B'har-B'chukotai

Leviticus 25:1-27:34

by Rabbi Lisa Gelber

For to me B'nai Yisrael are slaves, they are MY slaves, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; I am Adonai Your God. (Lev. 25:55)

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?

It's not surprising that a relationship of this kind—one of slave and master—with anyone, let alone God, seems uncomfortable to our modern sensibilities. Parashat B'hukkotai, among other readings, reminds us of God's power in our narrative: "I am Adonai your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from being their slaves" (Lev. 26:13). Was God merely proving God's might, rescuing us from the bonds of one enslavement to introduce us to another? It's difficult for me to imagine that God merely wants us to do what we're told, shut down our imaginations, and cease questioning; so, to be eved Adonai (a slave or servant of God) must mean something else entirely.

Parashat B'hukkotai begins quite clearly: "Eem b'hukotai teylaychu v'et meetzvotai teeshmoru [If you walk in my laws and guard my commandments]" (Lev. 26:3). Then the Torah goes on to tell us how wonderful everything will be—our fields will flourish, we'll experience peace in the land, we'll multiply as a people, and God will be among us. Great. How do we make this happen? What does it mean to walk in God's laws and watch out for God's commandments? Rashi, the eleventh-century commentator, suggests that although we might presume "eem behukotai teylaychu [if you walk in my laws]" means "if you observe all of my mitzvot," what God really requires is she t'h'yu amaleem baTorah, that you—or we—should immerse ourselves and labor in Torah study. This, in turn, will lead us to learn and understand the mitzvot, v'la'asot, and do them.

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Emor

Leviticus 21:1−24:23

Gleanings 

Obligations to the Poor at Harvest Time. 

By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch

Words often conceal the origins of the idea they denote.

Etymology and meaning diverge and thus confound. A good example relates to a halakhic fragment in this week's parashah. I refer to the verb "to glean." The word denotes minimal gain through hard work. Basically an agricultural term, it conjures up an image of beggars at harvest time gathering whatever remains in the field after reaping. From there the meaning expands to any activity, physical or mental, that involves collecting painstakingly individual items of the same order from disparate quarters.

The etymology of the word "glean" may be medieval English or even Celtic, but the idea itself hails directly from the Torah, but one of many scattered throughout the fabric of western civilization. Without the biblical context, the social value that inheres in the word remains unilluminated. The practice of leaving gleanings in the field for the poor is adramatic example of the extent to which faith is a seedbed for charity in Judaism and later in Christianity.

In our parashah, we read an abbreviated version of a law first enunciated in last week's parashah. "And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Lord am your God" (Leviticus 23:22). Omitted is the parallel injunction pertaining to the harvesting of your vineyard: "You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard"(19:10).

Bearing the Plight The spirit of both verses is identical: at the very moment when we are overcome with a sense of entitlement, we should bear the plight of others less fortunate in mind. No matter how hard we labored and worried to bring in this harvest, it does not belong wholly to us. Our personal blessing carries a measure of social responsibility. God forbids us from harvesting our crop down to the last stalk or shoot. There are first some with holding taxes to be paid.

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Parashat Aharei Mot—K'doshim

Leviticus 16:1–20:27

The third verse of Parashat K'doshim says, "Ish imo v'aviv tira'u" (One should revere his mother and father) (Lev. 19:3). The same mandate appears twice as the fifth commandment, "Kabed et avikha v'et imekha" (Honor your father and your mother) (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). Honoring parents was considered a virtue in the Roman world. Parents took care of their children, and children were expected to return the favor when parents grew old. But Rome did not create a legal obligation to care for parents, and a child who refused to do so could not be compelled by the courts.

Unlike the Romans, the rabbis made this rule legally enforceable. The obligation to honor parents appears in the Mishnah in the first chapter of Kiddushin (1:7), regarding marriage law. This may seem like a strange location. When discussing women's exemption from and obligation to mitzvot, the rabbis single out honoring parents for special mention. They say that sons and also daughters are obligated to perform this mitzvah. Why did they mention it separately, given that they subsume almost all other mitzvot under general rules? The answer is that when a woman marries and moves in with her husband's family, she needs to know that her obligations to the parents she left behind do not cease. In addition, the Mishnah implies that she acquires new obligations to her husband's parents. It is she who will be burdened with the responsibility of caring for them. This becomes clear when the Mishnah says elsewhere that a husband may stipulate that his ex-wife continue to care for his parents for a period of time, even after the divorce (Mishnah Gittin 7:6). Surprisingly, both Talmuds later reduce a woman's obligation to her own parents. They say that for so long as she is married, she is exempt from honoring them. It seems that caring for her husband trumps caring for her parents. We thus see that honoring parents has a direct connection to marital law and to women.

