Adina Blaustein: I feel like congratulations are in order that we finally got to Behar Bechukotai, the end of Vayikra. It's definitely challenging to go through the parshiyot of Vayikra, but I think you had a great series in ITV.

Ari Levisohn: Yeah, you know, Vayikra isn't the easiest, but I think we found really a lot of deep and profound lessons throughout the entire book, and here you are to take us home.

Adina: It's with some trepidation because this is definitely…this is my first time, I think, so…

Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha, diving deep “into the verses” to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself. I’m Adina Blaustein, content production manager at Aleph Beta, and I’m delighted to be standing in for Ari this week as host, to share with you ideas I developed in conversation with him. Here are I am with Ari: 

So I want to think about how the book of Vayikra concludes. We read, this year, Behar-Bechukotai – double parsha. And, truthfully, I think it's so wise that they're paired together since Behar-Bechukotai definitely seems to form a unit. Behar talks a lot about the laws of shemittah; Bechukotai alludes to curses and seems to pick up on this language of shemittah and Shabbat, so it seems to form a unit together. But the book of Vayikra is really ending with reminders about the laws of shemittah, and in Bechukotai, quite dramatically, these curses, these horrible punishments. What I want to do is explore: What's the significance of these curses? Why are they here? Are they lending anything structurally and thematically to the book other than just scaring you? Like, “Keep the laws, keep the laws, keep the laws.” 

Ari: Usually I try to just get through them as fast as possible. I think all of us, you know, try to just, “Oh yeah, bad things, bad things, bad things. Let's move on to Bamidbar.”

Adina: They always pick somebody to read them very quietly in shul, right? So, yeah, if you open up to these curses…

Ari: Chapter 26?

Adina: Yeah. It just describes things being progressively worse, from your body attacking itself, your enemies attacking you, you being scattered amongst the nations, and concludes with this really interesting notice, or a really interesting phrase, in 34: אָז תִּרְצֶה הָאָרֶץ אֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתֶיהָ – then the land will make up for its Sabbath year (Leviticus 26:34). What do you think this is referring to here?

Ari: Yeah, this is referring to the laws of shemittah, which we just talked about for an entire parsha beforehand. 

Adina: Exactly, and that's why I say that Behar Bechukotai are a perfect companion, because it seems like the reasons for these curses are, if you don't do the laws of shemittah, then you're going to get these curses. And once you realize that, you also kind of start seeing some words - I'll give you just a sec even to see if anything jumps out at you with shemittah in your head. Why don't you go ahead and scan some of these verses, and something's gonna pop out at you.

Ari: Well, I mean, the very next verse, I think, is super interesting, which is continuing this theme of shemittah. So, כׇּל־יְמֵי הׇשַּׁמָּה תִּשְׁבֹּת – so all of the days of the desolation, the land will rest (Leviticus 26:35). 

Adina: So there's almost like a Shabbat for the land.

Ari: Right. So, explicitly, it's saying, because you didn't give the land what it needed, now, you know, it's like the land's going to rest one way or another, whether you wanted it to or not. And if you're not going to let it rest, when you're the guardians of it, the caretakers, then it's just going to have to kick you out, because one way or another, it's got to get its rest.

Adina: Exactly, well said. Anything else you notice? Maybe like a number that repeats throughout these verses?

Ari: Before even looking at the verses, I'm guessing this number is seven.

Adina: It totally is, right? So take a look and see if you can identify.

Ari: Okay. So, I'm looking at verse 18. So, God's basically saying, “I will punish you sevenfold for your sins.”

Adina: Exactly. So, it's clear that these curses seem to be linked to shemittah. But I think a question that this then raises is, why does shemittah need a unit of blessings and curses at the end of it? And why does Leviticus need to conclude this way?

Ari: You're basically arguing, or suggesting, that these curses are coming specifically as a follow up to shemittah and what happens if you don't keep the shemittah?

Adina: I'm not sure. I honestly don't know.

Ari: Yeah, I mean, that would be fascinating because there are no other laws in the Torah that have anything like that, like a whole set of curses or consequences if you don't follow them

Adina: Exactly. It kind of amps up the significance of shemittah and it forces us to see shemittah in a whole new way. It also forces us, I think, to see Vayikra in a whole new way because shemittah is the conclusion of Vayikra.

