Behar (Archives)

Sabbatical & Jubilee Year: “If your brother becomes poor”

In reading this portion (Leviticus 25), attention is most often focused on the Sabbatical year, with its ban on agricultural labor and the numerous practical halakhic issues which arise as a consequence. Since the return of Jews to tilling the soil of the Land of Israel, beginning with the sabbatical year of 1882, this issue has been one of the most controversial polemic points among religious Jewry; it has often served as a litmus test of different group’s attitudes towards the Zionist enterprise, and whether their orientation toward the problem is national and collective, or private and sectarian. All this naturally comes to a head as the shemita year approaches, as it does now. There are numerous rules which affect the lives even of non-agriculturalists, re eating various types of food-stuffs grown, harvested, or stored in violation of these rules. There are various halakhic devices for coping with the Sabbatical year in a modern state: from the controversial “heter mekhira,” in which the entire land is sold to a non-Jew (a procedure reminiscent of the more familiar sale of hametz before Passover); to hydroponics, in which produce is grown in water vats, technically above the land itself; to otzar bet din, in which food that grows by itself is sold through a religious court, which technically speaking only charges for transportation and distribution; to those who buy food from Arab greengrocers (on the often erroneous assumption that they only sell produce from the Arab sector).

But this chapter of the Torah deals with other, far broader issues of economics and the responsibility of society to all its members. Beginning with the institution of the jubilee year, in which all land returns to its original owners, it presents a series of laws stating what one must do “when your brother waxes poor”: when he is forced to sell his homestead, or his house within a city, or to borrow money, or to sell himself as a bondsman to pay back his debts, whether to a fellow Israelite or to a stranger. In general, it is incumbent upon his family members, near and far, and by extension upon society as a whole, to take whatever measures necessary—including substantial outlays of money on his behalf—to help him out and to restore him to his former situation. In brief, the laws here create a wide and extensive social safety net. (To the laws in this chapter one must add the cancellation of debts every seven years, stipulated in Deut 17:1-11) The underlying conception is two-fold: first, that the land, and wealth in general, originate in and belong to God; “they are my servants, whom I took out of the land of Egypt” (v. 42). Property is ultimately placed in people’s hands by God as a surety or pledge; it does not really “belong” to its owner. Second, as a corollary, poverty and indebtedness is seen as an accident, a chance event, which does not detract from the human worth and dignity of the person who has become impoverished. Hence, ultimately (although over an admittedly long period of time), certain measures are provided to redeem the poor man from his losses and to assure him his rightful share in the Land of Israel.

These rules may be read as a counterpoint and complement to the social laws of Kedoshim (Lev 19): not to oppress others, not to lie or cheat, not to delay paying wages, etc.—in brief, opposing “unlawful” gain. The basic concept, both there and here, is that one must not treat ones fellow man as an object to be exploited, nor as a rival or even mortal enemy in the struggle for survival, but as a fellow who, like oneself, was created in the image of God and redeemed from Egypt. Here, complementing the mostly negative proscriptions of Ch. 19, we have a series of positive rules requiring one to treat ones fellow as oneself, specifically in the economic area.

After reading this parshah, the connection of pe’ah—the leaving of the corner of the field to the poor—to Shavuot, as noted in last week’s portion, begins to make more sense. If the central theological conception is that God rules over all and owns all, including the land and the people who dwell therein, two interrelated consequences follow: a) that we should acknowledge this fact in various ceremonial ways, many of which are given us by the Torah and the halakha, e.g., the mitzvah of waving the omer; b) that we should look at our fellow man in a brotherly, equal way, sharing with him in God’s bounty—hence leaving the corners of the field for the poor and indigent. Thus the connection between peah and omer and cognate commandments. Beyond that, linking Shavuot, as the festival of Torah, to a representative mitzvah of human responsibility and mutuality also makes sense.

A similar connection exists regarding the reading of the Book of Ruth on Shavuot. Theologically: because she was the first proselyte, the first to voluntarily accept Torah covenantal existence, undergoing in the “micro” what the entire people had experienced at Sinai in the “macro.” But also because the setting for the events is “at the time of the barley and the wheat harvests” (2:23), and the encounter with Boaz took place in that setting, in Ruth’s (and by proxy Naomi’s) role of poor people gathering the portions allotted to them.

