The Blessings Within Us: B'Chukotai

The Blessings Within Us

D’var Torah for Parashat B’Chukotai

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

B’Chukotai (“By My Laws,” Lev. 26:3—27:34), this week’s Torah portion, brings to a close the third book of the Torah, Leviticus.

It is a fitting conclusion to a book that concerns itself with holiness.  In the Torah, holiness isn’t an abstraction; it is much more than theoretical or philosophical musings.  Holiness is an energy—a force that emanates from God and which imbues everything in existence with substance and spirit.

Like all forms of energy, holiness—the divine energy of Creation—can infuse us with strength, but it can also be terrible in its destructive power.

B'Chukotai has three parts to it.  In the first, it lists the blessings that will be ours if we walk by God's light.  The gifts of life would be abundant in all their forms; nature would provide us with rain in its season; the harvest would be rich and plentiful.  Peace, freedom and harmony would be the lot of all the inhabitants of the land.

It’s a beautiful vision, yet it takes no more than 10 verses to relate.

The second part of the portion is much more terrifying.  In some 30 verses or so, the Torah lists visions of horrors that seem to undermine the foundations of our covenant with God.  In fact, by disobeying God’s laws of holiness, we would be destroying our very humanity, reverting to a depraved form of bestiality that even most animals don’t practice.

It’s a scary thought, but yet so true.

We human beings, just lower (or perhaps even higher) than angels, have wonderful abilities and gifts.  We have the ability to imagine and to create; we can design and build; we can bridge chasms and construct edifices of magnificent proportions.  But at the same time, we can be cruel to an unspeakable degree.  Human history is filled with acts of savagery and brutality. 

And much of it is done in the name of God.

Is it God’s doing or ours?

The book of Leviticus is an amazing document.  It states that our power—whether to create or to destroy—comes from God.  It is by aligning ourselves with the energy that emanates from God that we become God’s partners in creation—or in destruction.  By walking according to God’s commandments, we build and create.  But when we walk contrary to these instructions, we revert to our very worst.  Implanted within us is the potential for both.

The unspeakable horrors that B’Chukotai lists seem to be endless.  It’s a long nightmare that spirals ever downwards.  But a book such as Leviticus, which raises a simple act of kindness to the level of a mitzvah—a sacred commandment—cannot leave us bereft of hope.  That is why the last part of this portion is such a fitting conclusion to the entire book.

This section (basically the entire last chapter of Leviticus) deals with donations that a person may make to God.  In light of what we had learned in previous portions about the value of land (all relative to the number of years left before the Jubilee), what is the worth of land donated to God or to God’s priests, the kohannim?   And since we do not offer human sacrifice (God forbid), what is the worth or value of a human life that is dedicated to the service of God?

It isn’t the math that matters in this chapter.  It’s the very fact that the book closes with the concept that the earth is sacred to God, that life is sacred, that we human beings are filled with sacred value.  From its visions of heaven and hell, Leviticus turns our gaze to the middle ground:  Us.  Holiness isn’t beyond us.  It’s in the choices we make.  Blessings aren’t the result of some magic formula; they come from the way we see ourselves and our potential, from our values and from how well we live up to them.

Peace and harmony cannot be imposed on the world.  They can’t come from some powerful force outside ourselves.  Rather, they are the inherent outcome of all our actions, if we choose to align ourselves with God’s laws.  Dedicating ourselves to mitzvot, to the standards which Leviticus call holy and good, is the only way to reach these worthy blessings. 

And all it takes is a measure of honesty, fairness, justice and kindness. 

Chazak, chazak v’nitchazek—be strong and courageous, and we shall all be strengthened together.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman