TORAH PORTION: BECHUKOTAI |
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Parashat Bechukotai
May 27, 2022 | 26 Iyyar 5782
Torah: Leviticus 26:3-27:34 | Triennial: 27:1-27:34
Haftarah: Jeremiah 16:19-17:14
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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "Showered in Blessing", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "Peace-The Vessel of Blessings" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes a dvar haftara called "Humanity: The Incurable Illness".
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Showered in Blessing
Ilana Kurshan
Parashat Bechukotai consists primarily of a litany of blessings and curses that will befall the Jewish people depending on whether or not we obey God. The curses are quite long and graphic, consisting of thirty-one biblical verses about all the calamities that will befall us if we fail to heed God’s word. In contrast, the blessings occupy a mere eleven verses and are focused primarily on agricultural bounty. The opening of our parashah, which begins with the blessings, offers us a window into the one promise that encapsulates the essence of nearly all the blessings and curses that follow: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season” (Leviticus 26:3-4). A close analysis of the verses about divine reward and retribution reinforces the notion that according to biblical theology—and as expanded upon by the Talmudic sages—our relationship with God is mediated through rainfall, which serves as a physical and spiritual link between heaven and earth.
Rain is depicted in our parashah as the source of all blessing, and drought as the ultimate curse. If we follow God’s laws and the rain falls, then the earth will yield its produce and the trees will yield their fruit (v. 4). If the earth and trees yield a bountiful harvest, then we will have plenty of grain to eat (v. 5). And if there is enough grain, then we will eat our fill of bread with our stomachs satiated and our minds at peace, such that we will dwell securely in the land (v.5) and no enemies or vicious beasts will trouble us (v. 6). On the other hand, if we do not obey God’s commandments (v. 14) then God will make the skies impermeable like iron (v. 19) so that we will toil and work the earth to no avail (v. 20), as the land will not yield its produce nor the trees yield their fruit (v. 20). Ten women will have to bake their bread in a single oven, and the bread they bake will not satisfy or satiate (v. 26). Lacking any harvest to feast off, we will have to resort to eating the flesh of our own children (v. 29). We will abandon the land, which will be left desolate, and we will be scattered among the nations (v. 33). According to biblical theology, then, rain sets off a chain of blessings, just as the lack of rain sets off a chain of curses.
But as we know all too well on our own day, not all rainfall is good. The Torah teaches that if we obey God’s word, “I will grant rains in their season” (v. 4), a reminder that to everything there is a season. As we learn in tractate Taanit (2a), we begin praying for rain on Shemini Atzeret at the end of the Sukkot holiday, because that is the proper season for rain; if it rains earlier, it is regarded as a curse, as it would interfere with the pilgrimage festival of Sukkot and the commandment to dwell outdoors in a Sukkah. The second paragraph of the Shema (Deuteronomy 11:14) speaks of the yoreh—the first rain, which falls just after Sukkot—and the malkosh—the last rain of the season, which is supposed to fall just before we stop praying for rain on Pesach. According to this rabbinic understanding, the year can thus be divided in half – there is the dry summer from Nisan to Tishrei, which includes the entire cycle of biblical festivals (Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot), in which we celebrate God’s historical involvement in the Exodus, the revelation, and the miracles of the wilderness journey. And then there is the wet season from Heshvan to Adar, in which the rabbis understand that we might experience God’s involvement in human affairs not through history but through nature – through the rain that falls abundantly in the land of Israel, so long as we obey God’s word.
When the rain fails to fall during the winter months, the rabbis devised an elaborate system of fasts of increasing severity, in which we entreat God to heed our prayers and bring the rain. The first and second chapters of tractate Taanit explain how these fasts were structured: If it still hadn’t rained by the seventeenth of Heshvan, the elders would fast for three days (Monday, Thursday, Monday). This cycle of three fasts would be repeated starting on the first of Kislev if the rains still hadn’t fallen, followed by a series of another three fasts and then seven fasts – each incumbent upon more members of the community and each involving increasingly severe restrictions. During the later fasts for rain, the people would engage in mourning practices – they would wear ashes on their foreheads, desist from all unnecessary business transactions, and hold off on betrothals and weddings. The ark with the Torah scroll would be brought into the city square and covered with ashes as well, and the people would pray, “He who answered Abraham on Mount Moriah, He will answer you… He who answered our forefathers at the Red Sea, He will answer you…. He who answered Joshua at the Gilgal, He will answer you….” Rabbi Dov Berkowitz (in HaDaf HaKiyumi, 2013, Hebrew) notes that the word used for Taanit (fast) is related to the word used for Ya’anenu (He will answer you), suggesting that fasting in time of drought is primarily about seeking to open the channel of communication between human beings and God at a time when the heavens are impermeable to rain – and also, seemingly, to a divine response.
