This week is a special parsha. We finish up the third book written by the hand of Moshe (Moses): Vayikra (Leviticus), and it is also another double parsha. The first parsha is called B’har which means, “At the mountain,” as in, “And haShem (god) spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai saying.” The name of the second of our parshas is called B’chukoti which means, “In my laws,” as it says in the first verse of the second parsha: If you will go in my laws…” Combined, the name of our parsha means: In the mountain, in my laws. What a strange name for a parsha. I wonder what it is trying to tell us?
Parsha b’har begins with us learning that what follows was told to Moshe by haShem when he was on Mount Sinai, and it is about what we should do when we enter the promised land. The first thing we are told is that every seven years, the land must be given its own Shabbat and cannot be worked. Also everything the land produces that year is free for everyone and to all animals. We then learn that the 50th year is the Yovayl (Jubilee) year and all land reverts back to the family that haShem gave it to, and the land gets another shabbat.
The Torah then explains that when a person sells land, he is really leasing the land until the next Yovayl year. We also are told not to cheat our countrymen in regards to this, and to be in fear/awe of our god. And if we follow god’s ways, we will live securely on the land and the land will give its produce and the people will be satisfied.
The parsha then tells us what to do regarding a person who is so poor he has to sell his land. After a small discourse on homes in a walled city (they can be sold permanently) and houses and land in and around a Levite city (they can always be redeemed), we are told we need to support both our poor brothers and the poor strangers that live with us, and that we do not help them by taking interest on loans or food. Why? Because haShem took us out of Egypt to give us this land and be our god/powers.
We continue to learn that if a brother becomes so poor that he must be sold, he is not to be severely oppressed; he is to be treated like a hired worker until the Yovayl year. The reason is that we are really haShem’s servants, for he took us out of Egypt. Therefore we cannot be sold as real slaves. The Torah does permit slaves of those who are not from the children of Yisrael (and have not converted). We are also told how to redeem a brother who has been sold to someone who is not a member of the tribes. This first parsha ends with a warning against idols and to follow Shabbat and to be in fear/awe of haShem’s sacred place.
The second parsha picks up with us being told that if we follow in haShem’s laws and mitzvot (commands/joinings), then the rains will come at the right time and the land will give its produce in abundance and we will eat and be satisfied and live securely on the land. There will be peace on the land and we will chase away our enemies. We will multiply and haShem will establish his brit (covenant) with us. The feminine aspect of god (god has both male and female aspects – this is why I sometimes say he and sometimes say she in terms of god) will reside within us.
However, if we do not listen to haShem and do these mitzvot, and if our souls despise haShem’s judgements, and we violate the brit, haShem will cause panic in us, and consumption and fever. Our enemies will eat what we plant. Our enemies will defeat us and we will flee when no one is pursuing us.
If we continue not to listen, haShem will break the genius of our strength; the sky will be like iron and the land like copper. The land will not give its produce. If we continue not to listen and we rebel with violence against haShem, wild animals will kill our children and cut us off from our livestock and we will not breathe on our roads. If we continue to violently rebel against haShem, haShem will violently rebel against us (she will become a mirror for us). The sword will come upon us as the vengeance of the brit. We will be given into the hands of our enemies. We will eat, but not be satiated.
If we continue to rebel, we will eat the flesh of our children. HaShem will destroy our platforms and cut our suns and our corpses will be on the corpses of our idols, and haShem’s spirit will loathe us. Our cities will be destroyed, our holy places will be desolate, and haShem will not smell our pleasant aromas. The land will be so desolate that not even our enemies will live there. We will be scattered amongst the nations and the land will have the Shabbat years that we didn’t give it.
Those of us who remain will have a timid heart in the land of our enemies, and run from the sound of a falling leaf. Those of us who remain will rot in our iniquities, and our parents’ iniquities in our enemies’ land. We can confess to our betrayal, and our parents’ betrayal of haShem, but haShem will still bring us into the land of our enemies. Or if our uncircumcised hearts submit and then they will be favorable to our iniquities, haShem will remember the brits he made with Yaakov (Jacob), Yitzhak (Isaac), and Avraham, and haShem will also remember the land. For even though we have gone against haShem’s rules, haShem will not exterminate us or overturn the brit. haShem will remember that he brought us out of Egypt in front of the eyes of the other nations.
These are the laws and judgements and teachings that haShem gave between himself and us at Mount Sinai by the hand of Moshe.
haShem then told Moshe to tell us what to do when we make a vow concerning the value of souls to haShem. Likewise we learn how we deal with a vow that involves an animal, or a house, or a field, a first-born animal. However, anything that we yaharim (completely separate from for it is god’s – ie put in harem), cannot be sold or redeemed because it is most kodesh (holy/separate). A person who is put in harem gets killed.
This double parsha ends with a few rules regarding the tithing of produce and animals and ends by telling us that these are the mitzvot that haShem commanded Moshe to the children of Yisrael at Mount Sinai.
That is enough for one week, don’t you think? So, what can we make from all this variety of detail and information? Well, let’s see… there might be one or two things.
The first thing I see is an answer to a seeming contradiction that is in the Torah. We have two verses, one which says that a person is not responsible for the sins of the parents (Devarim/Deuteronomy 24:16) and the other one says that the sins of the parents will be visited on the third and fourth generations (Shmot/Exodus 20:4, and repeated in Devarim/Deuteronomy 5:8). Now if we assume that the Torah is truth and the word of god, how can these two ideas exist not just in the Torah, but in the very same book of the Torah? Our parsha gives us the answer.
