TORAH SPARKS ניצוצות תורה
פרשת בחקתי
PARASHAT B’HUKOTAI
May 21, 2011 – 17 Iyar 5771 – י"ז אייר תשע"א
Annual: Leviticus 26:3 – 27:34 (Etz Hayim, p. 747; Hertz p. 542)
Triennial: Leviticus 26:3 – 27:15 (Etz Hayim, p. 747; Hertz p. 542)
Haftarah: Jeremiah 16:19 – 17:14 (Etz Hayim, p. 763; Hertz p. 551)
Prepared by Rabbi Joseph Prouser
Baldwin, New York
Parashat Bechukotai presents a series of blessings that God will bestow upon the people Israel if they obey His commandments and comply with the covenant. In contrast, a much lengthier catalogue of curses and harsh consequences is invoked as the punishments if the Israelites neglect God’s law.
God’s loyal devotion to the covenant, however, is unflagging. God assures the Israelites that even when they are exiled to the land of their enemies, even when Israel as a nation fails in its covenantal duties and “forgets” God, God never will forget Israel or abandon it to destruction. God will continue to support and to shield Israel out of fidelity to the divine “covenant with the ancients” – referring either to the patriarchs or to the tribes of Israel that gathered at Sinai – or to both. God’s promise to safeguard Israel in perpetuity has inspired a number of writers, among them Leo Nicholaivitch Tolstoy:
“The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he who neither fire, nor sword, nor Inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first to produce the Oracles of God. He who has been for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself.”
Parashat Bechukotai continues with the valuation of possessions and livestock, so that payment can be made properly and vows can be fulfilled correctly in support of
the sanctuary; it describes the procedure for redemption of property and tithes
consecrated to the sanctuary and the limitations placed on the redemption process. With the conclusion of Parashat Bechukotai, the Book of Leviticus also draws to a close. The divine authority for the sacrificial cult, the fundamentals of significant areas of Jewish ritual practice, and – more specifically – the laws prescribed in the closing chapters of Leviticus, is explicitly restated in the final verse:
“These are the commandments that the Lord gave Moses for the Israelite people on
Mount Sinai.”
Theme #1: “Rules Rule”
“If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your
rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit.” Leviticus 26:3-4
Derash: Study
“From now on, your behavior, not the whim of the gods or slave drivers, will
determine your fate. By accepting a code of law, you become responsible for what you do and the result will not be a matter of luck. It may be a harsh law, but there
will be no surprises. To the men and women at Sinai, this must have been
revolutionary. For the first time, what they do matters.” Shulamith Hareven
“The difference between our Torah and other ancient and modern law codes is that the chief aim of the law codes is to establish law and order in society, whereas the
chief aim of the Torah is to enable man to become fully human.” Rabbi Mordecai
Kaplan
“Hebraic religion cannot and will not admit that society is the whole of life or that any social institution whatever is above judgment and criticism in terms of the
‘higher law’ revealed in the divine imperative. It says no to society or the state or the
church when any of these dares to exalt itself and call for the worship of total allegiance.” Will Herberg
“Judaism rises and falls in accordance with the degree to which halachah permeates and penetrates the life of the Jewish people. Despite the occasional successes scored
by secular Judaism, and the apparent growth in some branches of Judaism that do not maintain halachah, the lasting quality of Judaism and the Jewish people is intimately tied up with the observance of mitzvot ma’asiyot, the religious practices
that characterize Jewish life and give it the dimension of holiness.” Rabbi Isaac
Klein
“Law is the projection of an imagined future upon reality.” Robert Cover
“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.” Aristotle
Questions for Discussion
How are law and obligation liberating, as Shulamith Hareven suggests? How are our restrictive or exclusive relationships, in fact, freeing? What
elements of Jewish belief and practice reinforce this principle?
In the twenty-first century, Jewish law is non-coercive; that is, there is little mechanism for enforcement or sanction against the noncompliant. What incentives impel Jews to commit themselves to the covenantal system and a halachic lifestyle?
How might Rabbi Klein, an important mid-twentieth-century pulpit rabbi, halachic decisor, and author of the influential Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, explain the correlation between observance of the mitzvot and
Jewish communal vibrancy and spiritual experience? That same correlation
seems to be an inherent aspect of the divine promise in our verse. Does the social reality Rabbi Klein observes substantiate the blessings and curses of Parashat Bechukotai? What other forces contribute to the historic pattern he describes?
How does our individual – even private – observance of Jewish religious practice contribute to securing a Jewish future and affect the spiritual condition of our religious communities? What are the consequences should we neglect the mitzvot?
