Behar
A Spiritual Nation
Adapted from the writings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook
Parshat Behar instructs the Israelites on the Shemittah year. Every seventh year they are to refrain
from planting fields and pruning vineyards. Anything the land produces of its own accord becomes public
property, rather than the property of the landowner. Environmentally, the practice is said to rejuvenate the
soil. What does this practice
achieve morally and spiritually?
Life can only be perfected through the affording of a breathing
space from the bustle of everyday life.
The individual has the opportunity to recover from the influence of the
mundane at frequent intervals, every Shabbat day.
A nation, too, needs to express from time to time the Divine light
that animates it, so it can become a society in which souls can grow. What Shabbat achieves regarding the
individual, the Shemittah year achieves with regard to the nation as a whole.
Everyday economic life creates constant conflict between the ideal
practice of lovingkindness, truthfulness, compassion and pity, on the one hand,
and the inevitable oppression, coercion, and quest for material gain, on the
other. The resulting callousness
causes moral deterioration.
The periodic suspension of the normal social routine can raise a
nation spiritually and morally. A
year without oppressor and tyrant, a year without punctilious privilege and
private property, a year of equality and rest, can be a year in which the soul
reaches out towards divine justice, towards God Who sustains the living
creatures with lovingkindness.
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