Guidance From The Prophets

So, you know, I'm a haftorah geek. So whenever I kind of have these kinds of issues with the parsha, I kind of love looking at the haftorah, I always have. I think the haftorah suggests a sort of path. Much like the Torah could be a commentary on itself, and much like Midrash can be an added tool to kind of sometimes finding points of intertextuality, I think often the choices made for which haftorah to pair with which parsha can also act as a sort of commentary on the parsha and then also function as an intertextuality, because then you read the haftorah into new eyes, you see the parsha new eyes.

Ari: For sure, yeah. It's something we don't talk about, haftorah, much on ITV, but I'm glad we’re doing this because there's so much wisdom, I think, in how the Rabbis decided to use certain parts of Tanach as haftorah. And, yeah, it's like it formed this whole other method of commentary on the Torah. Great, okay. I'm really excited. What does the haftorah have to say about this?

Adina: So Ari, I want you to imagine you're being called up in shul to read the haftorah, but they're like, “Oh no, no, no, no. You don't just have to read it. You have to choose what it is.” So you just heard the parsha.

Ari: As a gabbai who, you know, it's my job to ask people to do the haftorah, that would make my job really hard.

Adina: Yeah, so what are you gonna choose? I'll help you out a little bit, let's narrow it down. Which book would you choose?

Ari: Hmm. Let's see. Okay, so we're talking about the curses here. These curses are predicting some, you know, this destruction and exile. So, maybe the book of Jeremiah?

Adina: For sure. And that's where the haftorah is from.

Ari: I passed. They'll ask me to read again.

Adina: You passed, exactly. Just to give some context on the book of Jeremiah, Yirmiyahu is the prophet, I think, more than any other prophet who gives us a window into the time period leading up to the final destruction of the First Temple. And so he has about a 30 some odd year career as a prophet. And Jeremiah is the one who keeps telling them over and over again, “Repent, maybe there's still a chance,” and, “The Babylonians are coming,” and the people keep basically ignoring him. It's really tragic.

So, we're going to start with Jeremiah, chapter 16, verse 19, and then it's going to conclude in the next chapter, Jeremiah 17, verse 14. I want to show you something interesting, I think, about this haftorah that doesn't necessarily make it the first obvious choice. Just glance at the haftorah. It begins with a prayer in first person, “Oh Lord, my Strength, my Stronghold, my Refuge in day of trouble.” I mean, it almost sounds like Tehillim (Psalms), and it continues with the prophet basically marveling with distaste at the horrible practices of pagan worship he sees around them. Verse 20: “Can a man make gods for himself? They're not gods.” And, acknowledging that in verse 21, we switch. It seems like it's God speaking here, basically saying, “Okay, I'm gonna teach them once and for all My power and might, and they'll know that My name is God.” In other words, there's a punishment about to happen. And as we transition into the next few verses, we have a further description of the horrible sins of Judah. Their sin is so entrenched, it's almost like written with the stylus of iron. Imagine carving something into stone using an iron stylus. That's how intense their sin is engraved on the tablet of their hearts. Really powerful imagery. And it continues over the next few verses basically describing with, again, distaste all of their sins.

Ari: It's interesting. That reminds me of – probably off topic, but it reminds me of Shema when it says וְשַׂמְתֶּם אֶת־דְּבָרַי אֵלֶּה עַל־לְבַבְכֶם וְעַל־נַפְשְׁכֶם, right (Deuteronomy 11:18)? It's like yeah, we're supposed to be taking the words of Torah, the words of God, and putting them on our hearts. But instead, the words of the sins are not just written, but etched on tablets of the heart.

Adina: For sure. And nothing about this, though, seems particularly striking why it should be chosen as the haftorah for Behar-Bechukotai. I mean, I just want to emphasize, if all we wanted to do in the haftorah was basically say, “There are punishments for not keeping God's commands and that the land is gonna drive you out,” there are far more evocative texts that could create a more stirring haftorah of, “Be scared, be scared, be scared.”

