Parshat Behar-Behukotai: Finding Meaning in the Rest of Isolation

This week we finish reading from the book of Vayikra/Leviticus with the double parashah/portion Behar-Behukotai (Leviticus 25:1- 27:34). 

Parshat Behar begins with the laws regulating the sabbatical year and the jubilee year. The Israelites are instructed that, once in the Promised land, they are to grow crops and tend their fields for six years. The seventh year is to be a Sabbath for the land during which they may eat whatever the uncultivated land happens to produce during that year. However, they may not  plant, sow or harvest any crops. In addition to the Sabbatical/Shemitah year, they are to count seven cycles of seven years and then in the fiftieth year they are to proclaim a yovel/jubilee year. This is to be a year of release in which all Israelites were to take possession of the original lands which will be given to their ancestors at the time of entering the land. 

In Parshat Behukotai, God promises that the Israelites will flourish in the land if they obey God's mitzvot/ commandments. However, if they do not, they will suffer terribly, as will their children. Repeatedly, God tells them "if you still do not obey me" they will suffer seven-fold punishments for their sins. The ultimate punishment, if the people continue to disobey God's commands, is that they will lose everything they have and "the land shall be forsaken of them, making up for its Sabbath years by being desolate of them, while they atone for their iniquity; for the abundant reason that they rejected My rules and spurned My laws …" (26:43).  In spite of this, God still proclaims that in the end "I will remember in their favor the covenant with the ancients, whom I freed from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God, the Eternal" (26:45).

In viewing Behar and Behukotai as one unit, there are two clear links that I see between them. The first is the connection between the laws of the sabbatical for the land in Behar and God's promise that the land will make up for it's neglected sabbaticals in Behukotai. The second is that God states numerous times in Behar that the reason Israelites are not to be enslaved eternally, nor treated as slaves, is that God brought them out of Egypt to serve God – and no one else. This connects with the verse in Behukotai in which God proclaims that, even after all punishments and curses have been meted out, God will not forget the people because God freed them from the land of Egypt.

The idea that both we and the land are meant to rest points to the importance of letting go. As "God's people" we are commanded to let go of any notion that we are in control of the world around us or that the creative forces in the world are in any way our domain. We do this by resting from all forms of physical creation or destruction each Shabbat. On that day our inaction allows us to be mindful of the fact that the world continues to exist and creation continues without any action on our part. 

Refraining from working the land every seventh year then reminds us that, even if we cease to work the land for an entire year, creation continues and food will be provided, precisely because we are are not in control. We are merely the caretakers of God's earth. Of this we must be mindful from year to year, month to month, week to week, day to day and moment to moment.

When we neglect to remember that we are not in control, then we are in fact neglecting the reality of the Divine Presence that is the source of all. In doing so we place ourselves, our egos and our sense of self-importance above the Self of the Universe. This is one way of understanding the punishments that come from disobeying God's mitzvot. 

Though translated most commonly as commandments, I choose instead to understand mitzvot as behaviors that serve to remind us that the Divine Presence is within all creation. When in paying attention to the mitzvot (or at least those we do not find anachronist or anethema in our times) we treat each human being and everything within creation as part of the Divine. As Jews, we do this using the uniquely Jewish language and traditions as our guide. But living a life of mitzvot is simply the way our Jewish language describes something everyone should do.

In Behukotai we read that each time we ignore the mitzvot we will be punished. Each time we ignore the mitzvot concerning the treatment of our earth, the animals upon it and/or our fellow human beings we are to be punished seven-fold. Though this number is meant to represent an excessive punishment,  the use of the term seven-fold was quite deliberate. Seven represents the cycle of creation and of rest. Therefore, it is as if the Torah is saying: "ignore the wisdom that teaches you to rest and acknowledge your powerlessness at the end of each cycle of seven, and creation will wreak havoc on you." In a way this is the Torah's version of a karmic response. Or, in the vernacular, what goes around will inevitably come around!

The final warning in the parashah brings all of this to a conclusion: If we continually neglect humanity and all of God's world we are doomed. If we continually ignore the divine within all creation and act as if we are the master of all that we see, then creation will teach us a lesson. For all the times we ignored the Truth and simply kept working the land …or human beings … or ourselves … without taking rest … we will be forced to rest. The land will not yield its fruits. We will not yield our fruits. God will not sustain us and we will be left alone and destitute. When this happens we will be forced to face the reality that there is indeed something greater than us. We will be forced to realize that ultimately we are not in control. This is simply a warning of what will happen if we ignore our world and all its inhabitants. If we ignore the world, we will indeed experience the consequences. Looking at our environment today, we know that all too well to be true.

In Behukotai we read that during that time of ultimate punishment, human beings will be afraid of "the sound of a driven leaf." We will reach the point where we are afraid of even the slightest sound. As individuals, we all have probably experienced this kind of fear. It is the sense that the world around us is such a dangerous and frightening place, that the slightest movement – or the slightest thought within our minds – will cause fear to arise. This is a fear that we cannot easily escape, for it comes from within us. For many of us, it is the fear that we are feeling now.

Though the current pandemic is in no way a punishment from God for our behavior, the results can be the same for us. We too are afraid of a driven leaf. We are afraid of the uncertainty and the unknown. All we can do as a community is to follow the guidelines, the civil mitzvot of social distancing and caring for ourselves. But when we are doing this it is a good time for introspection. As the pollution clears and the earth is allowed to rest, let us think of how we can allow this to continue. As we are forced into a variation of a sabbatical year, let us look at how powerless we are over the universe, be grateful for what exists, and do our best to appreciate every creature in the world.

In the face of the anxiety that we might be feeling,  our urge might be to run. But we don't need to run from the sound of a driven leaf. Instead we should recognize and acknowledge the fear for what it is. The fear of the unknown. The fear of uncertainty. The fear that comes from realizing that, in so many ways, we are not in control. The fear of acknowledging what we have done to our world.

By acknowledging the reality of our fears we can then let them go. We can then see clearly the truth of our world. Only then can we see that  all things and all people are part of God and that it is our obligation/mitzvah to behave in  a manner that acknowledges this. We must act in a way that truly respects ALL of God's creation and not just humanity, or even a chosen few.

Even though we have been forced into this position by a pandemic, we can still learn the lessons of Shabbat and the sabbatical year and take those lessons with us into the post-pandemic world. When we do this, we bring ourselves to the acknowledgement of what is stated in both Behar and Behukotai: that we have been freed from our enslavement to the need to control so we can act in a way that serves the greater good of the world.

When we come to this place, then we can truly experience a Shabbat for our soul and for our world. If only we could have learned these lessons without being put in isolation, and some have. But the reason for coming to these realizations doesn't matter. Remembering them and putting them into practice now and in the future that is ultimately of importance which will give meaning to everything we are experiencing today.

Shabbat Shalom.