A legal
system reflects the deepest moral values of a society and provides for the
enforcement of its moral standards. Parshat Behar, while barely more than a
chapter in length—only 57 verses—opens a window onto a world of moral values.
Although brief, its implications for social justice are long-term and
far-reaching. It focuses on land — how ownership, rights, obligations,
mortgages, and debts are woven into the fabric of people’s lives and the
quality of justice in a society. For most of us today, land is a commodity to
buy, sell, and employ to generate income. In the ancient world, land had far
wider implications: It served as the basis for one’s place in society, within
the family, as well as the source of one’s sustenance. Torah, sensitive to this
reality, as well as to the status of Eretz Yisrael as Israel sacred, ancestral
homeland, provides a mechanism for people to reclaim not only their land
holdings, but their place in society, as well.
Aptly
named Parshat Behar (“At the mountaintop”) projects a vision of economic
justice for people whose freedom and independence is jeopardized by losing
their land, the very means of earning a living. Hard work has never guaranteed
success. Rain or drought, peace or war, or pestilence can spell the different
between the blessing of prosperity, and the curse of starvation. You shall observe My laws and
faithfully keep My rules, that you may live upon the land in security; the land
shall yield its fruit and you shall eat your fill, and you shall live upon it
in security. (vv.
18-19)
People
who fell into debt in the ancient world all too often lost their land—their
means of independence and sustenance—and spiraled into a seemingly irredeemable
economic oblivion. It’s not an ancient story, is it? It happens every day all
around us. In the ancient world, one “solution,” though it’s difficult to
conceive how this was a solution, was to sell oneself into indentured servitude
or slavery to pay off one’s debts. The high moral ground—Behar/On the
Mountaintop—is laid out in this parashah: viewing the vicissitudes of life
that open the door to exploitation of the poor, through a religious,
theological lens. Our limited, human vantage point is inadequate, hemmed in as
we are by our own desires, fears, jealousies, and rivalries. Climb the mountain
and view things from God’s perspective, Torah teaches us.
The
first thing we see from atop the mountain is that the land belongs to God, Who
ordains a sabbath for the land every seven years, just as we have a sabbath
every seven days. If even the land is not to be enslaved by people, how much
more so other human beings. Moreover, every fifty years, the land celebrates a Yovel
(Jubilee) and is released to its original inhabitants. Here, the fortunes
of the land the people merge: those who were compelled to forfeit their land in
order to pay debts regain possession and the potential for self-sufficiency. But the land must not be sold beyond
reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. Through
the land that you hold you must provide for the redemption of the land (vv. 23-24) The connection of land and people are integral to
God’s Covenant, which protects the welfare of both by insuring that neither is
exploited and abused.
Yet the
real is often far removed from the ideal. If your kinsman is in straits and has to sell part of
his holding (25:25)…
If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city (v. 29)… If your
kinsman, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as
though a resident alien (v. 35)… If your kinsman under you continues in
straits and must give himself over to you (v. 39)… If a resident alien
among you has prospered, and your kinsman being in straits, comes under his
authority and gives himself over to the resident alien among you… (v. 47). There are situations that result in permanent
poverty for a family, as well as for the next few generations.
Parshat
Behar seeks to draw strict limits
and prevent trouble from tumbling downhill into trauma and tragedy. Just as
land is redeemed, so are homes redeemed in the Jubilee year, returning to their
original owners. And so, too, are people to be redeemed from the depths of
indentured servitude and slavery. Here we find the famous mitzvah prohibiting
lending money to poor people at interest—because it tends to increase the
concentration of wealth and reduces even further the likelihood that they will
work their way out of the abyss of debt and poverty.
A
number of scholars[1] contend that ancient Near Eastern law codes were
literary, rather than juridical, in nature.
