Dvar Torah on Parshat Behar

America seems poised to elect a boorish, ignorant, self-serving champion of cutthroat capitalism as its president – I hope I’m wrong but the clown has the momentum and the media on his side, and if I was a betting man my money would be on the loon in orange. Before we take one more step on this descent to madness, we should consider a message from this week’s parsha, Behar.

Parshat Behar opens with the laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years – when agricultural work is forbidden and all produce which grows during that year is free for all to come and take, and may not be held back by the land-owner and sold. In the Jubilee year, all land which has been sold reverts to its original owners. The parsha continues with a number of laws relating to financial activity: the prohibition against overcharging in a sale, the commandment to lend a financially challenged person money without interest, and the laws of a Jewish slave - someone with debts he can not pay who sells himself into indentured servitude for a number of years in order to pay them back. This series of commandments ends with the laws of a Jew who sells himself to a non-Jew as a slave. 

This last section tells us that in such a case “one of his brothers must redeem him”, and buy his freedom from the non-Jew. The Torah presents us with a beautiful explanation for this law: “For the children of Israel are slaves to me, they are my slaves, whom I took out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” The parsha then comes to a close with seemingly unrelated admonitions against idol worship, and exhortations to keep the Sabbath and guard the Temple.

Rashi, at the end of the parsha, quotes a statement from Tractate Kiddushin which beautifully turns this collection of somewhat disparate laws into a wonderful story, a cautionary tale, somewhat similar to Hogarth’s series of paintings “A Rake’s Progress.”

The story opens with the parsha’s first subject: the sabbatical year. Our “hero” is greedy, and does not heed the laws of Shmita, keeping the fruits of that year for himself and illegally selling them. His greed leads him to then sell his property, including his land and his home. Our avaricious hero winds up having to sell himself as a slave to cover his debts; things get so bad he eventually sells himself to an idol worshipper, which naturally leads to a life of idol worship and a general abandonment of the Mitzvot, which is why the parsha concludes with warnings against idol worship and desecration of the Sabbath.

This descent into idol worship, which began with the relatively minor sin of greedily selling the fruits of the Sabbatical year rather than freely sharing them, as mandated by the Torah, and ends with the shame and degradation of a life of idol worship and slavery might seem a bit melodramatic and far fetched, but the Torah is careful to show us the connection.

When telling us that all lands must revert to their original owners in the 50th year, the Jubilee, the Torah reminds us that “the entire earth is Mine, for strangers and sojourners you are with Me.” This is the rationale behind the demands of the sabbatical and Jubilee years – that we understand that the earth is God’s, and He has given it to us to use wisely and fairly, by sharing it with the needy and less fortunate. Crucially, a similar phrase is used at the end of the parsha, when telling us that we must redeem the poor Jew who sold himself into servitude to a pagan – “for the children of Israel are slaves to me, they are my slaves, whom I took out of the land of Egypt.”  This is why we must redeem him – the Jewish people belong to God, and we must help one another live accordingly, as fee men and women, serving no master but God. Just as we owe it to God to keep the laws of the sabbatical year – the earth belongs to Him – we owe it to Him to free an enslaved Jew – the Jewish people belong to Him.

The person who descends into slavery gets there due to one simple mistake: the arrogance of ownership. He believes the land is his to do with as he will, and so he refuses to share his produce during the Shmita year. He also believes he is his own man, with no prior obligations to a God who actually “owns” him. This is why he continues to behave in a greedy fashion, eventually allowing himself to deny his relationship to God entirely by selling himself to an idol worshipper. This arrogance of ownership, the inability to understand that the land and its fruits are a gift, just as our very lives and identities are, is what leads our hero to the failures recorded here.

This arrogance is, I think, very much at the core of the Trump phenomenon. A basic selfishness, a tremendous greed, along with a lack of gratitude for what we have been given and solidarity with those with whom we share it. This attitude runs right from the insane denial of climate change to the hateful way in which people speak about the stranger, the sojourner, the other. It all stems from a failure to understand that we are not owners, we are recipients of a great gift, which we are bidden to share, unselfishly, with the rest of humanity.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix