Temple Sinai

This week’s d’var Torah was written by Rabbi Gil Nativ, the rabbi of Congregation Eshel Avraham in Omer, Israel, who dedicates this d’var Torah to the memory of his mother who passed away on Lag B’omer 5771.

Parashat B’har-B’hukkotai

by Rabbi Gil Nativ

In our Torah reading this week, those following closely will notice a rather famous verse, one that millions of Americans know by heart: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”  These are words engraved on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, one of the national symbols of the nation.

But, interestingly, only a few Americans know the context of this verse. The Torah here does not speak of “liberty” as one of the principles of the Bill of Rights, but of a specific command that has to be carried out once every fifty years.  It is the sh’mitah year, the Jubilee year, the year of release, the year that all land must return to the family of the original owner. This is a law that reminds us that there is no ownership of land; rather the land is leased, because land cannot be sold forever.  It is G-d’s land.  And so when liberty is proclaimed throughout the land, it means that the land has been liberated, and that the economic deck has been reshuffled.

The basis of the sh’mitah law is the awareness that the fight on property, especially for means of production of the property, is an eternal fight. In every society there will always be differences between rich and poor, the propertied and those without property – the pretentious of the socialist-communist theories and ideologies that it is possible to solve once and forever the gaps and the tensions by building a society without social classes, a society without ‘yours’ and ‘mine’, has been proven to be an illusion. A new class of people who have influence and property will always appear. Even the Kibbutz, which was modest and wanted to create a voluntary community of 100 or 200 families with economic equality, failed. The tendency of the world is to cultivate the natural competition between people on private property, what is called by the sociologists ‘differentiation by recompensation’.

Why is it important to read the words in their original context?

First of all, in order to understand that “liberty” or “freedom” is not something gained once and for all, but something that has to be gained again and again. The human society is never static: the enslaved of yesterday will be tomorrow’s master, and again and again we have to pay the price of liberty, which is a painful price for both the master and the enslaved.

Second, and much more important: there is no way to disconnect the “liberty” – freedom of conscience, religion, opinion and union – from the economic reality! Hungry people can not be free. In our parashah, the liberation of slaves in the Jubilee year is inseparable from the agrarian reform where the liberated man gets a piece of land that was owned in the past by his family. If he will not get it, he will have to work for the land owners and sooner or later he will again lose his freedom. In an agricultural society the land is the main means of production, and the one who is forced to sell land that was inherited finds himself, at the end, selling his children for slavery. In the modern society, money and knowledge are the main means of production, and someone who has no money and no education finds his liberty and rights are very limited, even when the law proclaims equality for all.

The commands of the sh’mitah year are not an improved Marxist platform, nor are they are a different system intended to close the social economic gap. This law has a moral, educational purpose, not only for the relationships between the poor and the rich, but also, or mainly, in the relationship between human beings and G-d.  We are led to internalizing the idea that we should never say: ”My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth” (Deuteronomy8:17); even if we achieved our property with work and skill, there is always a Supreme Partner at work as well. If we give up some of our property in favor of the needy and weak, it is because “all is from You , and it is Your gift that we have given to You.  For we are sojourners with You, mere transients like our fathers.  Our days on the earth are like a shadow, with nothing in prospect.” (Chronicles I 29:14-15).

The trick is to nurture our societies as societies of justice and not as societies of charity. We have to internalize the priorities that the Rambam, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, outlined in his eight levels of righteousness, the highest rank being to enable the poor who are capable and want to work to make their own living by making them partners in a business or by giving them jobs, so they will not need charity.

But we can never forget that there are people in society who are not able to make a living: old people and children, the sick and the handicapped. For them we must remember that the land is not ours, that all is G-d’s, and that therefore what we have we must share.  The verse reads, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof”, both those who can create economic freedom for themselves and those who need help.  And that is a liberty that is not obtained just once, but must be renewed again and again throughout the years.