Mindful Torah...and more

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 ...

This week we conclude the reading of the book of Leviticus/ Va'yikra with the reading of the double parashah/portion Behar-Behukotai (Vayikra/Leviticus 25:1 - 27:34).  I would like to focus primarily on a concept found in the first part, Parshat Behar .  For in Behar , God gives Moses the instructions concerning the Sabbatical/ Shabbaton and the Jubilee/ Yovel .  Moses is told that, once they are settled in the land of Canaan, every seventh year the land must "rest" completely. One is not allowed to plant, sow or reap at all.  No real harvest may take place.   The people may gather whatever grows from plants seeding themselves the previous year, but that is all. They are not to sow or reap anything. Just as the people need a rest every seven days, so too the land needs a Shabbat in order to replenish itself. After the conclusion of seven cycles of seven years,  in the 50th year the Jubilee/Yovel is to be announced with the blast of a shofar....