This week’s portion, “Be’har” (literally, “on the mountain”) marks the penultimate portion of the third book in the series, Leviticus. It contains the famous and important set of laws known as “shmee’ta” – the innovative idea that every seventh year the land itself has to rest, much like we humans rest every seventh day. It also contains other, more familiar religious laws such as the prohibition on the making of idols (Levit. 26:1) and the decree to keep the Shabat (26:2), among others. To me, however, beyond those well-established rules, this week’s portion may serve as an excellent example for the relevance of the biblical text to our lives today; indeed, economic notions that we consider today as “cutting edge” – such as business cycles, great recession, and personal unemployment – were much in vogue back then as they are now. Allow me to demonstrate.
On Business Cycles and Old Recessions
The modern theory of business cycle – the notion that markets operate in stages, notably four: (1) expansion; (2) crisis; (3) recession; and (iv) recovery – was only developed in the twentieth century by modern economists like Joseph Schumpeter. Yet the idea that economic activity operate in cyclical waves, and that sometimes people find themselves riding on top or on the bottom of those waves, is as ancient as the markets themselves.
This week’s portion is famous for its detailed discussion of the laws of Sh’meeta, which I mentioned earlier – the careful consideration given to the ground, the main production factor at the time. In a limited sense, this is also a part of a business cycle, though this time – as opposed to a cycle created by market powers (real or manipulated) – this one is self-imposed. However, to me, the more interesting part of the portion relates to the very detailed account of what happens when people are suddenly affected by economic hardship. What happens, for example, when your relative was forced to sell a part of his land for economic hardship; when someone had to sell his lucrative dwelling home behind the protective walls of the city (the then-Upper East Side of Manhattan, so to speak); what happens to other dwelling homes that are sold, without a wall (insert your favorite not-so-well-to-do neighborhood here); what happens when your relative lost his job; and so on and so forth. (Levit. 25:25-55)
Though the laws themselves are fascinating – providing, in essence, a model for market-created social safety net, including the (now famous) restriction on usury loans – I am more interested here in the more general phenomenon of people who fell on hard economic times. What is the right manner in which society should treat those people? Is it “every man for himself”? Is it “socialism” (as it is often called here in America without sufficient basis), where the collective attempts to help those in need? The discussions of these issues more than 3,000 years ago – and the consideration of those issues as so pertinent as being considered a part of the holy cannon – prove to me that those issues were prevalent long before the Great Depression or the current economic crisis we are experiencing in America. The fascinating part, to me at least, is that the Jewish religion saw those issues as religious obligations, not merely as economic ones: Thus, the text mandates an obligation to treat those people with dignity, honor, and hope. The message here is simple: You have to treat those people well today, because tomorrow you might be the one needing that kind of help. The debate today over the creation of a new consumer protection agency, as well as the idea of “private” bail-out – a direct government assistance to people in need – are but a faint echo of this comprehensive set of rules that was created, more than two thousand years ago, to properly deal with business cycles and their effect. Once again, we can be proud of our wise sages (or God, if you believe He is the author of the text) that identified a social issue and created a comprehensive way of dealing with it.
Indeed, ever since the bible was written and until today, the very idea of community-based economic assistance is one of the pillars of Jewish life. All over the world, as well as in Israel, Jewish communities are recruiting as one in time of economic turmoil to make sure that no member of the community would fall behind. To be sure, those assistance efforts are made with the understanding that the person in need would do everything they can to “get back on their feet” as soon as possible: no “welfare queens” here. But I think this arrangement, by which one (or more) member of the community is falling on hard times, the community as a whole is being recruited to help them, and then he or she returns as a productive member in the work cycle, should be not only a source of pride for the Jewish community, but also serve as a model to much larger economies in general – cities, states, and even federal.
Shabbat Shalom,
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