Adina Gerver: Behar-Bechukotai Ethical Consumption

Adina Gerver summarizes the parashah simply: God promises agricultural abundance during the 7th year, which should invoke compliance. If this promise is not adequate for compliance, Bechukotai provides the warning of what comes next. The poetic pairing of reward and punishment in our relationship with the earth continues. Today we find Talmudic loopholes that allow us to continue in our disregard for the earth. Yet the truth of climate change today poses a major threat to us.

Rabbi Daniel Nevins: Behar-Bechukotai Remember the Land

Rabbi Nevins writes that the capacity for humanity to ruin and be exiled from the earth was found millennia ago, in this Torah portion. In Leviticus, the land is a central character, even more so than the Sanctuary. In Leviticus 26:42, the text reads “…and I will remember the Land”, giving it a status similar to the 3 patriarchs. The Land is not just a place to live, but an intermediary to encounter God.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z/l: Behar-Bechukotai The Chronological Imagination

Rabbi Sacks writes that reality has many dimensions, but we cannot grasp them simultaneously – they are too complex. But we can think about them sequentially. This is chronological imagination. The Torah presents a sequential worldview, which is aptly described by the shema – listen, hear, understand, respond.