So I just don't think that the main goal of this haftorah is saying that the main theme of the parsha is scaring you into submission, or like, “You're gonna have the worst things ever happen to you.” And you can even see how it almost seems like the haftorah is almost purposefully not going in that direction.

Ari: Yeah, so I kind of see where you're going here, because I'm starting to see the first word of 17:4 is וְשָׁמַטְתָּה (v’shamatata), from the word shemittah.

Adina: Okay, then we get to verse four, right? So here's what’s really interesting. So why don't you read verse four, where you start seeing that the Rabbis in choosing this text are kind of picking up on this key theme that we already noted in Behar-Bechukotai.

Ari: Which by the way – I mean, this is read on Bechukotai, which is the portion with all the curses, even when it's a separate week from Behar where we actually talked about shemittah. So the Rabbis already saw that shemittah was at the center of these curses.

Adina: Exactly, so read verse four.

Ari: וְשָׁמַטְתָּה וּבְךָ מִנַּחֲלָתְךָ אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לָךְ – just the JPS translation, you will forfeit, by your own act, the inheritance I gave you. I'll make you a slave to your enemy. 

Adina: Okay, I’m going to just interrupt you. That word, וְשָׁמַטְתָּה, means here not a land rest, but it just means to forfeit, which is what the verb shemittah means. In Devarim it says שָׁמוֹט כׇּל־בַּעַל מַשֵּׁה יָדוֹ, right (Deuteronomy 15:2)? There's also this notion of release of debt that accompanies the shemittah year. And so that word in a sense could mean release or forfeit, so here, too, it means…

Ari: You forfeited your nachala, inheritance, which – it's gotta be referring to the land, which is often referred to as a nachala, an inheritance.

Adina: Absolutely.

Ari: So in other words, it's saying you forfeited your inheritance, but it's using the word of shemittah. So already here, I'm connecting the dots. If, in the curses in Bechukotai, it said that the land will basically create its own shemittah because you didn't give it a shemittah, so maybe that's what it's saying here. Like, you forfeited it, but you forfeited it through not doing shemittah.

Adina: Yirmiyahu is telling the people, “You're going to go into exile, and then you'll give the land the shemittah that it needs.”

I just want to point out something key though. Vayikra doesn't use the word shemittah, right? That word shemittah is from, I believe, Devarim. In the book of Vayikra, the way we call it shemittah, because it clearly is, but in Vayikra it's called a Shabbat. But I think it's inescapable to kind of say, you know, וְשָׁמַטְתָּה (v’shamatata). When they read it in that vein, that's the power of intertextuality. They're saying, “Oh, it's shemittah, right? This is something we're picking up on.”

Okay, so once again, the way that Yirmiyahu is telling the people about their punishment is, in this verse, “You caused it to yourself,” right? You forfeited, by your own acts, the inheritance, and so I'll exile you. Exile is a natural consequence, we would say, from what you did. You betrayed the land. The land will kick you out. That's why you need to go into exile.

So here, we're kind of gearing up some kind of punishment, speaking to the people. And then, in verse five, it changes voices once again. כֹּה  אָמַר יְקוָה – you know, this is kind of the prophet speaking in the voice of God – Thus says the Lord, אָרוּר הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר יִבְטַח בָּאָדָם – so we have two terms here for man – cursed is the man who trusts in man, or cursed is the guy who puts his trust in man, who makes mere flesh his strength and turns his thought from God.

Ari: Yeah, this feels like a non-sequitur.

Adina: Yeah, and I'll just say that it's really interesting because it feels like a non-sequitur, but I'm starting to see now maybe even a little bit more why maybe this text was chosen, because it introduces this curse. And what's really interesting is that – and others have pointed this out, this isn't my own noticing – what starts developing despite the fact that, yes, it switches voices a lot, we see from the way that the Rabbis frame this haftorah is that a chiastic structure actually kind of starts developing, and this is the center of that chiasm.

