Shabbat Shalom: Parshiot Behar-Behukotai Leviticus 25:1-27:34

By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - We are now in the midst of the days of sefirat haomer, the count of forty-nine days from the second day of the Passover Festival (Nissan 16), when the barley offering is to be brought to the Holy Temple (omer is a measure of grain) until the night of the Shavuot Festival (Sivan 6), when the two loaves of bread were to be offered (Leviticus 23:9-21). Most Biblical commentaries link the count – because we are actually commanded to count each day with a special blessing – to the excited anticipation of the Israelites to the Divine gift of the Torah, which was scheduled to be bestowed on the day of Shavuot, the fiftieth day following our exodus from Egypt. The assumption is that the Jews began to anxiously count each day leading up to the Divine Revelation at Sinai in the desert, as soon as they left Egypt; just as they counted then, so do we count each year the days between our freedom from slavery and our adoption of our “mission statement and constitution” expressing the responsibility and the goals which that freedom demands.

But why is the count for Torah revelation bound up with grain sacrifices (the omer)? Why do we count up (from the first day to the forty-ninth day) rather than count down, as is more usual when anticipating a special event? Why may we not recite the blessing any more if we forget to count only once, but thereafter we may only mention the weeks and the days without the blessing praising G-d who gave us this command to count? And why is the Festival towards which we are counting, the Festival of Shavuot, known by a name which means weeks, which describes the period of the counting, rather than the goal of the counting, this particular holy day?

On first glance, the Torah portions in Leviticus seem to have very little to do with each other, appear to be dealing with totally disparate and disjointed issues. The third Book of the Bible opens with the sacrificial ritual, goes on to the tragic eighth day of the dedication of the Sanctuary, - when Aaron lost his two beloved sons by a divinely – sent fire – highlights the impurity associated with reproductive emissions and bodily decay, catalogues the commandments which lead the individual to holiness, delineates the festivals of the Hebrew calendar, describes the limitations and blessings of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, and concludes with the chastisements of Jewish exile and persecution. The panoply of topics seem to have no logical unifying theme, no conceptual scheme which might serve as a connective thread weaving them into a single tapestry of edification.

I would suggest that the overarching topic of this entire Book is holiness: holy space and place – especially the Sanctuary – and holy Festival days and years – especially the Feast of Weeks and the Jubilee year. And the connective thread linking the various points of sanctity is the commandment to count – sefirah. In order for one who is ritually impure as the result of contact with death, bodily decay or an emission from an organ of reproduction to be deemed pure enough to bring an offering to the Sanctuary, it is necessary for such a person to count the days towards purity, and the count always has something to do with the number seven; for example, a woman sees blood “shall count for herself seven days, after which she shall be purified” (Leviticus 15:28). The days between Passover and Shavuot are days which must be counted: “and you shall count… from the morrow of the festival seven whole weeks… You shall count fifty days” (Leviticus 23:15,16). And finally, every seventh year is to be a Sabbatical year in which the land is to lie fallow, debts are to be rescinded, and the Israelites are to dedicate themselves to acts of charity and the study of Torah: “And you shall count for yourself seven Sabbatical years (49 years, seven Sabbatical years)… And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, declaring freedom for the land and all of its inhabitants, a Jubilee (Yovel) year shall it be for you, in which each individual shall return to his original land and homestead, everyone shall return to his family” (Leviticus 25:9,10,11).

That which is sacred, Kadosh, is apart from and higher than the mundane, limited world of materialism; it is identified with the Almighty G-d, who is also (as it were) apart from and higher than, a G-d of spirit, love, compassion and peace. The ultimate goal of Judaism is to infuse the world with sanctity, to bring the Divine Presence within this sphere and so “perfect the world in the Kingship of G-d;” hence, the commandment which preceded the Biblical Book of Leviticus, which indeed made the Torah of the Priest-Kohanim possible, was “they shall make for Me a Sanctuary so that I may dwell in their midst” (Exodus 25:8).

Until the Almighty is permanently in our midst, for as long as we are forced to live in a world with Divine Eclipse (hester panim) seeing G-d’s goodness only “through a glass darkly” there are still pockets of space and periods of time which are infused with rays of Divine Splendor, which are declared Kadosh, sacred. The Hebrew word mo’ed (usually translated Festival) means rendezvous, a day or week when G-d makes Himself available (as it were) to meet with the Israelites, to establish a relationship with us. Passover was the first such meeting-point in history, when we felt G-d’s loving concern and achieved political freedom from slavery. But that is only the beginning; we yearn for Torah, we long for a Sanctuary, - a nuptial home in which G-d and Israel can dwell together in a perfected world. That goal is held aloft on Shavuot, the festival of first fruits in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, the anniversary of the Revelation at Sinai – and we know that there can be no redemption with the Torah of Divine Revelation.

How do we progress from the beginning of a relationship with G-d on Passover to the fullness of a complete union anticipated on Shavuot? By advancing from Passover’s sippur (telling the story of the Exodus) to the command of Sefirah (counting); the Hebrew root sfr (saffire, blue-white) means to make whiter, holier, more exalted (S’fat Emet). Just as those who are ritually pure count the days of their purification, so must we – Israel, G-d’s bride – purify ourselves during the seven times seven days leading to Shavuot.

Hence our count is linked to grain sacrifices to G-d, because there is no sanctity without sacrifice, without giving of self. We count up and not down because hopefully our personal religious growth is cumulative, we dare not miss a day of counting and growing or we may well descend to our former impurity, and since the goal can never be reached without preparation and improvement, the ultimate Festival of Redemption in the Sanctuary of Divine Union is named for the week’s of our counting and purification.
And since we yearn not only to dwell with the Almighty in a relationship expressed in time but also in a world of sanctified earth and sanctified activity, we count the seven Sabbatical Years affecting our land and hopefully will reach the fiftieth year, the Jubilee year, expressing universal redemption, freedom and peace.

Shabbat Shalom.