Behar-Bechukotai
It is a year of Yovel
(Jubilee), the 50th year shall this be to you; and you shall not
sow, nor harvest its aftergrowths, nor shall you
gather the grapes that were left upon their vines untended. For it is Yovel:
it shall be a holy thing to you; you shall eat its produce from the field. In this year of Yovel
every one of you shall return to his landed property.
25:10 - 12
The evils that beset the inner
life of society due to social class differences and the unequal distribution of
property, with the resultant sharp contrasts between opulence and misery,
independence and dependence, and the precarious situations that afflict nations
in the course of their political relationships with other nations – all these
are to be atoned for and erased by the Yovel…It is a Yovel of God, but it must be proclaimed and observed as
such also by ourselves.
Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th
Century)
The freeing of slaves in the
Jubilee year serves as an important safeguard for social order. Societies that rely on slave labor usually
suffer from slave revolts and violent acts of vengeance by the underclass. Instead of attaining social justice through
bloody revolt and violent upheaval, the Jubilee emancipation allows for peaceful
and harmonious social change. The
restoration of rights for the poor and disadvantaged becomes an inherent part
of the societal and economic order.
Avraham Hakohen
Kook (20th Century)
By Torah law, a person who owns
land becomes nothing but a renter – he has rented the land from the lord, God
of heaven and earth, for fifty years.
This regime, and there is doubt if it was ever observed in full, is a
powerful program for arranging social reality according to the Torah.
Yeshayau Leibowitz
(20thCentury)
Philosophers have understood the
paragraph as meaning that just as all phenomena in the universe date back to a
single original cause; they will again revert to that original cause. If you are fortunate enough to understand themystical dimension of the legislation of the Shemittah and the Yovel concepts
you will not fail to notice…that the torah emphasizes that just as these fields
were yours prior to the Shabbat, they are even more so yours after you have
observed…
Bachya ben
Asher (14th Century)
Out of the hurly burly –tohu vavohu – God creates order
by separating this from that: light from
dark, land from sea, humanity from beast.
To order the chaos of life, the Torah tells stories that impose the
order of story, and the Torah makes rules that derive from its stories…As the
Torah proceeds, its classifications, stories and rules become more detailed and
complex; the ordering of chaos comes to dominate Jewish religious
consciousness. Leviticus occupies the
Torah’s center, filling it with classifications of humanity, plants, lands,
peoples and textiles. In a way that
extends, develops and makes more intricate the command that we rest on the
Shabbat…Today our concern about preserving our lands causes us, once again, to
pause at this parsha and ask how its laws can inform
our response to a new crisis. By denying
the absoluteness of human claims to the land, can we develop a respect for the
sanctity inherent in the natural world?
Leonard Gordon and Lori Lefkowitz (Contemporary)