TorahParsha

What we learn at Sinai

for Parshat BeHar 

 

i

Up on Mount Sinai

God tells Moses

to build the Mishkan:

God’s place among the people

where only the pure may approach

only the unblemished may enter

only the High Priest may come                         

into the holiest room.

 

ii

After God teaches the Laws

of the Mishkan

of the responsibilities we bear

with God’s Mishkan among us—

then up on Mount Sinai

God commands

that every seven years

the Land must go fallow,

every seven years

the rich and the poor

and the servants and the workers

and the animals of the field

must give up their claims to the soil

and eat of the Land together.

We must know, God says,

that we do not own His Land,

that we are guests on His soil.

 

iii

What do we learn at Sinai?

That God’s space

is not ours, but His:

His to decide who may enter,

how we partake—

rich, poor, citizen, stranger,

man, beast

we are all guests ofGod.

None us belongs more than any other.

We all belong the same way.

So that in God’s  eyes

we are all one community;

from God’s point of view

we are all one.

 

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Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

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Leviticus Chapter 25, particularly 25:1-7, 23

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Correction: Last week, I referred to tents as Ohalot, when the correct term was Ohalim (now corrected online). I must have been thinking of the Mishnaic term, not the Biblical one. Thank you to Gershon Hepner for pointing this out.

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How we improve upon God

for Parshat B'Har - B'Chukotai

 

i

God says:

every seven years

will be God’s Sabbath year:

let the Land lie fallow,

let whatever grows be left

for everyone to eat.

*

Then God says:

count forty nine years—

seven cycles

of seven years,

a perfection of sevens.

And one year past that perfection

on the fiftieth year

you must sanctify the year,

you must proclaim freedom in the Land:

lands go back

to their ancestral families,

slaves go back

to their families as well.

 

ii

God says:

when My year has come,

recognize that it has come.

Step back from My Land.

Renounce ownership.

And when we renounce ownership

we all access the same land,

the same food;

equality is the wonderful by- product.

*

Then God says:

Go beyond merely recognizing My years.

Make the years yours.

Count the years yourselves.

Sanctify the fiftieth year,

the culminating year,

yourselves.

And go beyond letting equality come:

declare freedom outright.

 

iii

God shows us

to take the human

within His Law

and to draw it out

and so to make God’s Law

a human Law.

That is the culmination of His Law.

That brings His Law

even beyond perfection.

 

 

__

Shabbat shalom,

Abe       

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How should we use our senses?

for Behar - BeChukotai

i

I see the world from my own vantage-point.

But I hear your voice

from wherever I face;

sound calls me to you.

*

Consider:

Eve finds the Fruit

a pleasure to the eyes;

but she and Adam hear

the voice of God in the Garden,  

and they know they have wronged Him.

Eyes are a gateway to your pleasure;

sound startles you

from yourself

toward another.

 

ii

We count out forty-nine years.

On the fiftieth

we blow the shofar,

the trumpet.

Debts are forgiven,

land reverts to ancestral families,

land goes fallow;

slaves go free.

To say:

your borrower

land

slave

have their own existence

entirely apart from you.

*

We come to this understanding

through the trumpet:

through listening.

 

iii

Of the slave who shall go free

in the fiftieth year,

God says:

he is owed freedom,

you shall not see him worked brutally 

before your eyes.

To say:

train your eyes

to find brutality

to root it out.

*

For forty-nine years

you ready yourself to hear the shofar:

to listen,

to hear around you.

Learning to listen,

you learn to use your eyes.

Learning to listen,

you learn to see.

 

 

 

____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

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When does Money Become Holy? (for Parshat BiHar/BiKhukotai)

i

God says: When you come to the land, every seventh year the land shall keep a Sabbath.

You renounce ownership of the land in this Sabbath year.

All that year’s produce shall be for you, and for your servant… and for your stranger who dwells with you--you shall all have this produce together.

When you come to the Land, this year is the framework of your years.

When you come to the Land, your years are framed by sharing.

*

And God says: If you follow My Laws… I will grant your rains in their season; and the Land shall give forth its yield.

Understand that wealth—the  Land’s crop—only comes through God’s rains.

*

And God tells how a person may contribute money—value—to Him, to His Temple.

 

ii

If you share your wealth with the community around you, if you act knowing that your wealth comes only through God’s rains, through God’s gifts—then your wealth truly holds value.

Then, your money can be made holy—a gift to God.

 

____________

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

 

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Verses cited: Lev. 25:2,6; 26:3-4; 27:3

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Please continue to pray for Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah, and for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther

Counting

i
To count toward a whole is to note how the many small pieces add up, how they converge, to construct an entire world.

ii
We are commanded to count out seven cycles of seven years, culminating in the Jubilee year.

Seven is the number of days in which God made the universe.

And so seven is the number that contains all things.

And so our counting to the Jubilee year is a kind of counting toward infinity.

iii
In the Jubilee year, slaves return, free, to their clans.

In the Jubilee year, real estate that has been bought and sold is reclaimed, by the clans, as ancestral land.

All the places and people we have seen as chattel are located, at long last, in their places within the families that make up the nation.

iv
To be made to count is to be made to see that infinity is made of many tiny numbers, and the people and the places we saw as mere numbers are what make up the mosaic that is our people.