Parshat Behar

Shabbat Mom thinks of Behar as Co-op Board rules for the universe—and a reminder that we are renters, not owners, no matter what we choose to think. When the Israelites enter the Promised Land they must “observe a sabbath of the Lord...Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest...you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.”

Yet the people may eat the food that the land produces during this “shmita” or sabbatical year. In the Jubilee year all land reverts to its previous owners and slaves go free.

“You shall count off seven weeks of years—so that the period of seven weeks gives you a total of 49 years...(Then) you shall hallow the fiftieth year...each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family.”

G-d promises that if these rules are followed and if the people “do not wrong one another, but fear your G-d” then “the land shall yield its fruit and you shall eat your fill, and you shall live upon it in security.”

Shabbat Shalom from Lake Lugano (pictured above)!