Behukotai Archives | Academy for Jewish Religion

28 05, 2024

Parashat Behukotai 5784

By Linda Ripps|2024-05-28T09:49:19-04:00May 28, 2024|

“Why? Because, I said so!” Many of us heard those words as children, when we questioned something we were told to do. The reason given was, “Because I said so!” We ourselves may have said those words, as parents or teachers, in our roles as authority figures.

This week’s parashah, Behukotai, is named for hukkim, the rules mentioned in the opening verse. According to rabbinic tradition, hukkim are statutes for which there is no rationale. We are to obey them “because God said so.” The sages of the Talmud note, “And you shall keep my statutes (hukkotai; Leviticus 18:4)” refers to rules which may be challenged, because the reasons for them are not known. They cite a list of examples of such hukkim, including the prohibition against eating pork, against wearing shatnez (garments of diverse fabrics), and the scapegoat of the Yom Kippur ritual. The Talmudic passage concludes, “And lest you say these are meaningless acts, the Read More >

8 05, 2023

Parashiyot Behar-Behukotai 5783

By jackielebwohl|2023-06-01T10:56:55-04:00May 8, 2023|

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 Read More >

27 05, 2022

Parashat Behukotai 5782

By Linda Ripps|2022-11-09T14:55:21-05:00May 27, 2022|

Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah

A D’var Torah for Parashat Behukotai
By Rabbi Doug Alpert (’12)

Amongst our many struggles in interpreting Torah and apprehending G-d’s will is in how we view theodicy – how we reconcile the evil that permeates our world vis-à-vis our G-d of mercy and compassion. Arguably a close cousin in this struggle is how we view G-d who metes out blessing and curse, reward and punishment as a response to our conduct. Central to this week’s Torah portion – Parashat Behukotai is how G-d rewards us with blessing for fealty to the Mitzvot and imposes curse or punishment for violating G-d’s statutes and commandments.

While I characterize this struggle as ours, this may really be my own struggle. I shared this struggle with my interfaith clergy Torah study group. We have been meeting most weeks for about seven or so years now. We study Parashat Hashavua, sharing Read More >

7 05, 2021

Parashiyot Behar-Behukotai 5781

By Rabbi Ariann Weitzman|2022-07-29T11:24:20-04:00May 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 in Read More >

15 05, 2020

Parashiyot Behar-Behukotai 5780

By Rabbi Len Levin|2022-07-29T11:24:27-04:00May 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 sweat of their brows ( Read More >

15 05, 2020

Parashat Behar / Behukkotai 5780

By Rabbi Len Levin|2022-07-29T11:24:27-04:00May 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 sweat of their brows ( Read More >

30 05, 2019

Parashat Behukkotai 5779

By Bruce Alpert|2022-07-29T11:24:35-04:00May 30, 2019|

A D’var Torah for Parashat Behukkotai
By Rabbi Bruce Alpert (’11)

Reading this week’s Torah portion, I found myself as influenced by what is not in it as what is. What is not in it are the opening words “And God spoke to Moses, saying …” Those words, ubiquitous throughout the middle books of the Torah (they do appear half-way through this week’s parashah), do more than testify to the provenance of the revelation that follows them. They also create a distance between ourselves and those words by letting us know that we are hearing them, not directly, but as transmitted through an intermediary.

The “And God spoke to Moses” to which the opening words of this week’s parashah do not attach, appear all the way at the beginning of last week’s parashah. Even when these two parashiyot are read together, 56 verses separate us from the last mention of Moses’s mediating role. As a result, for me Read More >

11 05, 2018

Parshiyot Behar-Behukotai 5778

By Bruce Alpert|2018-05-11T17:43:13-04:00May 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, have led me to wonder whether Read More >

17 05, 2017

Parashat Behar-Behukotai

By Rabbi Len Levin|2017-05-17T13:26:55-04:00May 17, 2017|

A Society of Free Landholders
by Rabbi Len Levin

“You shall proclaim release [liberty] throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family.” (Leviticus 25:9)

Three years ago I discussed how the Jubilee law served as a beacon to both the American republic and the reborn Jewish homeland, informing their visions of liberty and economic opportunity for all citizens. (See Levin, Dvar Torah Behar 2014.)

To review: “In order to have a chance to remain free, people needed to have a material sufficiency to earn an independent livelihood. Hence, at periodic intervals — every fifty years — the primary source of wealth, the land itself, was to be redistributed to the ancestral families to which it had presumably been apportioned at the original Israelite conquest.”

The Israeli philosopher Eliezer Schweid, in his book, Philosophy Read More >

3 06, 2016

Parashat Behukotai

By Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD|2016-06-03T08:52:05-04:00June 3, 2016|

by Rabbi Jill Hammer

Parashat Behukotai is a manifestation of an ancient theology that seems distant and yet becomes more relevant to us by the day. In this parashah we learn that the covenant between the Divine and human beings is deeply intertwined with the covenant between the Divine and the earth. In fact, the two covenants cannot be separated. The earth is alive with relationship to God just as we are. This understanding of covenant affects our relationship to the earth and also can affect our way of thinking about sacred space.

In the parashah, the Israelites are promised an abundant earth: Ve-natnah ha’aretz yevulah, ve’etz hasadeh yiten piryo: The earth will give its produce and the tree of the field its fruit. Nature will be abundant and fecund. Your threshing will overtake your vintage and your vintage will overtake the sowing. In other words, each harvest will be so full it will Read More >

All shall unite to do God's will with an open heart.

All shall unite to do God's will with an open heart.

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