Jubilee Today
D’var Torah for
Parashat Behar
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
It seems that God and Moses save their most exalted teachings
for mountaintops. That’s where the Ten
Commandments are given—in fact, in the book of Exodus, that mountain appears under two names. In one place, it is Mount Sinai; in another,
it appears as Mount Horeb, the Mountain of God.
Later on, two more mountains will become prominent in our
history and geography. Mount Carmel,
near Haifa, is where the prophet Elijah roamed.
To this day there is a cave, not far from the old road to Haifa, which
is said to be Elijah’s hiding place.
Today it is a place of pilgrimage primarily for barren women praying to
conceive a child.
Mount Zion, of course, is where the Temple used to
stand. Among other teachings, the Sages,
the Rabbis of old, identify that mountain as the very mountaintop where Abraham
stood ready to sacrifice Isaac.
But in this week’s portion, Behar (“upon the mountain,” Leviticus 25:1—26:2), the mountain has
no name. We assume it is Mt. Sinai. The Israelites, after all, had not yet
started the actual wanderings that would take them zigzagging through the
wilderness for forty years.
It is definitely a place of holiness, however. As with the rest of the book of Leviticus,
this summit presents us with an exalted vision of how we can bring God into our
lives.
The book of Leviticus had dealt with the rituals of
sacrifice and laid out the duties of both the Priests and the Israelites. It dealt with sanctifying life and health; it
taught us to sanctify time through the celebration of Shabbat and the various
holy days.
It wasn’t only “religious” values that were taught. Holiness isn’t only a function of worshipping
at the temple. It is also about raising personal
and community relationships to an exalted place. Simple rules such as paying a day laborer his
wages at the end of the workday; such as not placing a stumbling block in front
of the blind; such as respecting the elderly, are made as holy as the idea of
leaving some of the produce of your field for the widow, the orphan, the
stranger and the homeless. Loving one’s
fellow human being as oneself is a sacred relationship, Leviticus teaches us.
From looking into the face of God—as it were—parashat Behar has us turn our
gaze down. What we see from this
mountaintop is the land below. The very
earth, we learn, is holy. Its ability to
bear fruit, flower and vegetable each in its season is nothing short of a
marvel. That there is a specific food
appropriate for each creature, and that all existence functions together in
order to sustain and maintain life is nothing short of a miracle.
But there are strings attached. We, human beings, must maintain the sanctity
of the earth in order for the earth to reciprocate and continue blessing us
with its bounty.
We are commanded to observe a Sabbath of the land. As each seventh day of the week is to be a
Sabbath for us, so is very seventh year to be a year of sh’mitta, of complete rest for the land. It is not to be harvested, plowed or
seeded. Even a stone may not be moved
during this year’s time if it is in preparation for the next plowing season.
That pause that our bodies and minds need, the chance to
regroup, refresh and re-energize our souls and hearts, is to be applied to the
earth itself. It too is alive. The way we treat it will correspond with it
gives us back.
But the cycle does not stop there. There is yet one more connection to be made
between us and the land that we roam, settle and live upon. Seven times seven years are counted off;
then, on the fiftieth year, a Jubilee is declared throughout the land. In the words of this parasha carved into the Bell of Freedom: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land for all
its inhabitants” (Lev. 25:10). In the
Jubilee year, slaves are to be released and lands are returned to their
original owners. All property must be restored
to the very families whose Biblical inheritance it is.
The vision is enough to take your breath away. How exalted!
How holy!
How impossible!
We have lost count of the years. Nations have displaced nations throughout the
centuries. Humanity has been fruitful
and fertile. Original deeds are long
gone.
It sounds as though the opportunity to sanctify the Jubilee
Year is not there for us anymore. Where
would we start counting the fifty? How
far back would we go? To our childhood
home? To some mythical and legendary
“old country?”
Even the Land of Israel has undergone many changes, even as
have we, the People of Israel.
Each of us has a moment we call blessed. It is there we want to go back to. If only we could, if only we had a wishing
stone or some sort of time turner, that’s where we would point it to. Call it Avalon.
But we also have another alternative, a more feasible
one. We can start right now. No matter where we are in time and place, let
this be holy ground. This is where the
counting begins. Let’s make this moment
count and start from fresh right now.
Going forward, we can give more of our attention to the
values we hold holy. Respecting others
as we do ourselves, keeping our gaze upward toward the exalted vision—but also
looking down often enough so as not to stumble—we can bring holiness into the
world we live in. We can aim to live in
such a way that, looking both forward and back in time, we can call this moment a holy one.
We don’t have to go back thousands of years to declare a
Jubilee. We can declare a Sabbath
throughout the world, for all its inhabitants, starting today. Each day from now on, let’s sow the world
around us, indeed our very lives, with the seeds of holiness. That way, in fifty years, our children will
call this moment holy and return to it, restoring it to all its former glory.
Let the counting begin.
© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman
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