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Tazri·a—M'tzora

Leviticus 12:1–15:33

This week's commentary was written by Dr. Alan Cooper, Elaine Ravich Professor of Jewish Studies and provost, JTS
This week's double dose of purity laws is unlikely to top anyone's list of favorite Torah portions. While the laws may be discomfiting and obscure, however, they also are fundamental to an understanding of biblical theology and anthropology, and they convey a message that transcends their particular details.

The priestly author of Leviticus marks the collection of laws in chapters 11–15 as a digression from the book's narrative flow. Next week's Torah portion begins with the words, "The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron" (16:1), picking up a thread that was dropped following the report of the young priests' demise in chapter 10. The intervening laws concerning dietary restrictions (chap. 11), childbirth (chap. 12), skin eruptions and related afflictions (chaps. 13–14), and bodily emissions (chap. 15) seem to stand outside the story time. In addition to their concern with purity and impurity, what those laws have in common is that they address the essential characteristic of human existence, the fact that we are embodied.

In traditional Jewish thought, embodiment and mortality are the principal factors that distinguish us from God. Unlike God, we must take in sustenance (chap. 11) and reproduce (chap. 12) in order to survive, and we inevitably experience physical corruption (chaps. 14–15) and death. Those are ingredients of our humanity, natural concomitants of our embodiment. We strive to constrain and control them and, once every year on Yom Kippur, we attempt to suppress them altogether in a ritual of disembodiment (Lev. 16:29–34).

Concerning God, in contrast, as the popular synagogue hymn Yigdal declares:

אין לו דמות הגוף ואינו גוף, לא נערך אליו קדושתו

God has no bodily form and is incorporeal; God's holiness is incomparable beyond measure.

Belief in an incorporeal God is the third of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles. In his "Laws of Repentance" (3.7), Maimonides condemns as a heretic anyone who conceives of God as having bodily form. He also devotes the first chapter of his Guide of the Perplexed to refuting the view that the references to the "image" and "likeness" of God in Genesis 1 denote God's physical body. (Ancient Near Eastern evidence, particularly a ninth-century Aramaic royal inscription from Tel Fekheriye, may argue to the contrary, but that is beside the point.)

Maimonides' insistence on God's incorporeality evokes an obvious question: if we rule out the possibility that God has any physical form, what does it mean for us to be "in the image of God" (Gen. 1:27)?  Many commentators have proposed that the "image" connotes some nonmaterial divine quality or attribute that is essential to humanity, perhaps one that distinguishes us from other living creatures. For Maimonides, the distinguishing feature is the intellect, but that is only one of several possibilities.

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Sh'mini

Leviticus 9:1–11:47

In Parashat Sh'mini we read of a great tragedy that befalls the people of Israel on the very day that it celebrates the dedication of the Mishkan, the sanctuary in the desert. Two of Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, bring an unauthorized offering and, consequently, they are slain by a fire that issues forth from heaven. We are told that when Aaron was informed of his sons' death he said nothing: "And Aaron was silent."

The meaning of silence is of course ambiguous. In the Talmud there is a dispute as to whether, in a case where one party claims that another owes him money and the other party remains silent, we should interpret the silence as being an admission of obligation. Of course, the failure to respond to an accusation may be an act of concession, but it may equally well be means of indicating that the accused feels no need to respond to what he considers a baseless accusation.

Silence may also be an act of contempt. It may be the equivalent of someone saying, "I will not dignify that remark with a reply." Indeed, Proverbs advises us, "Do not answer a fool in his foolishness."

The ambiguity of silence's significance is rooted in its avoidance of dialogue; it indicates that no further discussion is necessary, either because what has been said is obviously correct or because it is clearly baseless. That is, silence may indicate an embrace of what was said previously or it might be its opposite, an act of total disengagement.

There is another type of silence, namely silence in the face of tragedy—the silence of Aaron. What was going on in Aaron's mind as he stood there speechless? It may be, and there is a rabbinic tradition to this effect, that Aaron's silence expressed his acceptance of the Divine decree. As painful, and perhaps inexplicable, as his sons' deaths may have been, Aaron deferred to God's greater wisdom.

However, there are at least two other possibilities. One is that Aaron was furious with God for having taken the lives of his sons, but he was reluctant to express this anger. It may be that he feared that in his rage he would utter some blasphemy. Alternatively, he may have seen such an outburst as pointless in the face of Divine Will.

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