Grappling with Slavery in Parashat Behar
May 23, 2025 By Marjorie Lehman | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
Parashat Behar is filled with powerful messages about building a just and compassionate society, emphasizing commandments to care for the land, support the poor, and treat hired workers with fairness and dignity. However, I find that Parashat Behar stirs up more discomfort than ethical inspiration. I am always struck by the difficult distinction it makes between Israelites and non-Israelites with regard to slavery. With the themes of Passover and the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian bondage in my mind, I find it hard to reconcile that Leviticus 25 permits the enslavement of non-Israelites while protecting Israelites from such a fate.
Read More
The Terrifying Third Aliyah of Behukkotai
May 31, 2024 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Behukkotai | Shavuot
Why do we continue to read such horrible curses, and another passage much like it in Parashat Ki Tavo (Deut. 28:1–68), each year? The simplest answer is that we read the entirety of the Torah each year, omitting nothing. However, the Mishnah (Megillah 3:6) already notes something special about the curses of the Leviticus passage: “The section of curses must not be broken up but must all be read by one person.”
Read More
Growing Into Torah
May 12, 2023 By Megan GoldMarche | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
For this week’s parashiyot, Behar-Behukkotai, I might ask: What is something that you took or borrowed from someone that you know it is time to return, perhaps because it is the right thing to do or because it will make you feel lighter? This can be a physical thing like a book or shirt, or something intangible like the hope or support you received from someone. If you are hosting shabbat dinner this week I encourage you to try it out, with a brief explanation of the ideas of Jubilee and returning land to its original owners that appears in this week’s parashah.
Read More
The Blessings of Curses
May 27, 2022 By Ellie Gettinger | Commentary | Behukkotai
It is easy to see the last two years as a curse. A million people have died in the US alone; lives have been upended. We are in a constant state of emotional whiplash, responding to whatever new national emergency faces us. Reading the curses at the center of Parashat Behukkotai, I was struck by how chaos and lack of control presented within the tokhehah, or admonition, dovetails with the constant emotional disruption of the pandemic.
Read More
Why Do Jews Still Adhere to the Torah’s Covenant?
May 7, 2021 By Jeremy Tabick | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
Why do we, as Jews, have fealty to the Torah? Why do many of us feel bound by the Torah’s laws?
Read More
The Nature of Peace
May 15, 2020 By Walter Herzberg | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
The description of peace and prosperity in this week’s Torah portion seems particularly fitting for our current situation.
Read More
Remember the Land
May 31, 2019 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Behukkotai
Spring is my favorite season because it draws me outdoors, enticing me to leave the city and enjoy the rivers, fields, and mountains of this glorious earth. Even near the city I often find myself in nature, biking along the Hudson and up the Palisades past waterfalls and nesting eagles. Returning to the land reminds me of the many blessings of our world, filling me with gratitude and awe. It also causes foreboding since the signs of stress on the natural systems that make our lives possible are everywhere evident. While this era of anthropogenic climate change may be new, the concern that human conduct could lead to ruin and exile from the earth is found already in our Torah portion.
Read More
The Theology of Meteorology
May 11, 2018 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
Imagine if your weather app displayed not images of sun and clouds, but icons of good and evil, like this: ☺ ☹. Each city might have a virtue index—with the weather forecast tracking not the jet stream but morality, indicated by a friendly or fierce face. City X has been charitable, so they can expect light rains followed by sunny skies, but City Y has seen an uptick in violent crime, so it is in for a drought or hurricane. Such a system sounds absurd, and yet it is basically what the Torah presents as a theology of weather.
Read More
