’s command to Moses to tell the Israelites, “When you come to the land that I am giving you, and you inhabit the land.” No sooner did I read this verse as I prepared to write these words of Torah, than my own counting of the days flashed back 46 years to my first time ever in Israel, when I was a teenager on Camp Ramah Israel Seminar.
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Behar-Behukkotai
Jan 1, 1980
1 The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: 2 Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:
When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the Lord.
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