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Parshat Behar
2000
Leviticus 25:23
"And the Land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine, for you are strangers and sojouners with Me."
Leviticus 25:42
"For they are My servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt-they may not give themselves over into slavery."
Your Torah Navigator
1. Why does the text say that the land is "Mine" (God's) if humans buy and sell land (and, indeed, the Torah gives us so many rules for such buying and selling of property)?
2. What does it mean to be both "strangers" and "sojouners" with God?
3. What is the meaning of being God's "servants"? What connection does that have with having been taken from Egypt?
4. Specifically, who is the Torah telling us may not be slaves? How do we understand the fact that this injunction is not placed on other peoples, and how do we reconcile this with our modern understanding of human liberty?
A Word
Our parshah ends with the pronouncement "You shall not make idols for yourselves, or set up for yourselves carved images or pillars, or place figured stones in your land to worship upon, for I the Lord am your God. You shall keep My Sabbaths and venerate My sanctuary, Mine, the Lord's."(Lev. 26:1-2)
In essence, this entire parshah focuses us on countering the erroneous reality that we set up for ourselves. We can worship ourselves as idols: we attribute to ourselves power and status in accordance with our wealth and with how many people are "under" us. The end of the parshah gives us pause by posing the true reality -- that it is God's laws we must ultimately follow, not our own. In the end, it is God's power that is abiding, not ours. It is to prohibit worshipping our own glory that the rules of the sabbatical and jubilee years exist. Ultimately, we do not really own the land, and we certainly do not own each other. To believe otherwise is to deal in idolatry. We act godly when we till and tend the land and care for those around us, realizing we own none of it.
Prepared by Rabbi Marsha J. Pik-Nathan, Director, Tri-College Hillel (Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges)
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