Shemittah and Trusting in God

So the haftorah begins with this beautiful prayer of trust in God. “God is my strength and my stronghold.” The haftorah ends with this beautiful expression of praise and hope in God – quite a famous aphorism: Mikveh Yisrael Hashem, the hope of Israel is the Lord. And then, concluding with another quite famous verse, verse 14: רְפָאֵנִי יְקוָה וְאֵרָפֵא הוֹשִׁיעֵנִי וְאִוָּשֵׁעָה כִּי תְהִלָּתִי אָתָּה – Heal me, Lord, and let me be healed. Save me and let me be saved, for you are my Glory. So the beginning and the ending of the haftorah are these beautiful expressions of faith and trust in God.

Ari: Yeah, I would see all of these for all of these verses that we borrow for our prayers, both in the beginning and the end, right.

Adina: Exactly, and then the second and the second to last are part of this chiasm as well. Where you have phrases, basically, in shock about the way that Man is subverting things that are, or focusing on things that are so obviously false – you know, up is down, left is right. And what that then draws your attention to is the center of the chiasm, the center of the haftorah, the climax, which is this, almost, mini-poem about a curse and a blessing.

So what the haftorah is doing, in a way, and what the Rabbis are noticing by focusing on this chiastic structure, is they're basically saying, “Oh, this is the curses and the blessings.” And then kind of you see why the Rabbis picked this.

Ari: Oh, very cool. So in other words, although at first glance this haftorah seems like…and the section from Jeremiah seems like a bunch of non-sequiturs, it's actually part of this really beautiful chiastic structure. And when we look at any chiasm, one of the things that we can draw from it is the fact that it's all focusing your eyes towards the center, and that center here happens to be made up of blessings and curses, just like this week's parsha. Okay, so let's look at that center.

Adina: Here's why I think this is such a powerful commentary. It's basically saying, “Hey, the blessings and the curses are really important,” right? It's not just tacked onto the end of Vayikra. It's saying this is important, so let's take a closer look at those verses.

So the center starts in verse five: כֹּה  אָמַר יְקוָה – Thus says the Lord, אָרוּר הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר יִבְטַח בָּאָדָם וְשָׂם בָּשָׂר זְרֹעוֹ וּמִן־יְקוָה יָסוּר לִבּוֹ – Cursed is the guy who puts his trust in another man and makes mere flesh the source of his strength and turns his thoughts from God. And then, in verse six, we're presented with this metaphor of, what is he like? וְהָיָה כְּעַרְעָר בָּעֲרָבָה – He's like a bush in the desert, וְלֹא יִרְאֶה כִּי־יָבוֹא טוֹב – And he doesn't even get to see that good is actually coming. וְשָׁכַן חֲרֵרִים בַּמִּדְבָּר אֶרֶץ מְלֵחָה וְלֹא תֵשֵׁב – because he's in this kind of scorched place of wilderness, in a barren land without inhabitants. So he's isolated, he's all alone. Good is happening, and it's almost like even worse. It's not like, oh, he gets to join in others’ good, or has other people to help him out with his suffering. It's that he is all alone in his suffering, because he put his faith in another man.

Now, I want you to pretend that you're reading this in a vacuum, divorced from the parsha, without shemittah on your mind. Within the context of the book of Jeremiah…two important things to kind of note: The first is, this idea of putting your faith in another man, in the book of Jeremiah has intense political undertones. Because the people of Judah are struggling with, “Do we ally with Egypt? Do we ally with Bavel? Do we try to concede to Bavel? Would that save us?” And over and over again, Jeremiah basically is like, “No, no alliance is going to help you. The only thing that will help you is putting your faith in God.” So it definitely has a clear undertone from the book of Jeremiah, okay? But now that you have shemittah in your head, it takes on this whole new meaning, right, and this is why intertextuality works both ways. What does this verse now mean?

Ari: Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of shemittah is, is not some external man that you're looking to help you. The idea is that, every seven years, you leave your field, and you trust God, and you yourself take your hands off and recognize that God will take care of this even without me.

Adina: That jumps out at me immediately when I'm thinking of shemittah and reading this verse.

Ari: Right. The reason why you would not keep shemittah is because you don't trust God, and you feel like you need to control everything yourself. Yeah. You are the man that you are stubbornly putting all your trust in, which is like this really basic human instinct that we want to have everything in our own hands. It's why people are reluctant to adopt self-driving cars, even though they're already way safer, because we want to have that control in our own hands.

