פרשת בהר – בחוקתי

This week’s Parsha opens with the Mitzvah of Shmita.  The Torah commands that for six years we work the land and on the seventh year, we do not work the land and allow it to rest completely.  The Kli Yakar finds this commandment particularly difficult – to allow one’s land to lay fallow for an entire year.  Furthermore, the Kli Yakar explains why the punishment for one’s neglect of this Mitzvah is so severe – to be banished from the land of Israel – when far more severe commandments do not warrant this particular punishment. 

The Kli Yakar begins his elucidation by explaining that the fundamental purpose for the Mitzvah of Shmita is to instill in the Jewish people a deep and profound belief in God.  When the Jewish people came out of Egypt, their entire existence was sustained in a most miraculous way.  From the splitting of the sea, to the receiving of the Torah, to the Manna that they received for forty years, there was no way to deny God during this period.  But when the Jews entered into the land, they would have to become farmers and agriculturists and work the land much the same way that any other nation does.  Hashem knew that in doing this, there is a great danger that people could begin to forget the source of their success in any one of these endeavors and begin to erroneously believe that it was due solely to their hard work.  So in order to prevent the Jews from falling into this trap, Hashem invented the Mitzvah of Shmita to be a constant reminder that the success of the land is indeed dependant solely on God and to recreate the feeling that we had in the desert that even if we leave the land alone completely, (if this is what Hashem wants), it will produce on the same level and even more that it did when we worked it.

With this concept in place, we can easily now understand why the punishment for neglecting this law is the expulsion from the land of Israel.  The Mitzvah of Shmita is here in order to imbue in the Jewish people the importance of not believing in themselves or in their land for their success, but rather in God, and if they ever lose this awareness, they do not deserve a land!  There is a verse in Yirmiyahu (Chapter 5) which says “Go to the outskirts of Jerusalem and if you find in the streets there someone who does good and truly believes in me, I will forgive the Jewish people and let them stay in the land”.  We see from here that the land of Israel is extremely particular about the Jews’ belief in God, and if they cannot successfully foster this belief, they will be expelled from the land. 

R’ Chaim Shmuelevitz used to ask an interesting question.  If one looks into the Parsha in Chumash which discusses the curses the Jews receive if they do not keep the Torah (Parshas Ki Savo), one notices an interesting phenomenon.  The verse says that there are three levels of curses.  The first is one who receives his income annually and each year has to worry that next year he may not have.  The next level in severity is one who receives his food rations weekly and therefore has to worry from week to week.  And the worst curse is a person who has to rely on the baker daily and does not know if he will receive food the next day.  R’ Chaim asks, how can this existence of relying on God to sustain one on a daily basis be the absolute worst when this was exactly the way the Jews lived in the desert!  Isn’t this existence not only not a bad existence, but rather the most ideal state of the Jewish people?

R’ Chaim answers with a similar premise to the one we explained above.  He says that the same existence can either be a blessing or a curse depending on one’s attitude.  If a person believes in God, and truly knows that it is God who is sustaining him all of his days, then to live like the Jews did in the desert is a truly blessed existence.  Every single day one gets to see the hand of God in His life personally taking care of him and reaffirm his belief in God on a daily basis.  But if a person has not fostered such a belief in Hashem, then such an existence can be torturous!  One never knows if he will receive food the next day.  Every single day is more worrisome and unsettling then the previous one.  It comes out that when a person doesn’t believe in Hashem, God doesn’t actually need to curse him, he has brought the curse upon himself and will have to suffer with it continually until he changes his attitude, in which case, he will immediately begin the reap the benefits. 

On a practical level, how does one reach this blissful state of belief in God?  In truth, one does not need any fancy intellectual proofs to attain this understanding, all he need do is walk outside and take a look around.  From the mighty lion to the tiny louse, there is not one creature who goes hungry.  And certainly the chosen children of the Creator of the World will not lack anything because their father will provide for them all of their needs.  When a person contemplates this truth, he can’t help but recognize how everything good in his life is coming from Hashem and there is no reason to assume that Hashem will stop this good.

Many people from time to time find themselves not being able to cover their expenses on a monthly basis, yet over the course of time the equilibrium to their tenuous financial state usually returns to normal even though their income has not increased at all!  How do we explain this phenomenon?  The Mitzvah of Shmita offers us the answer.  Hashem says that if the Jews trust in him, and completely abstain from any work to the land, He will give his blessing and the land will manufacture enough produce for three years.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be more of the final product, but perhaps people will use the produce they have more efficiently and there will be less waste.  Or perhaps Hashem will give the food a Bracha in the peoples’ stomachs and they will remain sated for longer.  The point is, when we trust in Hashem, there is no lack of ways for Him to provide us with all of our needs, even without increasing our income.

I would just like to conclude with an intriguing story that happened to my father (Zt”l).  I didn’t hear it directly from him, because he was too modest to ever tell over such a story, but I heard it from my brother in-law.  At one point, my father needed to marry off one of my siblings and he really didn’t have the financial wherewithal to make the wedding.  When people kept pressing him about what he would do, he calmly replied to them that there was nothing to worry about.  He said that he had a rich father who was happy to help at any time.  As the wedding date drew closer, people around him were growing more concerned, but he never showed any signs of disturbance.  Not long before the wedding, a very fancy car pulled up in front of our house and the manager of a bank in the neighboring town emerged and handed my father a check for the entire sum of the wedding.  When asked how he knew to come there, he responded that a few nights ago, he had a dream in which he was instructed to do so.  At the time he paid no attention to the dream.  But when it recurred the next night, and this time he woke up on the floor with a big thud, he decided that he had better heed the voice in his dream  and drove immediately to our small Yishuv to hand my father the check.

May we all merit to trust in Hashem fully for all of our needs and harvest the rich rewards!