Thus far the text. As soon as one reflects on the reality of modern society, the contrast is striking. In recent years, the axiom that ”man to man is a wolf” has become accepted in broad circles of the Western democracies as normative. We live in an age of “Neo-Liberalism,” in which global capitalism has acquired the power to pursue its agenda unfettered and with impunity. A series of myths have even given this view a veneer of intellectual respectability: that the fall of Soviet Communism somehow “proved” or “vindicated” the validity of the capitalist system (as if democratic socialism or social-democratic alternatives may be rejected out of hand); theories of “drip-down” economics, according to which economic growth and maximal profits for huge corporations will eventually benefit the ordinary citizen (a theory which patently disregards human greed); the grandiose conceit of the “End of History”; the betrayal by university economists of their own intellectual independence and integrity by supporting the policies of the multi-national corporations with hardly a dissident voice; the myths that globalization will make the world a cozy “global village,” making the lives of people in India or Taiwan or the Arab Emirates so much better because they can enjoy “Baywatch” and MacDonalds, etc., etc . Meanwhile, bodies like the World Bank and the WTO dictate internal social policy to smaller countries dependent on them for loans; in more and more sectors, the gains of trade unions are being reversed by the creation of “special contract” work situations for many lower- and middle-grade professionals, without any job security or social benefits—not even holidays, or sick days (I have seen this process with my own eyes in, for example, a major Israeli newspaper); and so on.

What has all this to do with “Torah”? In reading this parasha, so suffused with egalitarian values and the constant righting of individual economic tragedies, one wonders how any religious Jew can not be a socialist, and not support at least some elementary measures to level off the vast disparities of wealth in our society. Yet, to be honest, there are difficulties with this picture as reflecting biblical reality. The late Binyamin Uffenheimer, in two articles that relate to this chapter, uses the terms “myth and reality” or “utopia and reality,” to suggest that the picture drawn here is more of a utopian ideal, even a fantasy, than a blueprint for social life that was ever realized in actuality. There is no record of its practical observance in the historical books of the Bible, nor is it clear from the halakhic sources whether it was observed even during the First Temple period; it certainly was not by Second Temple times. The Torah law canceling all debts every seven years was found by the Rabbis to be unworkable. The Torah reinforces the dry law with moral exhortation on this point (Deut 17:7-11), knowing that people would be reluctant to loan money that they would never get back. By Mishnaic times the Sages developed a legal fiction to bypass it: Hillel’s prozbul, perhaps the classic example of Rabbinic legislation intend to reverse unworkable or “outmoded” laws. Similarly, the law in this chapter against taking interest (25:36-37) is bypassed by a mechanism known as heter iska, universally used by banks in Israel today, including the most Orthodox.

Rabbinic aggadah also contains a motif in which poverty is interpreted as the result of moral shortcomings, e.g., as punishment for profiteering in produce of the Sabbatical year. Thus, the various personal disasters found in this chapter are seen by the Talmud (in Kiddushin 20a) as a series of steps in such a person’s downfall, if he does not repent at each stage. This reflects an almost Calvinistic-type morality, in which wealth is seen as a sign of divine pleasure and vice versa. The fundamental question is: Why is it that, of all human shortcomings, economic greed remains so intractable to religious teaching and law? I do not pretend that Jews were exempt from the lures of the Yetzer ha-Ra, the “Evil Urge,” in other areas, but it does seem that the Torah succeeded, to a large extent, in at least creating communal, social norms that people were reluctant and even afraid to publicly flaunt, e.g., in the laws of Shabbat, kashrut, and basic sexual morality (at least until the modern age). By contrast, in matters of economic greed, the Rabbis were essentially forced to capitulate to popular pressures and reinterpret many basic institutions out of existence. It is a sad commentary on human nature.

“Bar Yohai, Happy is She Who Bore You”

This coming week will be marked by the celebration of Lag ba-Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, a day of respite from the semi-mourning of the period of Sefirah: marked by bonfires, weddings, and pilgrimages to the graves of holy men, particularly the tomb of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai in the small sleepy Galilean town of Meron, where it is celebrated with ecstatic song and dance.

Tradition claims this day as the yahrzeit or hilula of Rabbi Simeon, author of Sefer ha-Zohar, the central text of Jewish mysticism, which portrays him and a band of disciples wandering through the Galilee, discussing deep and hidden secrets of the Torah. The Zohar reports a special gathering —the “Idra”— held shortly before Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai died, possibly on the very day of his death, at which he revealed mystical secrets to his disciples. Two entire sections of the Zohar—the Idra Rabba and the Idra Zutra—are devoted to this great event. The popular ascription of this event to Lag ba-Omer adds a further mystical note to the celebration held in his honor. (Although contemporary Kabbalah scholars, such as the Hebrew University’s Yehudah Liebes, belief that this gathering in fact was meant to have taken place on Shavuot) One of the central hymns sung on this occasion, “Bar Yohai Nimshahta Ashrekha,” is even based upon the mystical scheme of the ten sefirot. One explanation for the custom of lighting bonfires on this day is that, at the time of his death, Rabbi Shimon’s soul was visible as an intense, brilliant fire. (Echoes of Elijah ascending heavenward in chariots of fire? See 2 Kgs 2)