Adina: Then the next verse presents an opposite type of individual: בָּרוּךְ הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר יִבְטַח בַּיהֹוָה וְהָיָה יְהֹוָה מִבְטַחוֹ – Blessed is he who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord alone. And the metaphor that we're given in verse eight to kind of parallel the metaphor we were given about the cursed man, right? The cursed man is in the wilderness…Good comes, but he can't even access it. This blessed man, וְהָיָה כְּעֵץ  שָׁתוּל עַל־מַיִם – He's a tree planted by the waters, וְעַל־יוּבַל יְשַׁלַּח שׇׁרָשָׁיו – and he gets to send forth his roots to the stream. וְלֹא יִרְאֶה כִּי־יָבֹא חֹם – Even a heat wave can come, but he doesn't worry about it. וְהָיָה עָלֵהוּ רַעֲנָן – His leaves are ever fresh. וּבִשְׁנַת בַּצֹּרֶת לֹא יִדְאָג – A drought can come, he doesn't care. He's fine. וְלֹא יָמִישׁ מֵעֲשׂוֹת פֶּרִי – And even during that year of drought, he doesn't cease to yield fruit. And what's fascinating is that there's so much complexity here. It's not that, just “good, good, good.” It's that the blessing isn't that you're just going to have pure good. Even the blessing is saying, “Oh, hard times are going to come, but you won't have a care for those hard times because your roots are near the stream, and you're able to access that goodness even during hard times.”

Ari: Yeah, that's shemittah and yovel too. It's not, “God's magically gonna make things grow without you farming it in that year,” the two years of Yovel, but it's that God will give you enough leading up to it that you can last that year without it.

Adina: Exactly, and what it's doing is it's saying, don't have this, almost like “Pollyanna-ish” view when you think about things that are actually really hard. I think the power of reading these verses with shemittah in your mind is that you're left with a sense of, “Oh yeah, this is going to be really hard.” But you're going to have a sense, if you develop the sense of trust in God, then you'll be able to be successful.

Who is The “גֶּבֶר”?

Adina: So before we turn back to that original question, about “How does this then help us understand why Bechukotai is the finale to Sefer Vayikra?” I want to point out one more thing about this haftorah. So, we talked about how, when the Rabbis decided which text would accompany Bechukotai or Behar-Bechukotai as it does this year, they kind of saw this as a unit. They saw that the chiastic structure creates a very tight frame, a tight poem. And so it made sense that they chose these verses. It also makes sense – the center of the chiasm. I think we see the language used throughout referencing shemittah, referencing that Shabbat of the land as Vayikra talks about it. And also, I think, giving weight to the fears and the difficulties of accomplishing shemittah. I think it expresses that.

But I want to point something else out, which I think perhaps can help us understand why it is that the book of Vayikra ends with the blessings and curses.

And that is that really interesting phrase that is the center poem of the chiastic structure of the haftorah. בָּרוּךְ הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר יִבְטַח בַּיקוָה – Blessed is the man who puts his faith in the Lord. This is so famous. Like, it's so famous that I just immediately think back to like that bad nineties Charedi pop music that I listened to. Not bad – awesome nineties Charedi pop music that I listened to. I'm not gonna hum it, but you all know what song I'm talking about. The “Wawa oooh” and, like, do the motions in camp…

Ari: I could never stand that song by the way.

Adina: You can never stand that song. It's so annoying, right?

But that phrase is bizarre – like “בָּרוּךְ הַגֶּבֶר” – kind of interesting. And I was struggling with this, like, who is this גֶּבֶר? Who's trusting in the Lord? Like, what is this referring to? Once you start thinking about Yirmiyahu and גֶּבֶר,  it's funny, because the Rabbis identify the book of Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, as being written by Yirmiyahu.

Ari: Right.

Adina: And they talk about how chapter three of the Book of Lamentations opens with אֲנִי הַגֶּבֶר, right – I'm that man who saw all this horrible destruction.

Ari: Yeah, I thought this was where you were going to go.

Adina: Now, I think it's important to acknowledge…The Book of Lamentations does not identify Yirmiyahu as the author, right? It's the Rabbis who kind of say it, and it makes sense that it would be.

