• Table For Five
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Has the Torah changed how you live your life?

Table for Five: Behar-Bechukotai

In partnership with the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles

Edited by Nina Litvak & Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist

If you follow My statutes and observe My commandments and perform them, I will give your rains in their time, the Land will yield its produce, and the tree of the field will give forth its fruit. – Lev. 26:3-4

Rabbi Benjamin Blech, Professor of Talmud, Yeshiva University

The link between a Biblical verse in Leviticus and its contemporary fulfillment is nothing short of astounding. 

For Nachmanides, known more popularly as Ramban (1194-1270) – one of the giants of Rabbinic history in the Middle Ages – the Torah was not simply commanding obedience to the Divine Words but expressing a remarkable covenant: A covenant between the Jewish people and the very land of Israel, a commitment with prophetic implications that have special relevance in our times. Fulfill your ethical obligations to the Law and the land will respond by blessing you in turn.  Disregard your end of the bargain and – in an almost incredible symbiotic relationship – the land will clearly demonstrate its disapproval and withhold its gifts of grain and produce.

Man’s spiritual status predicts his material fate. 

Historians have not failed to notice. Before Jews came in significant numbers to what was known as Palestine, in the part of his book that closes Mark Twain’s visit to the Holy Land, he offers the following short summary: “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.” Without the People of the Book it seems the story of their land is a tragedy; only when Israel was reborn in 1948 as the home of the descendants of those who willingly stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and proclaimed their commitment to the Creator did the very land demonstrate its love for the people who would obey His commandments.

Rabbi Elchanan Shoff, Rabbi, Beis Knesses of Los Angeles 

Translated exactly – the verse begins “If you will walk in my commandments.” It then says “and observe my mitzvos.”  These sound identical. Our sages (cited in Rashi) therefore concluded that “walking in my commandment” means “toiling in Torah study.” Nearly a ½ century ago, when the Chabad chassidim first completed the Code of Law of Maimonides in a year of daily study, the leading Torah personality of world Jewry, the saintly Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, sent a letter that was read by his son-in-law Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler at the celebration. He wrote, “The primary fulfillment of our covenant with our Father in Heaven is through studying the Torah in great depth, with the goal of studying it, teaching it, guarding it, performing it, and fulfilling it… this sort of study is the fulfillment of the mitzvah ‘if you will walk in my commandments.’” Has the Torah changed how you live your life? Someone simply guided by some internal north star, who does only whatever their “gut” tells them is good, cannot be said to be walking in God’s ways. Unless they allow the Torah to teach them something, it’s a worthless text from which one can cherry-pick verses and phrases that support their already inborn feelings and disregard anything with which they don’t immediately agree. If one does do that hard “toil” of truly studying and observing that which the Torah commands, how will they grow from the Torah? Let’s allow the Torah to teach us!

Denise Berger, Freelance writer

In mindfulness class every Monday morning, as we set our intentions for the week ahead, our teacher softly reminds us: “Whatever we focus on, we see more of, because that’s how the mind works”. I think that’s exactly what these verses are telling us.  The message can get a bit obscured by translation, as well as by our own tendencies to expect easy outcomes; tuning in to the connotations of the ancient Hebrew wording can be very helpful.  

“Follow my statutes” might be more accurately conveyed as “if you go with some of My guidance that doesn’t make immediate sense.” And “observe My commandments and perform them” can be rephrased as “guard the commandments as something precious and fulfill them.” Apart from vocabulary, the difference here is in the energy — the Torah is instructing us to remain aware of Hashem’s love for us, and to internalize that bond as we go about our daily lives. We are to follow and perform not as robots but with devoted hearts.

And to the extent that we’re able to hold that feeling within ourselves, we are promised the rains and the produce, and the trees and so on.  Notably, the Torah is not telling us everything will be perfect or easy.  Farm animals and farmers themselves might still get sick, the work is still rigorous and exhausting, enemies may still threaten war.  The point of these psukim is to remind us, focus on Hashem’s love and you’ll notice it everywhere. 

Rabbi Aryeh Markman, Executive Director, Aish LA and Jewish American Summit

The wording here is precise in revealing, through some of the most fundamental verses in the Torah, the basic tenets of Judaism.  Let’s decode it.  

The literal translation of the verse begins: “If by my statutes you’ll go” – or, conversely, “If by my statutes you’ll walk” – a strange choice of words if the verse is trying to exhort us to fulfill what G-d wants us to do!  Why refer to it as “going”?  It’s redundant as the next words seem to repeat the same exhortation. What’s the message?

We all know that Judaism and living a Torah life go far beyond eating matzah on Passover or lighting the menorah on Hanukkah – it is the path upon which we walk. It’s the blueprint that guides our individual and communal goals, dreams and aspirations.  Our life’s direction.  

Judaism is not about lip service; some convenience we invoke to explain our pseudo intersectional identity.  It goes way beyond lox and bagels.  It’s more than a culture. It’s a lifelong work to incorporate the Torah way into our daily lives to start living on a higher plane and become an elevated people. It is our tradition that God looked into the Torah and then created the world. At Mt. Sinai He made the recipe to existence available to anyone who wanted.  So, by fiat if we observe His commandments and guard His statutes, the world will reflect our efforts.  Yes, the rains will come in their time and so much more.

Ben Elterman, Screenwriter, Essayist, Speechwriter at Mitzvahspeeches.com

This verse is strikingly similar to the verse from the second paragraph of Shema, “If you continually hear My Commandments that I command you today, to love Hashem, your God, and serve Him with all your hearts and all your souls then I will provide rain for your land in its proper time.” (Deuteronomy 11:13). 

The verse from Bechukotai seems to have fewer requirements. Merely that you perform the mitzvahs to get the rains necessary for the land’s produce. In the Shema, you have to emphatically hear (or rather internalize) the Mitzvahs as if you heard them fresh today, and you have to love Hashem and serve him with your heart and soul. Did Hashem decide He wanted more rigorous standards between Leviticus and Deuteronomy? A clue may be that between the two verses, there is a different word for rain. In Bechukotai the word is “geshem.” In Shema it’s “matar.” Geshem is connected to the word gashmius or physicality. The root of matar means, “descend from a high place.” 

You don’t have to be perfect to receive blessing. But at the same time, fortune may not always end up taking us to a good place. There’s no shortage of stories of lottery winners who went bankrupt. But when you view your blessing as a way to connect back to Hashem opposed to just a reward, then the blessing that comes from a high place will inevitably bring you to a high place. 

With thanks to Rabbi Benjamin Blech, Rabbi Elchanan Shoff, Denise Berger, Rabbi Aryeh Markman, and Ben Elterman.

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