We made it! After several weeks of laws and Levites, we are now at the end of the book of Leviticus. Before we enter the next book and excitedly engage with the narratives in Numbers, there is still more meaning for us to derive from this week’s double Parsha: B’har-B’chukotai!
Parashat Behar begins with a description of Shmita and Yovel, the cycles of Sabbatical and Jubilee that ruled our ancient ancestors’ agricultural and commercial lives. In the seventh year of the cycle, the Sabbatical year, farmers were instructed to allow their fields to lie fallow. In the Jubilee year, the 50th year (as calculated via a cycle of seven sets of seven years), land, personal property, and people are all returned to their places of origin or original ownership.
While our modern agricultural science has, to some degree, taken up the idea of a sabbatical year (crop rotation!), the system of Jubilee is somewhat unthinkable to us. In today’s world, the nature of ownership of anything is often so entangled in a web of complex financial and global systems that we might not be able to effectively act upon the law of Jubilee even if we wanted to! Perhaps Jubilee can only ever be a thing of the past, though in truth, we don’t know how widely or faithfully this law was ever practiced. So, if Jubilee was only ever aspirational and is today nearly impossible, what meaning does it hold for us?
For that, we can turn to the first Izhbitser Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Leiner. In his collection of commentaries and sermons on each Parsha, Mei HaShiloach, Rabbi Leiner notes that the emphasis on ownership is superseded by the fact that all of everything really belongs to God, and that things that truly belong to human beings are assigned only by God. Therefore, the process of Jubilee is not a matter of human exchange but is a restoration of the God-given, intended apportionment of the world. But if that’s true…and God owns everything anyway, why strive for anything?
Rabbi Leiner is careful to note that, although in the light of God’s truth we might despair of our own progress, we are not passive in our own experience. Working hard, doing business, and accruing wealth and property provide blessings that we enjoy in this world and that can bring blessings to other people. There is no reason not to pursue them (in a healthy and responsible manner), so long as one remembers to whom it all really belongs.
As we transition out of Leviticus, may we all remember to treasure the book as our shared inheritance that we share with God. Chazak Chazak V’Nitchazek!