The Sidra of Behar is a relatively short Sidra and is devoted to holy periods of times which come only rarely. It speaks about the year of release, called Sh’mittah, which occurs every seven years and the Jubilee year, which comes every 50 years. During the Sh’mittah years all agricultural activities have to cease. During the Jubilee year, which is not observed today, land was restored to its original owners and slaves were freed. The idea behind it was to ensure a certain economic equality amongst the population. The aim of the Sh’mittah year was similar, though on a much smaller scale. For 12 months, the poor were given the right to collect their food from any field they wanted. They did not have to rely on gifts handed down to them by the land owners. It is remarkable that these two institutions were unique to Israel and did not exist in any other culture.
The first verse in the Sidra tells us that this law was given on Mount Sinai. At first glance, it is a difficult statement to understand, since the entire Torah was given at Mount Sinai. Rashi explains that it comes to emphasise that just as the laws of the Sh’mittah were given on Mount Sinai with all the details, which we know through the Oral Torah, so the details of all the other 612 Commandments were also given at Mount Sinai. Professor Yeshayah Leibowitz has written that, by his comments, Rashi reinforces the central concept in Judaism i.e. that the Written Torah and Oral Torah are totally interdependent. The Jewish people can only be guided to live in accordance with the Torah, by studying and following the Oral interpretations which accompany every law. The Jewish people do not obey the straightforward, surface meaning of the text of the Torah, but as it is interpreted in the Oral Torah.
The year of release is first mentioned in the account of the Covenant of Sinai, which we find in the Sidra of Mishpatim. But only one sentence is devoted to it. Here we are given more specific details about it. They are placed here, at the end of the book of Vayikra, because they focus on the special holy status of the land of Israel. Just as the weekly Shabbat declares the holiness of the Jewish people, so the Sh’mittah year testifies to the holiness of the land of Israel. Immediately following the laws of Sh’mittah, we find the terrible section of the TOCHECHA, known in English as the CURSES, in which we are warned that if we fail to observe the sabbatical year, we shall be driven out of the land in great fury.
The Sidra begins by telling us that the Israelites began to observe the Sh’mittah year immediately upon their entry into the land. Our rabbis had a tradition that they started observing it, after Joshua’s conquest of the land and divided it amongst the tribes. This took 14 years. On the other hand, the calculation when the Sh’mittah year should occur is based on the Biblical count of the years since the Creation. If we divide the number 5775, by seven, which will be the number of the year in two years’ time, we see that it will mark the 825th Sh’mittah cycle. It is fitting that the counting should start from the creation of the world, since the Torah calls this holy year The Sabbath of the Lord. Its main purpose is to show that the world belongs to God, which is also the purpose of the weekly Shabbat.
The Sidra of Behar continues with social laws, designed to protect the weakest in society. It speaks of people who gradually fall deeper and deeper into the clutches of poverty. It lists four situations, in which a person might be in need of assistance.
1. A person who is compelled to sell his field because of his economic difficulties. The Torah commands us to give him the opportunity to buy back his field, if it is at all possible for him. If he can’t afford it, his property is restored to him in the Jubilee year.
2. The next stage is when a person no longer has anything to sell. He needs our support to survive and we are commanded to do all we can to prevent him from falling ever deeper into trouble. We have to offer him help so that he can continue to work and sustain himself. We might lend him money so that his business will be saved. We might give him a job. We have a duty to prevent a situation in which he will have to borrow money to buy the essentials of life. Maimonides regards this form of charity as the most dignified, ranking it as the highest level of charity, out of 8 levels.
3. The third stage of the impoverishment comes when a person is forced to sell himself as a slave to another Jew. The Torah legislates that he must be treated like an employee who gets paid for his work, rather than like a slave who is one of your possessions.
4. The greatest tragedy is when a fellow Jew finds himself in such a devastating economic situation that he has to sell himself as a slave, to a gentile, who is living amongst Jews. In this event, the community has to make every effort to redeem him with money.
The Torah concludes with the statement which constitutes the ideological principle which lies behind these laws: “These laws are given because the people of Israel are my slaves. They became my slaves when I took them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Just as the land does not belong to any person, but to the Master of the universe, so all human beings belong only to Him and no one has the right to deprive anyone else of his freedom.
Maimonides writes in his code, Mishneh Torah, regarding the laws relating to the mitzvah of Zedakah: “We are obligated to exercise great care in the mitzvah of charity, more than in the performance of any other mitzvah. If a poor person asks us for something, and we have nothing to give him, we can still speak to him with kind words.”