The Promise of Security, the Path of Brotherhood

There are few sounds as moving to the Jewish soul as hearing the Torah offer a promise so complete and reassuring: a life in Eretz Yisrael marked by security, prosperity, and freedom from threat. In Parashat Behar, the Torah grants us a breathtaking vision of what life can be—if we commit to a society rooted in justice, compassion, and mutual responsibility. Rabbi Paul Bloom explains the nature of this commitment and the benefit it confers.

A Divine Promise with a Condition

In Vayikra 25:18–19 we are told that, if we follow God's statutes, “you shall dwell in the land securely”. Not only that, but the land will be fruitful, the economy will flourish, and we will live free from fear. It is a beautiful promise—but it is not unconditional. The Torah presents this vision alongside a profound and revolutionary system for economic justice—the Yovel, the Jubilee Year.

Yovel: The Torah’s Economic Reset Button

Every 50 years, the nation of Israel hits a spiritual and economic "reset." Land is returned to its ancestral owners. Those who have sold themselves into servitude are set free. Debts are cancelled. The entire structure of inequality is dissolved, and the people start anew.

In today’s terms, the Yovel is like a factory reset—a complete restoration of original settings. In Biblical times, when over 90% of the population worked in agriculture, land ownership was the foundation of economic life. Losing one's land meant losing one's livelihood and dignity. The Torah ensured that such loss could never be permanent. No family could be condemned to generational poverty. No oligarchy could ever permanently control the economy. Through Yovel, the Torah mandated a national act of compassion—a cycle that sustained social balance, human dignity, and national unity.

Stages of Descent, Opportunities for Redemption

Parashat Behar doesn’t just stop at the macroeconomic scale. It explores, in striking detail, the personal descent into poverty, marking four distinct stages, each one more desperate than the last:

1. Selling one’s land – the first sign of distress.
   
   
2. Borrowing money – the Torah forbids charging interest, commanding us to lend without profit.
   
   
3. Selling oneself to a fellow Jew as a servant – requiring humane treatment and dignity.
   
   
4. Selling oneself to a non-Jew – the lowest point, prompting a communal obligation of redemption.

Each stage begins with the phrase כִּי־יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ (“when your brother becomes impoverished”), emphasizing not just the individual’s decline but our responsibility toward him. At every level, the Torah commands us to intervene, to lift up, to restore—not from pity, but from brotherhood.

“Achicha” – Your Brother

A remarkable feature of this parasha is the repeated use of the word “achicha”—your brother. Time and again, the Torah reminds us that those who fall on hard times are not strangers. They are not burdens. They are our brothers.

Just as Yehudah promised his father to be responsible for Binyamin, saying, “I will be his guarantor” (Genesis 43:9), so too must we take personal responsibility for one another. This is the foundational ethic of Jewish society—not competition, but commitment; not survival of the fittest, but upliftment of the fallen.

The Rambam adds a deeper dimension to this idea. He explains that our brotherhood is not merely biological but spiritual. We are brothers because we are all children of God, bonded by Torah, Shabbat, and mitzvot. Our unity is rooted in shared purpose and divine mission.

Living in God's Land

The Torah reminds us that the Land of Israel ultimately does not belong to us—it belongs to God. We are tenants, stewards entrusted with His land. That awareness demands a society built not on exploitation but on holiness, not on greed but on generosity. The Yovel year is therefore not just economic—it is profoundly spiritual. It is a year of freedom, of return, of reconnection. It reminds us that liberty, dignity, and opportunity must be the birthright of every Jew.

A Prophetic Hint: 1948 in the Torah

There’s a touching gematria (numerical hint) in the parasha. The Torah says: "וְשַׁבְתֶּם אִישׁ אֶל־אֲחֻזָּתוֹ וְאִישׁ אֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתּוֹ תָּשֻׁבוּ"—“Each person shall return to his ancestral land, and each to his family shall you return” (Leviticus 25:10).

The seemingly redundant final word "תשובו" (you shall return), has a gematria (numerical value) of 708, which corresponds to the Hebrew year 5708 (תש"ח)—the year 1948 in the Gregorian calendar and the year the State of Israel was established.

This small detail becomes a monumental reminder: the return to the Land of Israel is not just a historical event—it is a fulfillment of a divine promise etched into the Torah itself.

The Ultimate Blessing

Parashat Behar outlines a society where no one is left behind, where freedom is regularly restored, and where unity is sacred. If we build such a society—rooted in responsibility, anchored in Torah, and animated by the spirit of achicha, your brother—then we merit the ultimate blessing: to live in the Land of Israel in security, prosperity, and peace.

May we continue to witness the unfolding of this vision in our days, and may we rise to the responsibility it demands of us.

Ascending the mountain: Behar 5784

This parsha begins with the word that defines its name: Behar (“On the mountain”). This mountain naturally is Sinai and the Torah’s emphasis is on reinforcing Judaism’s core belief that our Torah is God-given, not the result of centuries of work by a committee. This basic belief lies at the heart of many of the contentious disputes that have marked Jewish life over the ages.

 The earliest splinter groups, such as the Sadducees and the Karaites, did not openly deny the validity of the Written Torah and its divine origin. They did however strenuously deny the holiness of the Oral Law and its origin at Sinai, denigrating its rabbinic interpretations and decrees. This led to serious splits within the Jewish people and to bitter recriminations that lasted centuries. In all these instances, the divinity of Torah and of its Oral Law always eventually won out. Deviant movements eventually fell away from the main body of the Jewish people, both individually and as a body with the power to influence Jewish life and mores.

 Sinai, the mountain to which this parsha alludes, was given to Israel. It is a difficult mountain to ascend. The Psalmist asks: “Who can ascend the mountain of God?” But, as difficult as it is to ascend the mountain, it is even more difficult to remain there. The Psalmist again intones: “Who can maintain oneself in the holiness of God’s place?” The struggle to keep the Jewish people on the mountain of God in terms of their belief and faith has been the hallmark of Jewish life over millennia. It has not abated in our time.  

 Jewish secularism comes in two sharply contrasting forms. One is simply based on the premise that the lifestyle and value system demanded by our ancient faith is out of step with modern society and its demands. Shabbat, kashrut and other fundamentals of Jewish life are all too restrictive to perform any useful function in today’s world. The Jewish people can no longer afford to be so different from the rest of the human race. The mountain may have had its purpose at one time, but that time has now passed. New ideologies and circumstances have rendered it obsolete. So, for them the mountain no longer exists.

 The second species of secularism denies the existence of the mountain altogether. There never was a mountain, it is nothing but an urban legend, fostered by the rabbis over the ages. In effect, our grandfathers were all liars or naïvely believed in fairytales for which there is no scientific evidence. Aside from these two groupings, there are others who wish to be identified as buying into the Jewish scene. They do not see themselves as being secular but nonetheless, in varying degrees, follow the path of the Sadducees and the Karaites since at heart they too deny that the mountain has anything to do with God and divine origins.

 History shows that, in the long run, such philosophies and movements give way to the pressures of time and circumstance. Eventually they lose their influence and power. At the end of the day, only the mountain remains as it always has, challenging us to ascend it and to remain at its peak.   

 Shabbat shalom.  

Rabbi Berel Wein