But with that in my head, I started thinking, what if Yirmiyahu isn't really addressing the people here, but he's addressing himself? And that, just that added layer of him addressing himself, was fascinating. And then, I kind of was realizing that when you expand the context, when you look at the broader context of where this haftorah is taken from.

Look at the section before this haftorah begins, in the beginning of Jeremiah 16. Jeremiah is told the destruction that's to come is going to be so bad, don't get married or have children. He's basically told, “Live your message.” Your message is, “Hey, Judah, destruction is coming.” You are going to be, as a prophet, the living embodiment of that destruction, how you're not going to get married. People are going to come to you and say, “Hey, like, you should be married.” And you're going to say to them, even 20, 30 years before the Temple is destroyed, “I can't get married because any children I have would be destroyed.”

Ari: It reminds me a lot of the Midrash about the Jews in Egypt and how they also stopped having children. And it was, you know, Miriam who convinced them eventually to have children, but the argument they made was, you know, dooming them to – at least half of them to death because of a decree against the boys. So that reminds me a lot of here. It's just like, “Don't give birth to these children, into this generation that is doomed for destruction,” which is a kind of horrible, really depressing thought.

Adina: I just want to point out though, a key difference is that Yirmiyahu is meant to do this years before things are terrible, right? He's already walking around saying, “Death and destruction are coming,” right? There's no use having children years before the Babylonians are besieging the city. This is a very early prophecy.

And there's a few other key restrictions that he lists. Basically, the verses continue to say, so many people will die, there's no point in even having funerals, right? Don't go to funerals. Don't go pay shiva calls. And, verse eight, another restriction: Don't enter a house of feasting. Why? Because I will quiet, I will banish, I will make a forced Shabbat, from this place, the joyousness and the rejoicing of a wedding, the voice of a bride and a voice of a groom.

So he's told three restrictions. Number one, don't get married or have children. Number two, don't mourn, don't go to funerals. And number three, don't celebrate. Don't go to weddings. And these restrictions basically force him to basically be this pariah from society. 

Ari: Yeah. He can't go to funerals. He can't go to parties. 

Adina: He's the message, right? There's a…just, he is the message. Okay. 

My suggestion is that he's speaking inward because he's basically saying he can't trust in anybody except God, right? Basically, God just told him, you cannot have any relationships, right? You will not depend on anybody else. So who's he left to depend on? Only God.

Ari: Right. He was lonely and he was, you know, just this guy crying for people to listen, and everyone was ignoring him. And yeah, he, more than anyone, would know the value of trusting in God as opposed to man.

Adina: For sure, and I think that that trust doesn't mean confidence, right? Trust doesn't mean, “I've got it together,” right? Trust means I have a message, and I have a purpose, and I have a mission, and I trust that God will kind of help me do what I need to do, and with that sense of purpose, God is gonna help me move forward with that. It doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that I have a mission to do, and I need to accomplish that.

Ari: Right. So, yeah, exactly what we were saying before. He knows bad things are coming but he knows to trust God through those bad things, and that, you know, God has provided for him enough to get through those bad things. Not that those bad things aren't going to happen.

A Relationship of Trust

Adina: So with that in mind, then, when you look at those phrases, אָרוּר הַגֶּבֶר/בָּרוּךְ הַגֶּבֶר, with my suggestion that Jeremiah's turning inward – now I want you to turn your attention to that larger question, right? This is the haftorah, right? This is the poem chosen to accompany Behar-Bechukotai, and we saw, already, linguistic parallels.

But now I want to return to that larger question of: Okay, so why end Vayikra with blessings and curses? Why End Vayikra in this way? Why end with shemittah? Why have this little accompanying chapter of, “Oh, if you don't do shemittah, such bad stuff is going to come,”? And, you know, the haftorah seems to say, read it through the lens of somebody who has to live the message. And from living the message comes this profound expression of, “If I'm truly living God's mission, then the only person that I could possibly put my faith in is God. And I will be blessed in that way and cursed in that way.” 

Now, I want you to think of the power of the Book of Vayikra ending with these blessings and curses and not keeping shemittah. I want you to think about the types of commandments and the way that Vayikra is kind of structured up till now. What does the Book of Vayikra really do?

