May 8th: Behar and Bechukotai
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
One of the challenges of religion is understanding the intentions and meanings of verses from sacred scripture. Is a passage a fact or a brag? Is it instructions or an aspiration? Or is it one ancient person’s opinion that can or should be seen alongside other opinions that differ? Modern religionists revere their sacred scriptures, but they are nonetheless challenged by the various possibilities for reading and understanding the ancient words.
A good candidate for these questions is the oft-quoted passage from Isaiah (11.6-9) about the lion and the lamb lying down together.
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid;
The calf, the beast of prey, and fatling together, with a little boy to lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together;
And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.
A babe shall play over a viper’s hole, and an infant pass his hand over an adder’s den.
In all My sacred mount, nothing evil or vile shall be done;
For the land will be filled with devotion to the Lord, as water covers the sea.”
It is a beautiful passage, but is it a promise, or a hope, or a utopian metaphor? Basking in the glow of tranquility is lovely, but as my late colleague, Rabbi Israel Vana, once quipped, “This is all fine as long as the lion, wolf, and leopard are happy to remain vegetarians…”
There are other similar passages—like how we humans are “created in the Image of God” (Genesis 1.26) or how we shall “beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks” (Micah 4) or how we shall “sit under our fig trees and not being afraid” (ibid.). Are we looking at metaphorical hopes or at job assignments?
It is with these questions in mind that I approach the rules for the Sabbatical and Jubilee Years (found in this week’s Torah portion, Leviticus 25). Does the Torah describe what the ancients really did, or do we have a social architect’s ideal of a holy and self-correcting society?
The Sabbatical year involves calling off all debts and allowing fields to lie fallow. The image in the Torah is of people tranquilly watching nature provide for them—as they go out daily to their fields and bring back just enough for the day. The notion of taking a breather is nice, but I wonder about other agrarian and mercantile activities that might have required attention. For example, cows, goats, and sheep still need to be tended and fed. Moreover, if the modern-day observance of the Shemitah/Sabbatical Year by the ultra-Orthodox in Israel is any indication, the ancients might have had a number of minimizing nuances. For example, foods not allowed to be grown by Jewish farmers could be purchased from non-Jewish farmers or brought in from non-Jewish districts. We already know modifications to the debt rules. Though the Torah warns against holding back loans as the Sabbatical Year approaches, apparently many people ignored the warnings and were less generous to their needy neighbors as the cancellation date neared. To remediate the situation, the great Hillel “interpreted” the Torah rule so that each loan was given its own individual seven-year time frame. This Prosbul adjustment allowed assistance both to flow and be paid back. My point is that, given the complexities of human life and the continuing needs and ambitions of even pious people, I wonder how literally the ancients observed the Shemitah—and I wonder if we should read the passages in less-than-literal terms.
As for the Jubilee year’s proclamation that land should revert to its ancestral owners, many wonder if this were ever the case. Though the Torah commands that real estate purchases be treated more like lease arrangements—that one would only purchase the use of the land for the years remaining in the forty-nine-year cycle, many land purchases involve improvements like houses, fields cleared of stones, etc. Does the Biblical return take these kinds of projects into account? There is also the question of how land could be “owned” by family members many generations removed from the original Israelite settlers. Some families could have grown into hundreds, and other families could have no survivors. Though noble and charitable, some of the passages sound more like utopian waxing than practical plans and practices.
If we take the view that these passages are more idyllic visions than literal practices, does this affect us religiously? Can we still read, revere, and take these messages to heart? The answer is Metaphor! These verses can be viewed as we do all metaphor and hyperbole—emotional and spiritual expressions to be taken seriously but not literally.
When the Torah calls for all debts to be cancelled after seven years, it reminds us to be concerned for the debt burdens of those around us and to work on the problems of perpetual and overwhelming debt. The problems are tricky on many levels, but we are challenged to be serious about fairness, responsibility, and kindness. Practical grace should be our goal.
When the Torah speaks of letting fields lie fallow for a year, it echoes the calls of agronomists and other ecologically minded people who approach agriculture mindfully and with a view for long-term productivity and economic vitality. The problems are very tricky, but our ancient metaphors remind us that we have a part to play in tending to God’s Creation.
As for the Jubilee Year’s return to the ancestral homestead, this plunges us into the many issues of land ownership—including zoning, the effects of ownership decisions on neighbors, sentimental as opposed to legal senses of ownership, and the societal effects of land use—challenges our own community faces every year. The needs/wants of owners are often not the needs/wants of “the community,” and questions about who should control land and who is going to foot the bill are perennial concerns. While the Jubilee Year reversion of ownership may not be able to deal with the complexities of land ownership and use, the passages remind us to expand our vision and think of how we can reconcile personal rights and communal needs with perspective and fairness. There is also the fact that, when we let God enter our thinking (and remember that God owns all property!), we can be guided to better and holier decisions.
And, as for the Isaiah passage, perhaps what we have is a call for humanitarianism—where the divisions of ethnicity, social class, nationality, and religion stop pitting us against one another. Rather than wolves and lambs and asps and little children, perhaps this is a metaphor and a prayer about different kinds of people learning to live with mutual respect and cooperation.