Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week's Torah portion is Parashat Bechukotai, in which God details some of the consequences of ignoring the land-based commandments (exile and agricultural ruin) and then goes on to explain the concept and laws of Jubilee. In the previous parasha, we received the laws of Shmittah, the agricultural sabbatical year. Just as people and animals are required to take a day of rest every seven days, the land requires a year of rest of seven years. After 7 cycles of shmittah, the 49th or 50th year is a Jubilee year (the Talmudic rabbis argue, and most subsequent rabbis stick with 50th, but I am not fully convinced), when not only the land and people and animals are to refrain from agricultural work, but also land holdings return to their ancestral tribal owners, all slaves go free, and all debts are forgiven. 

The undercurrent of all these laws is that the land belongs to God and we are mere caretakers of it, and that we belong to God and to no one else. Human slavery is abhorrent to God because it strips people of the autonomy needed to properly follow God’s orders to each individual, including the order to allow rest for our lands and subservient creatures. Rashi says, “[God’s] contract is prior to any social arrangement.” That is, as Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg puts it, Shmittah and Yovel allow for the world to regain the equilibrium it has lost over the previous seven or forty-nine years. 

So much of Biblical law seems to be about reigning in the base instincts of people. In the Beginning, God told Adam and Eve they may eat vegetation. After the Flood, God allowed meat eating but within certain parameters of how the beasts may be killed. In the wilderness, God limited the animals that may be eaten. Each step seems to be an attempt at allowing some slack while pulling in the violent urge of humans to kill other beings for food and sport. Similarly, the laws of slavery set forth in this and last week’s Torah portions emphasize how discouraged slavery is in Jewish law, yet doesn’t outlaw it entirely. God recognized the state of the world, the commonplace indentured servitude of conquered peoples and petty criminals, and set forth further limits to allow the Israelites to exist in the world as they knew it but to start moving toward a more liberated future. 

This continues to be our work today. Shmittah is complicated in a global economy, and it only applies in the Holy Land technically, so as suburban American Jews we may feel disconnected. Yovel hasn’t really been observed for approximately 2400 years. So the exact processes by which we can reconnect with land and each other and God and reset that equilibrium have to be reimagined. Still, the themes remain relevant. God knows we will drift toward greed and arrogance, that we will hoard resources and mistreat others, that we will take what we can and give as little back as we think we can socially get away with. And so, there must be reset measures in place to help snap us back to our baseline. 

One thing that stuck out to me again and again in this parasha and its corresponding chapter of Zornberg’s The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on Leviticus, was the push-and-pull of our relationship with wealth and work. Parashat Bechukotai (and its often-connected parasha of Behar) says quite clearly that wealth is not ours to keep and pass on. Generational wealth is largely accumulated through property more than currency, but these mitzvot make clear that there is no exclusive land ownership, and thus the land holdings cannot be inherited by the next generation. The corollary to this is that everyone in each generation must continue to work the land, to settle anew, to find their own paths in life. And everyone, regardless of wealth, must rest every seven years. It is not a vacation for the wealthy. It is an equalizer for everyone. Zornberg talks about the concept of batalah, the boredom of not working, and the requirement for other forms of labor to be invented to help everyone maintain schedules and some sense of normalcy during the Shmittah year, lest people lose their minds from a whole year of inactivity and idleness give way to idolatry. 

Nap Ministry was founded in 2016 by Tricia Hersey, a Black writer, theologian, chaplain, and artist, rooted in womanism and Liberation Theology. It hangs on a framework of “Rest is Resistance,” and utilizes communal rest as a form of sacred gathering, akin to worship. Ahad Ha’Am once said, “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” But have we really kept Shabbat? Has Shabbat kept us? We still work on Shabbat. Not just the 39 malachot that may or may not be violated by flicking a light switch, but really work. We clean and shop and mow our lawns and drive our gas-guzzling cars on Shabbat. We may even do work, like for our jobs, on Shabbat. We barely take our weekly day of rest, and we for sure don’t ever take a whole year of cessation. We don’t absolve all debts every 49 or 50 years. Jewish social justice organizations may speak out about modern day slavery, but I have seen little to no Jewish movements toward abolishing medical or student loan debts as would be totally in line with this Shmittah year that ends this September. While Nap Ministry is deeply contextualized by and for Black women, its concepts of radical rest fit perfectly within the themes and values of this week’s Torah portion. I don’t want white Jews to necessarily appropriate Tricia Hersey’s work specifically, but I want to encourage Jewish people to remember our love for dialectics - between holy and profane, Shabbat and the rest of the week, rest and work. We need both. We need true, deep, restorative rest for our bodies and souls and societies in order to continue working and living effectively together. This is how we reset, how we return to baseline, so that we can continue to care for and live on the Earth, so that we can continue to care for God’s creation and be worthy of God’s blessings. 

This Shabbat and long weekend, rest. Truly, deeply, fully, rest. Take a nap. Listen to calming music. Play with your kids and socialize with your neighbors. Reset and refresh. And may we all feel the bounty of an Earth restored. Amen and Shabbat Shalom. 

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