Congregation B'nai Israel

Emor

 

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not altogether remove the corners of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I the Lord am your God.

23:22

 

 

There was a pagan custom to leave some sheaves as a gift to the demons to protect the harvest.  Accordingly, this precept was also aimed at uprooting this heathen notion, and that custom was now given the new content of charity and generosity towards one’s fellow being.

Yitzchak Heinemann (19^th Century)

 

These verses occur (in the middle of the commandments concerning the harvest) because God surrounded Israel with Mitzvot (commandments) in all their activities:  When ploughing, there is the mitzvah of “you shall not plough with an ox and a donkey together…”  When sowing, there is the mitzvah “you shall not sow your field with mingled seed…”

Keli Yakar (16^th Century)

 

The Midrash teaches a very important lesson:  The Torah puts the obligation of gifts to the poor among sacrifices precepts in order to underline that these offerings do not present gifts to God…Rather, the Temple service aims at the purity of the heart, attained by way of the offerings…Thus, one who leaves these “offerings” to the poor is considered as someone who has built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and offered up sacrifices in it.

Rashi (11^th Century)

 

We learn that one who gives graciously to the poor, makes a loan to the Lord.  We should realize that not only the *unexplained) religious statutes were given at Sinai on Shavuot but also the rational laws, such as kindness towards the poor and the stranger.  Indeed without belief in God the human mind is liable to become savage and pitiless even to one’s own father…Hence, we are to celebrate on Shavuot the giving of the Torah…the entire Torah.

Meshekh Hokhmah (19^th Century)

 

It is evident that these laws are not made for the direct purpose of the maintenance of the poor.  Even the poor man himself has to leave his gleanings from the field and to other poor people.  It is clear that at the harvest, at the moment when a person takes home that which nature and his own hard work have yielded to him, and puts the proud and far-reaching words “my own” in his mouth, these laws are to remind every member of the nation, and to demand an act of recognition from him, of the fact that this “my own” includes for everybody the duty of caring for others who are needy…

Samson Raphael Hirsch (19^th Century)

 

The visible expression of God’s extreme goodwill is expressed by His assigning these holydays so that (those) who are unable to study Torah can comprehend the meaning of Torah by means of the ceremonies based on historical events performed on the Shabbat and the other holydays…In this way they can also achieve a high level of faith in God’s individual Providence.  Every child, after all, can answer questions as to why we observe certain holydays.

Akedat Yitzchak (15^th Century)