Perhaps counterintuitive, but just because it looks like a duck, walks
like a duck, and quacks like a duck,
doesn’t always mean that it is a duck, which is to say, ancient law
codes functioned not as normative law but rather as (1) a ruler’s proof to the
gods that he was qualified to rule with divine approval; (2) training texts for
judges with sample laws to consider when rendering their decisions; and (3) a
collection of judicial problems and solutions for judges to consider. As Joshua
Berman points out, however, whether the laws of the Torah comprised a normative
law code in force during the biblical period, they reflect a world of values
and ethics. As Berman put it: “…the laws of the Bible may be rightly viewed as
reflections of wider systems of thought and ideology, as the indexes [sic] of
the blueprint of a civilization.”[2] The values that undergird Behar, and so
much of Torah, are values that not only deserve close scrutiny, but which would
serve our society and world well.
Jeffrey
Tigay[3] notes that Israelites did not borrow money for
commercial investment. Loans were made to those who fell into poverty, which is
clearly the context in our parashah: If your kinsman, being in straits, comes under your
authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, let him live by your
side: do not exact from him advance or accrued interest, but fear your God. Let
him live by your side as your kinsman. Do not lend him your money at advance
interest, or give him your food at accrued interest. I the Lord am your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be
your God (vv. 35-38). Income inequality was a serious concern in the
biblical period. Berman notes that the prohibition, “closed an avenue through
which the rich could accrue greater wealth at the expense of the needy. It
fostered a sense of community and shared responsibility.”[4] While other ancient Near Eastern civilizations
enacted relief edicts and releases (perhaps the template for Torah), these were
by fiat of the ruler and served his political purposes. Torah, however, grounds
release of indentured servants and debt slaves in theological considerations:
they apply at regular intervals because God requires them. This, Berman notes,
serves to “neuter [relief edicts and releases] as tools of political
manipulation.”[5] Similarly, debt release, redemption, and manumission are depoliticized
by Torah’s legislation, and are now seen not at the largesse of a human ruler,
but the moral standard of the Ruler of Rulers, reflecting the divine holiness
inherent in every human being.
Midrash
Sifre, tells a short story about two rabbis who travel from Eretz Yisrael to
Babylonia in order to study with a sage there. The two rabbis, homesick for the
Land of Israel even before they arrive in Babylonia, hyperbolically declare that the obligation of
living in the Land of Israel is equivalent to all the mitzvot in the Torah.
R. Elazar b. Shamua and R. Yochanan ha-Sandlar set out
for Nitzivim [in Babylonia] to study Torah from R. Yehudah b. Beteira. When
they arrived in Sidon, they remembered the Land of Israel. They lifted their
eyes and began to weep. They rent their garments and (quoting Torah) said, You
will expel them and dwell in their land (Deuteronomy 12:29). They returned
home and declared, “Dwelling in the Land of Israel is equivalent too all the
mitzvot of the Torah.” (Sifre #80)
In
context, the story expresses the view that living in the Eretz Yisrael is a
Jewish obligation second to none. While living in the Land entails its own
holiness, we know from Torah that it entails far more than the spiritual
qualities of the land, itself. It comes bundled with a long list of rules and
requirements that govern economic and social relationships, both to land and
people, a set of which are articulated in Parshat Behar. Perhaps what R.
Elazar b. Shamua and R. Yochanan ha-Sandlar are also saying is that part of the
value of living in Eretz Yisrael is the quality of living under moral laws that
protect people who fall into poverty. Living by the laws of the Torah insures
that the most vulnerable will not fall between the cracks and suffer economic
abuse and exploitation on top of their misfortune. Even if the law codes of the
Torah are, in large measure, aspirational, the underlying values provide ideals
worth striving for.
© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
[1] E.g., Joshua
Berman, Raymond Westbrook, Jean Bottero, Michael LeFebvre.
[2] Joshua Berman, Created
Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (2008: Oxford
University Press), p. 85.
[3] Jeffrey Tigay, Deuteronomy
(1996: Jewish Publication Society), p. 217.
[4] Berman, ibid., p.
97.
[5] Op. cit.,
p. 101.
