Bechukotai
Bechukotai is dominated by the passage in which God speaks of the blessings that will be experienced by the Israelites in their future if they are faithful to the covenant, and the curses they will encounter if they are not.
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The Rejection of Rejection
…the Catholic Church and the Jews. I don’t want to explore the tragic consequences of this belief here, but rather its untenability in the light of the sources themselves. To our surprise, they key statement occurs in perhaps the darkest passage of the entire Torah, the curses of Bechukotai. Here, in the starkest possible terms, Moses sets out the consequences…
The Rejection of Rejection
…week’s parsha, Bechukotai, is the last in the book of Vayikra. Bechukotai outlines the rewards for following God’s commandments and the punishments for disregarding them. The parsha also details different offerings to the Temple and the animal tithe. The first half of the parsha discusses the blessings the Israelites are promised, such as abundant food, timely rain, and security if…
The Birth of Hope
The Parsha in a Nutshell Parshat Bechukotai is dominated by the passage in which God speaks of the blessings that will be experienced by the Israelites if they are faithful to the covenant, and the curses they will encounter if they are not. This belief in Divine involvement in history forms the basis for the Jewish principle of hope. The…
Family Feeling
I argued in my Covenant and Conversation for parshat Kedoshim that Judaism is more than an ethnicity. It is a call to holiness. In one sense, however, there is an important ethnic dimension to Judaism. It is best captured in the 1980s joke about an advertising campaign in New York. Throughout the city there were giant posters with the slogan,…
In Search of the Why
…parshat Bechukotai – if we follow the interpretation of Maimonides. Bechukotai begins with the blessings that will ensue if the Israelites are faithful to their mission and covenant with God. Then come the curses that will follow disobedience. They are long, terrifying and relentless – even if they end, as they do, with a note of consolation; “Yet, despite all…
The Power of a Curse
…market that allow some to become rich while others suffer the loss of land, home, and even freedom. Bechukotai is mainly God speaking about the blessings that the Israelites will receive if they keep the Torah, and the curses/bad things that will happen to them if they do not. If we believe that God acts in history, rewards the good…
The Politics of Responsibility
The twenty-sixth chapter of the book of Vayikra sets out, with stunning clarity, the terms of Jewish life under the covenant. On the one hand, there is an idyllic picture of the blessing of Divine favour: If Israel follows God’s decrees and keeps His commands, there will be rain, the earth will yield its fruit, there will be peace, the…
Holy People, Holy Land
…to the land of Israel, the punishment would be exile from the land of Israel. So the Torah says in the curses in Bechukotai: “All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.” Lev. 26:35 Its meaning is clear: this will be the punishment for…
A Sense of Direction
Smartphones can do amazing things – few more amazing than Waze, the Israeli-designed satellite navigation system acquired by Google in 2013. But there is one thing even Waze cannot do. It can tell you how to get there, but it cannot tell you where to go. That is something you must decide. The most important decision we can make in…