Ari: The book talks specifically about the sacrifices and the priests...

Adina: Well, the book starts with the sacrifices and the priests.

Ari: Right.

Adina: So much so that we call it Torat Kohanim, but then it basically says to all of the people, it's not just restrictions for them, for the priests. It's not just for them. There's going to be an application of tumah (impurity) and tahara (purity) and kedusha (holiness) to all of you.

And so then, the Book of Leviticus then switches from being a book aimed towards a priestly class to a book that is incredibly relevant to all of Bnei Yisrael, with this code of, here's how you're going to bring kedusha into your relationships. Here's how you're going to have kedusha in your body, right? Here's how you're going to have kedusha in your time and the ways that you consecrate times of the year, and here's how land, even, can acquire a certain level of kedusha. I think the Book of Leviticus is basically forcing you, the Book of Vayikra is basically forcing us to all be, or is begging us to all be, like Yirmiyahu, by living the message.

Ari: This book is setting us up to have a very specific kind of relationship with God and relationship with other people, other nations.

Adina: Yeah. And shemittah, I think, defines us so completely as forced to trust in God in order to be able to be successful. I think, in a way, shemittah is almost the climax of the book of Vayikra, right? And it's powerful. The Vayikra begins with sacrifice and ends with shemittah, which, in a certain sense, is the biggest sacrifice that the community can make – to let their land have a Shabbat, to let their slaves go free, to have the yovel year remission of debt, right? All the things that come along with it. That is, I think, to have that Shabbat – what an amazing sense of trust in God. And then, with that reframe, you can now look at the blessings and the curses. 

And I think the word is a natural consequence. You can think about, just like for Yirmiyahu, his only option is to trust in God, and he will be undone from within if he doesn't have that trust. So too, now, we're looking at the curses, and we're saying it's not just, “Shame!” You know, threatening you and scaring you into doing the shemittah. It's now saying, “If you don't have that trust in God to be able to do that, this is what flows from it. This is what comes out of it.”

Ari: Yeah, and in a way, these curses are actually something to aspire to.

Adina: What do you mean by that?

Ari: Right? Not that you should aspire for them to come to fruition, but you should aspire to have the kind of relationship with God where the natural consequence of not following in His ways, of not trusting in Him, is that everything in your life falls apart. You build, throughout this Book of Vayikra, you build towards this relationship of trust, this relationship where all your eggs are in the basket of God.

Adina: I think what you're saying resonates with me so powerfully. The stakes are so high, and the Book of Vayikra is ending acknowledging that you are deeply intertwined with God, and you're meant to live a mission just like a prophet lives the mission, just like Yirmiyahu lives the mission. The Book of a Vayikra, I think, more than the other books, is basically sending you on a journey, sending you on a mission, and setting you up to have this incredibly close relationship with God, so much so that you almost live that relationship so, so fully.

Ari: Right. It reminds me of how, in these curses, one of the things that God keeps repeating is that you treated Me, you acted with Me with, the word is keri, which seems to mean, kind of like apathy or carelessness. And God says, “Since you treated Me with this carelessness, I'm going to treat you with carelessness.” It's this complete disintegration of the relationship when neither party's interested in having that relationship anymore. Those curses are really just a natural outgrowth of what happens when God turns His back on you. 

But what that's pointing you towards is, how do you avoid these curses? Just care. Care enough to want to have a relationship with God. Care enough to work on building that trust. And, you know, trust…it’s really the center of any relationship.

And you build that throughout the entire book of Vayikra and through all of these laws. And then shemittah has this amazing, beautiful exhibition of that trust, which is…it defines our relationship with God.And we're able to stand before God and say, “Look how much we trust You.” And in return, God turns to us and says, “Wow. Look how much effort you're putting into your relationship with Me. I'm going to put just as much, even more, effort into My relationship with all of you.”

Adina: Yeah.

Ari: Wow. That's really beautiful, Adina.

Adina: Thank you so much for giving me the chance to share.

Credits

This episode was recorded by me, Adina Blaustein, together with Ari Levisohn.

Editing was done by Evan Weiner.

Audio editing was done by Shifra Jacobs, with additional audio edits by Hillary Guttman.

Our senior editor is Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.