Dvar Torah for Parashat Behar (Leviticus 25:1- 26:2)
(Given at Temple Israel on Friday, 5/24/2024)
In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Behar, we learn about the institution of Shnat Hayovel – The Jubilee Year. Once every 50 years there was to be a massive economic reboot, when debts would be forgiven, foreclosed family homesteads would be returned to those who had been chased off them, and enslaved people would go free.
Of this occasion the Torah commands –
וְקִדַּשְׁתֶּ֗ם אֵ֣ת שְׁנַ֤ת הַחֲמִשִּׁים֙ שָׁנָ֔ה וּקְרָאתֶ֥ם דְּר֛וֹר בָּאָ֖רֶץ לְכׇל־יֹשְׁבֶ֑יהָ יוֹבֵ֥ל הִוא֙ תִּהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְשַׁבְתֶּ֗ם אִ֚ישׁ אֶל־אֲחֻזָּת֔וֹ וְאִ֥ישׁ אֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתּ֖וֹ תָּשֻֽׁבוּ׃
You shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to your holding and each of you shall return to your family.[1]
That idea of “return” is prominent in Judaism. As it says in Psalm 126, which opens the grace after meals on Shabbat and festivals:
שׁוּבָ֣ה יְ֭הֹוָה אֶת־שְׁבִיתֵ֑נוּ כַּאֲפִיקִ֥ים בַּנֶּֽגֶב׃
הַזֹּרְעִ֥ים בְּדִמְעָ֗ה בְּרִנָּ֥ה יִקְצֹֽרוּ׃
Bring back our captives, O God,
like watercourses in the Negeb.
They who sow in tears
shall reap with songs of joy.[2]
Almost half of the world’s Jews today live in Israel. Our people have lived continuously in the Land of Israel for some three thousand years --- since more than a millennium prior to the birth of Christianity or prior to the Arab conquest that followed the founding of Islam. But most of us were exiled after the Land of Israel was conquered and occupied by one foreign power after another, from the Roman Empire to the Muslim caliphates, to the Crusaders, to the Ottoman Empire. Modern Zionism developed during the late 19th and early 20th century in large part as a response to the age-old threat of antisemitism. For Theodor Herzl and other early Zionists, Jews could ultimately only be safe and secure in a sovereign Jewish country. Such ideas were only accelerated by the experience of the Holocaust, when a third of our people were murdered while the British mandatory authorities sought to bar Jews from finding sanctuary in our historic homeland.
When, in the Israeli national anthem, we sing the words “Hatikvah Bat Shnot Alpayim” (“The hope of two thousand years”), what is that hope to which the song refers? “Lihyot am chofshi b’artzeinu, Eretz Tziyon virushalayim” --- “To be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.
It is far from clear as a matter of historical record, whether the institution of Shnat Hayovel/ The Jubilee Year, that 50th year when the displaced would return to their ancestral homes, was ever fully carried out in Ancient Israel. But, with the rise of Modern Zionism, the idea finally came to fruition on a much grander scale – and none too soon.
It was a privilege and a blessing for me to be able to spend the past three months on Sabbatical in Jerusalem. The past seven and a half months since the terrorists of Hamas murdered over 1200 people in Israel and took over 200 hostage have been heart-wrenching. Everywhere you look in Israel there are posters with the names and faces of the hostages inscribed with slogans like ---- “Bring them Home Now” and “Together we will prevail.” Every Shabbat service includes prayers for the rescue of the hostages and the safety of the members of the Israel Defense Forces who are trying to rescue them and to defeat the terrorists.
Even in places like movie theaters, concert halls, and El Al flights --- the standard announcements about silencing your cell phones and fastening your seat belts are augmented by expressions of concern for the hostages and the IDF.
Within most of the territory of Israel itself, life goes on. But there is of course an undercurrent of mental and emotional fatigue.
Still, I have to admit that the thoughts that sometimes kept me up at night while I was living in Jerusalem were not so much about my safety over there as about the rising tide of anti-Israel activism that I would face coming back to the United States.
Israel is fighting a war of life and death against a nihilistic organization that wishes to murder every Israeli it can --- from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Yet meanwhile, much of the world – including here in the United States --- accuses Israel of genocide of Palestinians when in fact it is Israel that is trying to prevent Hamas and its terrorist accomplices from continuing their genocidal efforts against Israel --- efforts that reached their most recent climax on October 7th, 2023.
And, of course, Hamas’s intentional tactics of embedding its fighters, its missiles, its armaments and its tunnels amidst civilian neighborhoods, hospitals and schools has resulted in horrific consequences for the general Gazan population. No one doubts that it’s all horrific.
Yet it can only be with the defeat of Hamas that we can have any hope of establishing a lasting era of peace between the population of the State of Israel and the population of the Palestinian territories. Progressive Zionists like me long for the day when those territories can become an independent Palestinian state living in peace alongside of --- and not instead of – the State of Israel.
During my time in Israel, I was inspired by the volunteer efforts of Israelis and visitors from abroad to support those in need, and to support those risking their lives to defend the nation.
A few weeks ago, I took part in a day long group excursion to the regions bordering Gaza that had experienced the brunt of the terror on October 7th. As part of that tour, we visited a rest area adjacent to the community of Shuva. Shuva is a moshav that was settled in the 1950’s by Jewish immigrants and refugees from Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. It’s located four miles east of the Gaza border. Its fields became a hub for Israeli army operations during the Hamas mass terror attack on October 7. Initial medical treatment was provided at Shuva Junction since that was the nearest place to the fighting where helicopters could safely land, and patients were transported or flown from there to hospitals elsewhere in Israel. Recognizing a need, three brothers from the moshav, Eliran, Kobi, and Dror, set up a rest station there for the IDF soldiers, offering coffee, tea, and later meals, and personal supplies.[3]
It was inspiring to visit Shuva, and to meet the volunteers, local residents, and soldiers who were passing through. On the wall behind the lunch counter there at Shuva hung a sign in Hebrew with those words from Psalm 126 from which the Moshav had apparently taken its name:
שׁוּבָ֣ה יְ֭הֹוָה אֶת־שְׁבִיתֵ֑נוּ כַּאֲפִיקִ֥ים בַּנֶּֽגֶב׃
הַזֹּרְעִ֥ים בְּדִמְעָ֗ה בְּרִנָּ֥ה יִקְצֹֽרוּ׃
(Shuva Adonai et sheviteynu ka’afikim banegev; hazor’im bedim’ah berinah yiktzoru)
Bring back our captives, O God,
like watercourses in the Negeb.
They who sow in tears
shall reap with songs of joy.[4]
May the day come soon when that dream will be fully realized.
Shabbat shalom.
© Rabbi David Steinberg (May 2024/ Iyar 5784)
[1] Lev. 25:10
[2] Psalm 126: 4-5
[3] https://dannythedigger.com/shuva/
[4] Psalm 126: 4-5