In our modern world we can appreciate that in order to keep the channel of communication open between humans and God, we must also do our part to protect God’s world. When we pray for rain on Shemini Atzeret, we ask God that it should be “for a blessing and not for a curse.” Our prayers express our hope that God will be invested in human affairs, perhaps by inspiring humanity to take better care of our planet so that the rain might indeed fall in its proper time. As we read in our parashah, we aspire to live in a world in which God is “ever present in our midst” – such that even when God’s face is hidden, we might nevertheless be showered in blessing.
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Peace-The Vessel of Blessings
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Text: Vayikra 26:3-6
3‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, 4then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce... 5Your threshing shall last till the time of vintage… you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. 6And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid; I will rid the land of evil https://biblehub.com/nkjv/leviticus/26.htm - footnotes beasts, and a sword will not go through your land.
- What areas of life will be blessed if the commandments are kept? Is there anything that you would add?
- What is the relationship between the opening words “I will give peace in the land” and the rest of the promises in v.6?
- If there is peace in the land, the promise that “a sword will not go through your land” (v.6) seems obvious. What do you think that the Torah adds by this statement?
Commentary: Rashi Vayikra 26:6
And I will give peace - Perhaps you will say, there is food and drink! But if there is no peace, then all this is nothing. Scripture, therefore, states after all these promises "I will give peace in the land". Hence, we may learn that peace counterbalances everything. In a similar sense, it states: "Who makes peace and creates everything.”
- What is the logic in the order of the passage of the blessings?
- Why are the blessings of plenty worthless without a promise for peace?
- How does the line Rashi quotes from the morning tefillah (prayer) “makes peace and creates everything” support his idea? What could the word “and” in that line be replaced with?
Commentary: Malbim Vayikra 26:6
And I will give peace in the land – after He promised them the blessings, He now promises the vessel that holds the blessings, which is peace, which contains all the blessings. …about this, it is said “makes peace and creates evil” (Isaiah 45:7) – for peace is the opposite of evil, just as the light is the opposite of darkness. Therefore, it says that peace counterbalances everything.
- What is the relationship of peace to all the other blessings?
- Malbim quotes the verse that is the basis for the line from tefilla that Rashi quoted: “makes peace and creates evil”. How does he understand the word “and” in this verse?
Commentary: Ibn Ezra Vayikra 26:6
And I will give peace in the land - Among yourselves.
- What in v.6 caused Ibn Ezra to understand this part to point to internal peace?
- How do you understand the relationship of internal peace to the rest of v.6?
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Humanity: The Incurable Illness
Bex Stern Rosenblat
The God of the Tanakh is not human. The God of the Tanakh can hardly be comprehended by humans. Our haftarah portion makes this starkly clear: cursed is the man who trusts in humanity, blessed is the man who trusts in God. So what’s so wrong with trusting in humanity?
Jeremiah 17:9, as translated by Robert Alter, reads: “More crooked the heart than all things, it is grievously ill and who can fathom it?” It’s a difficult verse to translate and even harder to understand. It begins with the word עקב, from that same root meaning heel/deceive/ supplant that we can follow the footprints of through Genesis. It first appears in God’s cursing of the snake in the Garden of Eden - humans will bruise the heads of snakes and snakes will bruise the heels of humans. It next appears as the root of the name of Jacob, the founder of our people. Jacob grasps the heel of his brother, deceives his father, and supplants his brother. The word connotes the hidden and the unpleasant, the seedy unseen. In our verse, we are directly juxtaposing this sneaky heel with the heart. The innermost body part is being compared to a foot.
The wordplay continues with the word אנש. Alter translated it above as “grievously ill.” It’s a word that appears occasionally in Jeremiah with this meaning of incurable illness. However, if the root were vocalized differently, meaning if we read the same root letters with different vowel sounds, the meaning of the word would be “humanity.” This is in fact how the Septuagint and the Peshitta, early translations of the Tanakh, choose to understand the word. Of course, we do not have to choose one meaning over the other. When we read אנש as a pun, pointing both toward “incurable” and “humanity,” the meaning of this phrase becomes that being human is an incurable illness.
The verse ends with the phrase, “who can know it?” but it is unclear what the “it” refers to. Are we talking about our deceitful hearts, twisting and turning like feet, or the sickness that is the human condition? Perhaps, the verse invites us into a joke - who can know whether the verse is referring to humanity or incurable illness, deception or heels. Perhaps, we, as invalids stricken with the condition of being human, are invited to throw up our hands and laugh at the impossibility of discerning our own natures. The next verse comes to our rescue - God can understand us even when we cannot understand ourselves. In the meanwhile, we can put our trust in God and laugh at ourselves.
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