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Parashat Behar by Mordechai Berkovitch

This is the Parsha for Shabbat 28th May 2005 / 19 Iyar 5765

Both in last week's Torah portion of Emor as well as in this week’s Torah portion Behar, we find a commandment to count: "And you shall count for yourselves seven complete weeks shall there be, from the morrow of the Sabbath (the second day Of the Passover Festival. You shall count fifty days..." (Leviticus 23: 15,16)

 In addition "And you shall count for yourself seven Sabbaths of years, seven years seven times... And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year"

(Leviticus 25: 8,10)

 There is apparently a striking parallel between the seven weeks connecting the Festival of Passover to the Festival of Shavuot, and the seven Sabbatical years connecting the Sabbatical year to the Jubilee year.

 Indeed, the very commandment to count, instructs us to establish the connection between the two periods, it ordains that we join together the celebrations of freedom to the celebration of the first fruits, it connects the Seventh year to the Fiftieth year..

And as we now count each evening the weeks and days Leading up to the celebration of the Revelation of the Torah at Sinai, we can feel adumbrations of 

counting the Sabbatical years leading up to the Jubilee year ordained by this week's Torah portion.

 What are the parallel connections, which the Torah is instructing us to be mindful of?

 Let us begin with the counting of the days and weeks between Passover and Shavuot: Passover is the Time of our Freedom; Shavuot is the Time of the Giving of the Torah, the Festival of the First Fruits. The linkage between these holidays may be seen from the perspective of two different levels: the personal and the national.

At the personal level, an individual who is free from obligation - but is without a sense of  responsibility, or a student on vacation who has nothing constructive to do with his free time, or an adult who need not go to work but who has not accepted for himself a clear code of ethical conduct, can only get into deep trouble as a result of the unsupervised and undirected leisure hours or days at his/her disposal. Ideally, one cannot experience freedom, without a concomitant sense of responsibility. Freedom can lead to boredom; independence without responsible maturity can lead to crime, abuse and self-destruction.

 At the national level, a nation which gains its freedom only to enslave its citizenry, a nation which  establishes an army and utilizes its soldiers to perpetuate acts of terror against neighboring peoples, has forfeited its right to be a nation, has perverted and vitiated the very concept of independence.

This is why the Almighty commands us to unite the Festival of Freedom to the taste of the poor bread-matza which we eat as slaves in Egypt and why we must count the days until we bring the first fruits and declare our obligation to the G-d of the stranger, the orphan and the widow.

 In effect, the connecting counting between Pesach and Shuvout is telling us, that the purpose of our national freedom must be to establish a free society of justice and compassion, predicated upon sharing its bounty with those who are in want.

Shabbat Shalom