Down, Toward the Land

Down, Toward the Land

D’var Torah on Parashat B’har-B’chukotai (Lev. 25-34)

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Mountains are majestic.  People have always known that.  In our human imagination, mountains have ever been the dwelling places of gods and titans.  In our Biblical tradition, there are three major mountains, each the scene of various revelations of God. 

Mt. Zion, of course, became the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the hub of Judah and Judaism, the meeting point of Israel and the God of Israel. 

Elijah the Prophet trod the more solitary paths of Mt. Carmel, above the Haifa harbor.  But even he, persecuted by the governing powers who felt threatened by him, had to seek ultimate refuge and inquire meaning and purpose on yet another mountain—the one where, centuries earlier, God had first appeared to Moses—Mt. Sinai.

It was at Mt. Sinai that God also first appeared to our people, sounding the words that became the foundation of our faith, the Ten Commandments.  It was there that Moses received the instructions for building the Tabernacle and there, too, that he learned and taught his brother, the High Priest Aaron, about holiness and the ways of holiness.

The Holiness Code, the essence of Jewish Life and Belief, is at the heart of the Book of Leviticus.  But though it summons the highest ideals of our people, Leviticus is only the third book of our Torah.  The fitting conclusion of the book—the final two portions that serve as this week’s double portion, B’har and B’chukotai—is not only an eloquent summary of what has been.  It is also a gateway opening to the rest of our life and history.

The first verse of Parashat B’har begins appropriately, “Adonai spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying“—

—Saying what?  What exalted vision of glorious holiness would God provide for Moses and us this one last instant that we are “at the Mountain,” B’har Sinai? 

However, nothing more can be said that hasn’t been said already.  The rules have already been given, the teachings, taught.  Instead of looking for any further ecstatic or spiritual connection with God, the Torah directs our attention elsewhere:  “When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to Adonai.”  “When you come into the land”!  It is there that God wants us to look, toward our future, toward where we are headed, not where we are right now.

The rest of our life, as it were, isn’t at this Mountain any more.  It is toward the future that we must now look.  Our focus is not to remain sequestered at some exalted high place that we’ve been to, where humanity and the Divine intersect; but rather, it must now be redirected to the plainer, more lowly paths, where humanity and earth intersect.

This is the season of graduations and confirmations.  Hundreds of thousands of proud learners line paths, enter squares, taking their final steps as students on the grounds of their hallowed institutions.  However, once they shake the offered hand, once the diploma is in their hand, they are no longer bound to their masters and mentors.  Once down from the stage, their first steps are into their future life.

What rules can be, what rules should be given at such a moment?

“When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a sabbath to Adonai.”  That’s what God says to Moses to tell the People at this moment.  Look to the land and make it holy.  Recognize your place and role in it.  You aren’t the master of the house, you’re only the caretaker.  God is the owner of the Land, and that’s why the Land must be holy.

Some years ago, I was walking down a street in Jerusalem when a couple of kids walking in front of me unwrapped some candy and dropped the wrapper on the ground.  I couldn’t believe it.  I picked up the trash, threw it in a bin and asked the offending kids, quite harshly, “So Jerusalem is a trash can now?!”  I think they just shrugged.  Another madman in Jerusalem!  The city is full of them!

But that’s how God intends for us to see all the earth, not only Jerusalem.  Once every seven years, we must let the land produce at its own rhythm, not at our hurried, frenzied buy-and-sell rhythm.  Once in fifty years—the rounded off seven years seven times—we must recognize our position as tenants on God’s farm.  There are no landowners, no homeless people; we all lease the land and are here at God’s pleasure.  We all become equal, all equally dependant on God and the Earth’s natural abundance.

It’s actually a graduation gift:  a moment that we can stop competing with one another, stop trying to prove ourselves better than someone else, stop the treadmill that has us speeding toward an end that will come all too soon of its own accord.

Stopping for a moment of respite, we can look around and see who’s still around.  Where we’ve been is almost inconsequential.  Where we are is more important.  It’s a moment of rest and tranquility that allows us to catch our breath and rediscover the balance in our lives.

Of course we don’t have to wait 50 years for such a jubilant occasion.  Every moment in our life ought to be filled with that sense of wonder, when we can look behind and see where we’ve come from, and then turn fully around and look forward again.  We don’t leave the past behind, that’s impossible.  We are human, and that means we remember.  But just the same, we take the teachings of the past—about self respect, about loving one another as we love ourselves, about dignity and compassion, and of course that lesson about the consequences that must follow our actions—and we apply them to the future.  In the land where we are headed.

Graduation, confirmation—these are the moments of grace we’ve been granted, the gateways where the past and the future can be seen as equally distant, equally near.  As you descend Mt. Sinai and head off la-Midbar, into the Wilderness, into Life, make them both holy.  You know how, you’ve been taught.  Now go do it.

© 2012 by Boaz D. Heilman