32/33 Behar-Bechukotai: Day 5 (Thursday) | The Consequences of Overworking the Land

20 Iyar 5786 AM | 1 AVE.

Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by Your Spirit and invited the nations to share in the richness of Your Word. We thank You for the people and state of Israel, including the Messiah, our First Fruits, through whom the harvest of life has begun.

Today is the thirty-third day of the Omer according to the minority Sadducean and Essene counts, which is 4 weeks and 5 days.

May the Spirit of Truth prepare my heart for the revelation of the 50th day.

6:23 AM EDT. 

Jonathan Writes:

Some thoughts before today's scheduled readings.

"Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the Universe, who has given us the Torah of truth and has set sublime wisdom in our midst through the inspired teachers of Your Word." 

If the Written Torah is the Literal Truth for Past, Present, and Future, then Leviticus 25:44-46 from yesterday's reading is a commandment from Hashem to the Jew to retain the Canaanite (foreign) slave in perpetuity, and it applies to Jewish slave-owners in every time and place (Cf. Depths of the Torah, Appendix G18, P235).

Before we dismiss the Written Torah as obviously NOT the "literal truth" for our time, let us consider two additional points: Christians - both Gentiles and Jews - understand themselves to be metaphorical (and maybe metaphysical) slaves of Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, for all eternity, while the very word Islam means "Submission," and the highest title a human can achieve in the Quranic worldview is slave of Allah.

This is well and good, but we (the free world) are not about to allow Torah-observant Jews to own slaves at all, let alone own the children of slaves in perpetuity. The Written Torah is obviously NOT the Literal Truth for Our Time, and P235 is obviously NOT eternally valid.

"Open our eyes, that we may see wonderful things in Your Torah, and help us to walk in Your ways according to the Seven Noahide Laws that You gave for all humanity."

The Torah that opens our eyes to the Seven Noahide Laws in their contemporary application must be a Living Torah of sapwood that supersedes the heartwood of the Written Torah.

It will take some time for me to absorb this understanding.

Let's turn now to the scheduled reading. It is Leviticus 26:10-26:46.

This is the link to the Daily Chumash with Rashi at Chabad.

The Daily Wisdom from the Lubavitcher Rebbe is titled "Blessings in Disguise." 

This time around, I am inclined to draw two messages out of today's reading.

First, as I read Leviticus 26:13, I am struck by how forcefully the God of the Written Torah critiques the institution of slavery: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk in uprightness." (BSB)

Is it any wonder the Jewish Essenes "are widely regarded by historians and theologians as the first group in Western history to explicitly and systematically reject the institution of slavery"? According to Gemini, "While the broader ancient world—including the prevailing Judean society of the time—accepted slavery as a standard economic reality, the Essenes viewed it as a fundamental violation of human nature and divine law."  

Second, I am struck by how forcefully the God of the Written Torah promises to punish Jews who overwork the land. This I think must be the teaching of the Living Torah in response to our reading today: not that a strictly literal interpretation of the seventh fallow year is required, but that we should instead universally and flexibly apply principles of good soil stewardship, or it will eventually fail to produce, with disastrous consequences. This could mean organic, veganic, and IPM production methods. It could also mean no-till, low-till, cover-cropping, intercropping, and staggered fallowing.

According to Gemini, "While the vast majority of religious Jews in Israel—from the Haredim to the Religious Zionists—still adhere to the literal seven-year calendar (using legal mechanisms like Heter Mechira or Otzar Beit Din to navigate it), there is a prominent intellectual camp that argues the spirit of the law is a universal agricultural principle. The most articulate voices for this view are associated with the Heschel Center for Sustainability and the Siach (Religious-Environmentalist) network." 

The video today is The Heschel Center for Sustainability - Leading for a Sustainable Future.

Shalom.

End 8:19 AM EDT.