If we look toward the end of the second parsha, right at the very end of what will happen if we ignore haShem and her wishes, we see a couple of very strange verses. I am looking at verses 26:41 and 42. The first verse says, “And they will confess their iniquities and the iniquities of their fathers in their betrayal that they betrayed in me, and even that they went with me in violent rebellion.” This verse clearly shows a people that seem not only to be confessing their own sins, but also the sins of their ancestors.
Verse 42 gives haShem’s reply to such a confession. The first part of the verse reads, “But I will go with them in violent rebellion and bring them to the land of their enemies.” From this, we can see that we are responsible for the sins of our ancestors, for even confessing those sins does not help us. However, the verse ends with, “Or then they will submit their uncircumcised hearts and then they will desire their iniquities.” Now, I am going to understand that last bit as meaning that they will desire to submit their will to sin to haShem, just as they have submitted their hearts to the will of haShem.
I can see everybody scratching their heads and saying, “Yeah, so what,” and I don’t blame you. Let me go into some detail of what I see going on. The meaning of the verses that state that the sins of the ancestors will be visited on the next three or four generations is based on the fact that we learn our deepest ways of being from our parents.
Now, how many times have each of us said, as children, that when we grow up we won’t act like our parents or treat our children like we were treated. And how many of you (be honest now) find yourself acting just like your parents. This is what our Torah is talking about. Even if you confess and say you won’t do the iniquities of your parents, you probably will and so haShem is not going to pardon us just because we declare we don’t want to be like our parents.
Now, granted you might not be as severe as your parents. The Torah even acknowledges that by saying it will take three or four generations before that trait is removed; each generation making a small change. But overall, that second and maybe third generation will sin like the first generation taught them to. This is what the Torah means by the sins of the ancestors will be visited: the sins will be taught from parent to child and the child will then try to change a little but probably will do the same sin.
This is not automatic though. We do have free will and choice. This is what the second part of our verse is coming to teach us. If we really work hard on our closed up hearts, and let go of our desire to go against god, and surrender to what god wants of us, then we also let go of our desire to sin like our parents did, by giving that desire up to god. If we can do that, if we can consciously be aware of when we are about to do what our parents did, and stop ourselves and say, “No! I will not act that way! I am changing the script,” then haShem will remember his promises and forgive us. Then we will no longer be held accountable for the sins of our ancestors because we are no longer doing them. This is what our two verses are saying. They are informing us that we have a choice, and saying we will change is not enough. We need to actually change. If we can then Devarim 24:16 is true. If we don’t, then Devarim 5:8 is in effect. Our choice.
And this is how these two verses in Devarim are not contradicting each other.
I said I had two thoughts. That was the first. Here is the second. It started with something that my friend Drew Tik said over a Shabbat dinner. He was sharing a teaching that the land is holy in its own right and in a way that has nothing to do with the children of Yisrael. In fact, the Torah makes a point of saying that we don’t really deserve that land, but it is given to us on the merit of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov, and because the nations that were on the land were too corrupt for the land. The Torah also makes a point of saying we are just sojourners on the land, that it isn’t our land, it belongs to haShem.
I want to explore this a little bit further. In our parsha, haShem says the land is his. In an earlier parsha, haShem said we were her nation. It would appear that there are two parallel things happening. The first is a line from haShem to the holy land and to the rest of the world, and a second is a line from haShem to us as his holy priests, and to the rest of the nations. So, we are parallel to the land.
Now I don’t recall where I read/heard it, but I believe that the land is most prosperous when we are on the land and following haShem’s ways. In other words, when we are doing what haShem wants us to do as stewards of his land, the land will be its most productive. If we don’t act correctly, if we act in a way that the land can’t handle (such as ignoring the land’s shabbat), the land will vomit us out. The Torah uses and interesting word here, vomit, as if we made the land sick.
As I was thinking about that I was struck by another parallel. How did god make the adam (human)? First he gathered the land (or adamah in Hebrew) and shaped the adam. Then he blew into the adam’s nostrils a soul. So, a person is made of the land and something that comes from haShem. Can we not think of the land as the body and the children of Yisrael as the soul, as something given to the land by haShem? After all, is it not the soul that drives the body? If the soul directs the body well, the body (person) can produce great things and the soul will feel great satisfaction. However, if the soul does not direct the body appropriately, if it pushes the body too hard in harmful ways, it will crave without ever being satisfied (this is called addiction), the body will get sick, and in extreme cases will vomit the soul out. This is called death. If we don’t take care of our bodies, our bodies will get sick and die. What is a body without a soul? Lifeless. Dead.
In other words, when our Torah talks about how we should act on the land, it is really talking about how we should treat our body. For example, we need to give it rest. We need to understand it is a gift from haShem and we can use it to produce a great bounty. Or we can pollute it until we die. The choice is ours.
May we all let go of what is blocking us from being our most productive selves and may we all do what is best for ourselves and the world. May be know when to rest and when to work. May we value those around us. May we help those who need help and not exploit those less fortunate. May we not cheat anyone, for we are only cheating ourselves. For we, the people, are the unified soul of the land.
If you care to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.