This week’s two portions – Be’har
(literally, “at the mountain”), and Be’Chuku’tai (literally, “in my laws”) –
mark the end of the third book of the Torah, the book of Leviticus. Among others, these portions contain the
famous laws of “shmi’ta” – the innovative idea that every seventh year the land
itself has to rest, just like we humans who own it do every seventh day. They also contain other, more familiar
religious laws such as the prohibition on creating idols (Levit. 26:1), the
decree to keep the Shabat (26:2), and others.
And at the end of the Chapter 26
we find this dramatic concluding remark: “These are the statutes, laws, and
doctrines that God provided between Himself and the Israelite People at Mount
Sinai at the hand of Moshe.”
(26:46)
But other than those well-established rules, this week’s
portions also discuss two very interesting concepts that are often less
discussed in Judaism – that of business cycles and that of negative incentives
for inappropriate behavior. To me, both
demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that very little has changed between
the time the Torah was written and today. I will dedicate a very short
discussion to each.
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 pioneer economists like Joseph Schumpeter. Yet the idea that economic activity operate
in waves, and that sometimes people find themselves on top and sometimes on the
bottom of economic success, is as old as the idea of market itself.
This week’s portion is famous for
its detail discussion of the laws of Sh’meeta, which I mentioned earlier – the
careful consideration given to the soil, the main production resource of the
time. In a limited sense, this too can be seen as a part of the notion of
business cycle – here, the land must “rest” every seven years, and then begin
again. To me, however, the more interesting part of the portion relates to the
very detailed account of the rules that should apply when members of the
community fall on hard economic times. For example, what is the law when your
relative was forced to sell a part of their land, as he no longer can hold on
to it? When a member of the community had to sell his lucrative residence
located behind the protective walls of the city (the then-Upper East Side,
perhaps) and to move to live outside the protective bounds of town? What
happens to when out-of-protective-town homes are sold, as the owners can pay
the mortgage? What happens when your relative losses his job and cannot make
do? And so on and so forth. (Levit. 25:25-55) I hope that by now, some – if not
all – of this sounds very familiar. An accurate description of the “biblical
housing bubble,” if you will.
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 very phenomenon of people who fell on hard economic
times and how society should treat them (according to Judaism). This, to me,
shows not only that a community-based approach and notions of shared
responsibility were envisioned well before the Great Depression or the current
economic crisis, but that the Jewish religion saw it as a moral and legal
obligation to treat those people with dignity and fairness, and to provide them
with hope for better economic times.
The message here is simple: You have to treat those people well today,
because tomorrow you might be the one in need of 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 laws created over two thousand years ago to properly deal with
the notion of business cycles and their effect. Once again, we can be proud of
our wise sages (or God, or both) who identified a social issue and created a
comprehensive way of dealing with it.
The
“Sh’ma” and Sanctions for Bad Behavior
While business cycles are
entirely a secular phenomenon – no God is involved in either their
creation or the solution provided (with the proviso, of course, that everything
is done in His command) – the next issue is anything but.
The Sh’ma – “Sh’ma Israel, Adonai
Eloheinu, Adonai Echad” – is by far the most famous of Jewish texts. It consists of two parts, as Yeshayahu
Leibowitz explains in length (also in English, see The Reading of Shema in
Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State 37 (Harvard 1992)). The
first part of the Sh’ma, which is presented as an absolute demand (or as
a Kantian categorical imperative, for those who are interested in modern
philosophy), requires every Jewish person to love the Lord our God with all
their heart, all their soul, and all their might. (And Rabbi Akiva added: “with
all thy soul – meaning that even when they come to take away your soul (i.e.,
to kill you) – you should still love Him.”)
I would not dwell here on the
beautiful issue of why the word love was chosen to portray the desired –
nay, decreed(!) – relationship between the person of faith and God. I would
just suggest that love is the greatest human feeling of all, the strongest, the
most expressive, and thus no other human emotion could be chosen for the task.
The second part of the She’ma is
framed as a conditional demand (or, in Kantian terms, a conditional
imperative). It begins with the words “And if you shall hear [Me],” and
promises a set of rewards for those who would follow the ways of the Jewish
Lord. Leibowitz dwells here on the
notion of “Lishma” and “Lo Lishma” (a faith for its own sake, which is
the one mentioned in the first part, and a lesser, though much more prevalent,
form of faith, to gain a reward, appearing in the second) – an issue I
dealt with in previous posts. But for my purposes today, I would like to remark
on what is missing from the Sh’ma.
The two sections (I omit here the third part of the Sh’ma, dealing with
the Ts’tsit) describe no sanction, no punishment, no negative reward for the
person who chooses not to follow the ways of God.
That part is supplied by today’s portion. And
in droves.
The portion of “Be’Chukutai” begins with the
now-familiar text of “If you shall follow my laws, and keep my decrees . . .
then I shall provide your rain in time (etc., etc.)” – much like the second
part of the Sh’ma. But then the text moves onto a third part that does not appear in the
Sh’ma:
"But if you shall not listen to me, and shall not follow my
decrees, and if you reject my rules and despise my laws . . . then I shall do
the following onto you:" And here the text provides a parade of
horribles, including plagues, wars lost, becoming slaves to enemy armies, a
land refusing to give fruit, the death of domestic animals, and so on and so
forth, including being forced to eat the very flesh of your own descendants.
(Levit. 26:29).
To me, that shows – once again – that not much has changed since the
time the text was written. Yes, it is very nice to discuss categorical
imperatives – doing things because they are right in and of themselves; or even
to do something for anticipation of reaping the rewards – such as “if you will
follow my laws, all the best will happen to you.” (As the second part of the
Sh’ma is phrased). But at the end of the day, human nature is such that nothing
would happen unless and until meaningful sanctions are put in place. And those
sanctions, to be sure, must be such that would deter someone from doing the
act. Serious, big sanctions (and in this case, perhaps even cruel and
unusual sanctions) should be put in place in order to deter unwanted behavior.
And this is the role (well) played by the portion read this week.
I would like to leave
you with the following question, however: If this section is so important, so
vital, so crucial to human behavior, why was it left outside the Sh’ma itself?
Put differently, If you were sitting today in the Sanhedrin’s Knesset G’dolah
(a religious legislative body that ceased to exist, but that had all the
required authority to change the law) would you reintroduce this part of the
text into the Sh'ma? Let me know your thoughts.
Shabbat Shalom,
Doron
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