Parashiyot Behar-Behukotai 5783
May 8, 2023
Rabbi Matthew Goldstone
The second of this week’s parashiyot, Behukotai, lists the various blessings in store for those who observe all of God’s commandments and enumerates the multitude of curses awaiting those who ignore or disobey. While the underlying theology, that our actions are the immediate catalyst for the good and bad we see in the world, may not resonate for some of us, I would like to focus on a different dimension of the correlation between our actions and a divine response. “And if these things fail to discipline you for Me, and you remain hostile to Me, I too will remain hostile to you…” (Lev. 26:23-24). God’s response to human hostility (קֶרִי) is divine hostility (קֶרִי). The quoted passage suggests, in rabbinic parlance, מידה כנגד מידה, “a measure for measure” response. The sense of commensurateness between deed, on the one hand, and reward or punishment, on the other, undergirds many approaches to...
Parashiyot Behar-Behukotai 5781
May 7, 2021
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah A D’var Torah for Parashiyot Behar- Behukotai By Rabbi Ariann weitzman (’11) Our double portion this week, parashiyot Behar-Behukotai, offers a connected vision of a world founded on basic trust in the systems of nature as an expression of God’s abundant grace. Parashat Behar begins by instructing us in the laws of the sabbatical and Jubilee years. Every seven years, we must let land lay fallow. Every 50 years, we must let the land rest an additional year, free individuals enslaved by their debts, and let land revert to its ancestral holdings. Along the way, objections are raised: How can you sell land knowing it must revert back to its original owner in just a few years? How do we deal with houses in cities or small villages? How can we truly believe that food will be provided for us...
Parashat Behar / Behukkotai 5780
May 15, 2020
Lessons of the Sabbatical for a Time of Pandemic A D’var Torah for Parashat Bahar / Behukkotai By Rabbi Len Levin “Six years you may sow your field…and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord…You may eat whatever the land will produce during its sabbath.” (Leviticus 25:3–6) What is the proper balance of work and rest in the Bible? Can the institutions of the Sabbath and the sabbatical year inspire us with ideas for dealing with the disruption of that balance in the current health crisis? In the biblical creation story, man and woman were originally put in a garden where they could live off the fruit of the trees that grew naturally. By their sin, they were expelled from this paradise into the real world where people must earn bread by the...
Parashiyot Behar-Behukotai 5780
May 15, 2020
Lessons of the Sabbatical for a Time of Pandemic A D’var Torah for Parashat Bahar / Behukkotai By Rabbi Len Levin “Six years you may sow your field…and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord…You may eat whatever the land will produce during its sabbath.” (Leviticus 25:3–6) What is the proper balance of work and rest in the Bible? Can the institutions of the Sabbath and the sabbatical year inspire us with ideas for dealing with the disruption of that balance in the current health crisis? In the biblical creation story, man and woman were originally put in a garden where they could live off the fruit of the trees that grew naturally. By their sin, they were expelled from this paradise into the real world where people must earn bread by the...
Parshiyot Behar-Behukotai 5778
May 11, 2018
A D’var Torah for Bahar-BeHukkotai by Rabbi Bruce Alpert ’11 We are surrounded by layers of reality. . . There are swarms of ghosts, spirits, phantoms, souls, angels and devils. . . The smallest pebble has a life of its own. . . Everything is alive. And everything is God or God’s intention. . . These lines are from Ingmar Bergman’s film Fanny & Alexander. They are attributed to a pious Jew who seemingly magically saves two children from the clutches of their evil stepfather. One of the children, the sensitive Alexander, has perceived this layered reality all along as his father’s ghost has become his companion in grief. I have never been much into mysticism. My hesitancy is not so much based on rational skepticism but rather on my inability to understand mysticism’s subtlety and nuance. But the juxtaposition of two verses in this week’s double Torah portion, Behar-Bekhukotai,...