What are some of the ways in which Jewish tradition and the law at its core help us “to become more fully human”?
Theme#2: “Beyond Our Deserts, Since the Desert, Though We Desert” “Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them: for I the Lord am their God. I will remember in their favor the covenant with the ancients, whom I freed from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God: I, the Lord.” Leviticus 26:44-45
Derash: Study
“In the language of the Bible the word berit became a characteristically religious
word, one of these words in which the idea of great interrelatedness, the great unity of all, of mystery and ordered certainty seeks to express itself. The God-given order was to find expression in this term. The Old Aramaic translation of the Bible translated berit as ka’yama [that which is established], indicating that which is above all change, above all that comes and goes.” Rabbi Leo Baeck
“‘The covenant with the ancients’ – That is, the covenant that was ratified at Sinai. Some say that this refers to their ancient forbears, the patriarchs… but the former interpretation, in my opinion, is correct.” Ibn Ezra
“‘The covenant with the first ones [or ‘the ancients,’ as above – JHP]’ – This somewhat opaque phrase refers to the founding generation that stood at Sinai, but its
very vagueness allows a certain elision between the ‘first ones’ and the patriarchs,
with whom God initially sealed the covenant that has just been mentioned.” Robert
Alter, The Five Books of Moses
“‘I will remember in their favor the covenant’ – Through the ingathering of the exiles.” Sforno
“No matter how disloyal the Israelites have been, the Lord remains their God and will restore them.” Baruch Levine, JPS Commentary
“Yahweh will not break his covenant and will not destroy Israel completely; and furthermore he will remain her God. This must for the moment be sufficient for
Israel. This glimpse of the future might be best explained by the still direct impact of the catastrophes leading to the end of Judah as a state and depopulating the land for
a long time to come, and by the deportations which took part of the population into
‘the land of their enemies’; that is to say, by a time in which definite expectations of return might be no longer entertained and when it was too soon to raise them
afresh.” Martin Noth
Questions for Discussion
How mutual is Israel’s covenant with God, if the divine partner to that agreement is committed to fulfilling its terms even if they are habitually and
predictably ignored by the Jewish people
It is not entirely clear whether God is referring to His relationship with the founding patriarchs of Israel or to the Israelite masses who were gathered at Mount Sinai, or somehow to both. What interpretation of “covenant with the ancients” best suits the context of the biblical narrative? Which (aside from the question of a critical contextual reading) is most compelling to contemporary heirs to the covenant?
Rabbi Baeck demonstrates how the Targumim (the early Aramaic translations of the Torah) inform our understanding of the text, and here of a critical theological concept. (It was Baeck who memorably posited “All translation is commentary.”). What aspects of Jewish life and Jewish law are, indeed, “above all change, above all that comes and goes”? How do we recognize these immutable values and distinguish them from more transient or negotiable elements of our faith?
To what human relationships might we compare our verse’s depiction of God’s abiding commitment to Israel, be our people ever so disloyal and unfaithful?
Noth explains our verse as directed at the Babylonian exiles by whom the
Torah was, he argues, first read (or heard). How does that historic assertion change our reading of the parashah and, specifically, our verse? How does this relate to Sforno’s comment that God’s unflagging loyalty is to find expression through restoration of Jewish exiles to their homeland? How might this biblical message (and its parallels in the liturgy) have kept the Zionist dream alive to be realized in the twentieth century?
Historic Note
Parashat Bechukotai, read on May 21, 2011, describes the salutary blessings
that will devolve upon Israel when the nation is loyal to the covenant, embracing its ennobling aspirations, as well as – and in stark contrast – the horrific consequences that will befall the Jewish people should they spurn the humanizing vision incorporated in God’s law. The parashah thus explores the nature of free will and the pliable human potential for both sanctified living and monstrous evil. On May 21, 1908, the first horror movie – with an analogous theme – premiered in Chicago: “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Halachah L’Maaseh
Lev. 26:37 admonishes: “Each man will stumble over his brother.” Rashi conveys a midrashic interpretation: “Each man will stumble through the sin of his brother.” That is, we are each properly invested in the religious life and morality of our neighbor. On this basis, Jewish law imposes upon us an obligation to rebuke others in a manner that will be well received and corrective. The same principle enables us to help fellow Jews fulfill religious obligations by, for example, reciting a blessing on their behalf. (See Sanhedrin 27B; Pitchei Teshuvah 5 on Yoreh De’ah 157; Orach Chaim 167:14, Rema ad loc.)