PARSHAT BECHUKOTEI 2016/5776

This week we finished the third book of the Torah, ויקרא ספר . This past Wednesday, I taught my last Parsha Shiyur of the year to an adorable group of Kindergarten and First Grade students at Perelman (other side of town). When we completed the Parshiot of שמות several months ago, one of these budding scholars asked me what we were going to do the rest of the year. I was a bit perplexed and just said we will continue to learn the Parshiot. But, he replied, the next book is VaYikra and we are too young to learn that part of the Torah – our teachers do not allow it. So, I quickly replied, tell your teachers and parents this is an HONORS CLASS and we are continuing with VaYikra!

Now, I knew where this was coming from. We think that the details and the focus on so many levels of reaching often difficult to attain degrees of קדושה are better left to older students; of course the reality is that too many of our students, even graduates of Day Schools, NEVER GET TO this book of rules and regulations. What a shame! Actually, long ago, children at a young age BEGAN their intentional study of Torah with this very text. And I am happy to report that my cute little students have done well, learning about how we are supposed to behave, the reality of how we often behave, the standards set for us by Ribbonu shel Olam, why those standards are set, how we can incorporate them in our lives and so on. Most of all, they have learned about the values of intentionality, sincerity and honesty in our actions in our daily lives and how these values are so rooted foundationally in our Torah.

During this last session of the year, I ended our study together with an important lesson from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, one of my favorite teachers, as you have by now figured out no doubt. Rabbi Sacks teaches a most important lesson about these verses that was not lost on my students. We focused on the following verses:

I will bring despair into the hearts of those of you who survive in enemy territory. Just the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to running, and they will run scared as if running from a sword! They will fall even when no one is chasing them! They will stumble over each other as they would before a sword, even though no one is chasing them! You will have no power to stand before your enemies. (Lev. 26: 36-37)

After scaling back the language just a bit and sharing this, I asked the kids, So who or what is the enemy territory and the enemies of which Rabbi Sacks speaks? THEY GOT IT! The enemy that will cause us to stumble is not always external, it is not always THEM; rather it is too often internal, it is US! It is US when we do not act according to the standards that are set for us. It is US when we are not intentional about our doing Mitzvot. It is US when we take ourselves, G-d, our land and each other too casually and doing what we do out of some misguided sense of perfunctory duty instead of truly understanding and considering what we do and its impact on all aspects of the equation we call LIFE!

This text appears as part of the profound warnings given us in this Parsha. We are told in these verses and those preceding as well as after them that the entire system that G-d has put together needs us to maintain it – otherwise, it will fall apart. If we do not observe the Sabbatical year as we are adjoined to in verse 34, then the appeasement (or תקנה if you will) will be we will lose the land and it will rest in our absence. If we are not scrupulous in observing laws of ownership and redeeming land, we will lose our sense of being. If we do not remember our accountability to and for each other, than we will be fighting each other as we have just read in the painful words, באחיו איש וכשלו – we will become weak because of and with each other instead of strengthened by the ties that bind us – worse than the enemy from external sources, the real threat to our well being is to become the enemy within!

In short the entire system of G-D, COMMUNITY, LAND and INDIVIDUAL that is so carefully scripted throughout the words of TORAH and specifically, Sefer VaYikra, will be destroyed, and there will be no one to blame except for ourselves. So now what?

Rabbi Sacks explains as follows:

[We must remember] that there is nothing unique to Judaism in the idea that we are all implicated in one another’s fate. That is true of the citizens of any nation. If the economy is booming, most people benefit. If there is a recession many people suffer. If a neighborhood is scarred by crime, people are scared to walk the streets. If there is law and order, if people are polite to one another and come to one another’s aid, there is a general sense of well-being. We are social animals, and our horizons of possibility are shaped by the society and culture within which we live.

All of this applied to the Israelites so long as they were a nation in their own land. But what happened when they suffered defeat and exile and were eventually scattered across the earth? They no longer had any of the conventional lineaments of a nation. They were not living in the same place. They did not share the same language of everyday life.

So how did the members of the Jewish nation maintain or lose those features that defined them --- US --- as a people – this is Rabbi Sacks’ fundamental question? Let us look back for a moment at verses 21 and those that follow in Perek כו.

קרי עמכם אני אף … קרי עמי תלכו אם If you behave XXX with me (and my Mitzvot) I will behave XXX with you…

Specifically, I want for us to consider the word קרי, which appears five times in the short span of 8 Pasukim AND ONLY at this point in the Torah, no other! After verse 41 of this chapter, we will not see this word again. Rashi takes this word to mean “casual” as in קרה or מקרה all of which share their derivation – this is the definition appearing in most of our texts that follow Rashi’s interpretive translation. Onkeles, on the other hand, indicates that there is a sense of contrariness or rebellion here, preferred by the BDB in its explanation and in other translations that are not beholden to Rashi. How do we get from such a benign meaning to one that is potentially explosive or why did Rashi take the kick out of the word? What was CONTRARY about what the Jews were doing here? Was it that they were not observing and practicing according to all of the carefully laid out plans, or was it something else? What does it mean if we go with Rashi on this and take the word קרי to mean CASUAL? What could possibly be the problem?

There is an old story told from the earlier days of email and technology. Someone approached his Rabbi asking why the various Mitzvot as prescribed were so detailed and complicated? The Rabbi explained that every detail and every precise element had a purpose and for the total effect to be felt, all details had to be included in the whole entity. The person inquiring just continued to indicate disagreement with this approach and became first careless in his reasoning and then moved on to being contrary. At this point the Rabbi said, okay, lets stop this conversation because I have to leave. I will email you the rest of my response. The Rabbi did as he promised, but did not hear from the individual with whom he had the discussion. He then began to bombard the Rabbi with emails asking why he had not heard. The Rabbi continued to resend his original response. Then the phone call came. “Why did you not answer me? Does that mean I am correct about the details not being important?” The Rabbi said he definitely responded and began to read back the email to the person. Everything was correct in the address except for one problem – the “.” Was missing before the last letters “org” in the address. The individual was completely frustrated with the Rabbi, who simply responded “but it was only one little dot – such an insignificant detail!”

We may not always understand the details. Or those details may not be beneficial to us individually. But if we are casual in their observance and then move to being careless in observing them and so forth down that slippery slope to fighting their very existence, the entirety of our work may very well be for naught. To not care or to not be attentive to the details of our lives as caring and responsible people – this could potentially lead us to become our own worst enemies – acting in a way that is contrary to the intended way we are to be. As we repeated the words upon completing this book of our Torah (until next year) indicating strength in our learning (CHAZAK CHAZAK V’NITCHAZEK) let us remember that the strength of our identity is indeed in the details of that identity and it is KAVANAH we strive for, not to be קרי or casual in our observance . Shabbat Shalom!