Parshiyot Behar-Behukotai 5785

A Bible verse for the shelter’s door

A D’var Torah for Parshiyot Behar-Behukotai

By Rabbi Robert Scheinberg

Rookie rabbi mistakes, chapter 1: One week after my arrival to my first full-time congregation that I served as a rabbi, at age 27, I was invited to a meeting of our local clergy coalition, and I met the director of the local homeless shelter. My synagogue had been one of the organizations that founded the shelter several years before.

The shelter’s director, a wise, courageous, and gregarious nun named Sister Norberta who had led the effort to found the shelter despite local government opposition, warmly welcomed me and quickly told me that she had a special job for me. They were doing a renovation of the shelter and wanted to commission some artwork for the shelter door, including Biblical verses that would be sources of inspiration for those who would be walking through the door of the shelter. They wanted to use one quotation from the Hebrew Bible (though she probably said “Old Testament”) and one quotation from the New Testament. They had chosen the New Testament verse already, but perhaps I, as the newly arrived rabbi, would be the best person to choose an appropriate verse from the Torah or elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

I was excited to help, and shortly thereafter I delivered to Sister Norberta various verses from throughout the Hebrew Bible that would be appropriate — verses about the responsibility to provide for the needy in our midst. “Open your hand to the poor and needy kin in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:11) “Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the poor into your home.” (Isaiah 58:7) “God secures justice for those who are wronged and gives food to the hungry.” (Psalm 146:7) I was eager to make a good impression and was sure that at least one of the verses I had found would be suitable.

I remain so impressed with how gently Sister Norberta helped me to understand just how badly I had misunderstood this assignment. She asked me to think of the various people who would be crossing the threshold of the shelter — including staff, residents, volunteers, donors, and others. She was seeking a Biblical verse that would resonate with all these various people and to reinforce that they were one community. And she added that in her experience, categories like “the needy” or “the hungry” were not helpful to use in the context of the shelter, because they suggested that these conditions were permanent characteristics of a person, rather than temporary and situational. Helping people to move from homelessness to being housed often required helping them to see themselves as worthy and capable, rather than immutably needy. For similar reasons, those who slept at the shelter were called “guests” rather than “residents,” in an effort to choose words that would not stigmatize or condescend, and that would not suggest that there was a huge gap between those who were sleeping at the shelter and those who were the volunteers or staff.

Sister Norberta generously asked me to try again. And I remain grateful for what I learned from her that day — and for many years thereafter — about community, about language, and about the challenging process of helping people to get back on their feet.

The Torah portion of Behar includes some of the Torah’s most famous teachings about economic justice. Interestingly, of the wide variety of Hebrew words for people who are poor – ani, evyon, dal, makh, dakh – the term most frequently used in Parashat Behar for people who are needy is ahikha, literally “your brother” (and in gender-neutral translations of the Torah, “your kin”). The implication is that difficult financial straits could strike anyone. A particularly evocative teaching in the early midrashic collection called Sifra interprets one of the verses from this week’s Torah portion as being about the slide into poverty: “‘If your kin grows poor, and their hand falls with you, you shall uphold them.’ (Leviticus 25:35) To what may this be compared? To a donkey struggling under its load. So long as it is still in its place, one person can prop it up. But if it falls to the ground, even five cannot stand it up again.” (Sifra Behar 5:1) Similarly, a smaller intervention can help to keep someone from sliding into poverty, while it will take a much larger intervention to extricate them from poverty once they have fallen.

The institution of the Jubilee Year described in the Torah portion of Behar also affirms the cyclical nature of prosperity and poverty, suggesting that it makes sense to hit a reset button on the economy every so often, to soften poverty’s effects and to give everyone a fair chance at success. Whereas scholars doubt that the Jubilee year as described in this portion was ever really put in practice, the presence of these verses in the Torah hopefully promotes empathy and encourages us to see ourselves reflected in the faces of those who are enduring financial difficulty. The midrashic collection Vayikra Rabbah famously reminds us, galgal hu she-hozer ba-olam, economic fortune is a wheel that keeps turning. Sometimes we’re up, and sometimes we’re down — and this is one reason why the Torah encourages empathy with those who, at the current moment, are down. What looks like generosity is also self-interest, because we don’t know where we will be on the wheel tomorrow, so it makes sense for us to build a society that cares for people wherever they are on the wheel.

I am glad that in my subsequent meeting with Sister Norberta, I was able to suggest a Biblical verse that she agreed would be appropriate. A verse that would carry meaning for guests, volunteers, staff and donors alike, because we are all alike. For many years this quotation adorned the door of the shelter: “Blessed shall you be in your coming in, and blessed shall you be in your going out.” (Deuteronomy 28:6)

In memory of Franciscan Sister Norberta Hunnewinkel, 1941-2024

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Rabbi Robert Scheinberg, Ph.D., is the Rabbi in Residence at the Academy for Jewish Religion, where he teaches courses in Jewish Liturgy, as well as the Rabbi of the United Synagogue of Hoboken. Rabbi Scheinberg was a member of the editorial committees for Mahzor Lev Shalem and Siddur Lev Shalem, the prayer books used in many Conservative congregations.