Printable PDF available here. Prior pieces on Behar/Bechukotai are available here, here and here.

Rav Kook (Based on Ein Ayah, Gemara Berachot 43b)

I am the Lord your G-d who brought you out from the land of the Egyptians to be their slaves no more, who broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect (lit. קוממיות). (Vayikra 26:13)

One may not walk with an upright posture (lit. קומה זקופה), for one who walks with an upright posture, even only four amot, it is as if he pushes away the Divine Presence, as it is written (Isaiah 6:3) “The entire world is full of His glory.” (Gemara Berachot 43b)

In Gemara Berachot, our Sages teach that it is prohibited to walk with an upright posture. One who does so arrogantly “pushes” – so to speak – the Divine Presence away from the world. While we can all agree that arrogance is a bad character trait, this teaching seems to contradict an explicit verse in Parshat Bechukotai. G-d declares that He freed us from Egyptian slavery, so that we could walk ‘קוממיות’ – upright! How are we to make sense of this apparent paradox?

To answer this question, we must understand that our Sages are speaking (as they often do) on multiple levels. After all, your posture is more than just a matter of how your vertebrae are aligned. It is a function of how you see yourself and your inner world. It is the latter that our Sages are primarily concerned with.

Every person is created with various abilities and talents, both physical and spiritual. By actualizing our potential, we can attain completeness, contentedness, and the ultimate blessing of Divine closeness. We were all created with a yearning to elevate ourselves, to express our talents on the highest dimensions and to continually erase the border between the potential and the actual. But this process is not one we undertake out of a sense of raw ambition or self-centered desire. It is a religious task, one that must be undertaken with consciousness of the Divine taskmaster who has given us the abilities that we seek to develop and express.

One who views his talents through a spiritual lens will always be conscious of a guiding Divine hand. He will exert himself to the best of his abilities, but also retreat and place a limit to his ambition when G-d or His Torah demand it. Although he realizes that he was put in the world to achieve and accomplish, he knows that the yardstick for his accomplishments comes from Above – and not from his family, friends, or society around him.

In other words, this person “walks” upright – but not to the fullest extent possible. His “posture” is somewhat bowed, because he knows that no matter how much he achieves or accomplishes, there are certain places he could take his talents that G-d has put off limits.

This is the resolution to the contradiction we started with. The Torah indeed declares that G-d wishes us to walk erect (lit. קוממיות) – but this is not the same thing as the ‘upright posture’ (lit. קומה זקופה) condemned by our Sages in Gemara Berachot. The latter refer to someone who walks entirely upright, who acknowledges no limits to his powers or talents. In this way, he “pushes away the Divine Presence” and leaves no room for Divine influence to guide or impact the actualization of his potential.

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Rav Kook (Shabbat Ha’aretz, Introduction)

And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim freedom [for slaves] throughout the land for all who live on it. It shall be a Yovel for you, and you shall return, each man to his property, and you shall return, each man to his family. (Vayikra 25:10)

From Rosh HaShana until Yom Kippur of the Yovel Year,[1]Jewish slaves were not released to their homes, until the shofar was sounded on Yom Kippur. But they were also not enslaved to their masters, as the Yovel Year had already begun. Rather, they would eat, drink, and rejoice, and wear crowns on their heads like free people. Once Yom Kippur arrived, the court would sound the shofar, slaves would be released to their houses, and fields that were sold would be returned to their original owners. (Gemara Rosh haShanah 8b)

Every fifty years, in the Yovel year, all Hebrew slaves would be emancipated and fields would return to their ancestral owners. We would expect this to be a disruptive and chaotic experience. Yovel overturned the ordered patterns of the economic and social order. Put yourself in the shoes of a Jewish master used to owning his slaves, or a wealthy landowner habituated to reaping profit from his substantial holdings. Yovel would have felt like a bomb going off, leveling everything in sight.

But this is not the picture painted by our Sages in the gemara. The Yovel was a cause for celebration, and was regarded by all not as a source of joy, not dread. This is because Yovel draws from the highest source of holiness, which is itself an integral part of Israel’s essence. It comes not as a demand foreign to Israel’s being, but an expression of its true self and its all-encompassing spiritual vision. For any other nation, Yovel would be utterly foreign to their aspirations, and would be experienced as a terrible burden. But not so is the Jewish People.

We must ask, however, what the difference is between the spiritual aspiration furthered by Yovel and that of shemitah? Do the two represent the same, different, or mutually complementary ideals?

The answer is that the vision of Yovel is more ambitious than the shemitah cycles that proceed it. Shemitah is future oriented. It comes to correct the spiritual development of Israel prospectively. Unhindered and unrestricted, man’s economic activity leads to jealousy, spiteful competition and lust for wealth. It dullens man’s spiritual grandeur, and causes him to forgot G-d. Shemitah, the “Sabbath of the land,” comes to elevate man’s aspirations beyond his physical sustenance and remind him that “Not by bread alone does man live.”

This is an awesome, supernal process that plays out every seven years, but it is very much future-focused. The people, like the land, gather spiritual strength for the earthly labor of the next six years of the shemitah cycle.  But the pollution of society’s past shortcomings, failures, and injustices remains. Yovel comes to uplift this domain as well. Let us explain.

Most slaves would go free after seven years of labor. The slaves who had to wait until Yovel were those who refused to leave when given the opportunity, who choose a position of feeble dependence and spurned G-d’s declaration that “Israel shall serve Me – but no other.” These were individuals who had lost their dignity and become estranged from the supernal holiness that gives Israel its life force. These lost souls could not be uplifted by shemitah – but Yovel comes to emancipate even them, to restore their splendor and holiness, and revive their pride in holy life. As our Sages tell us, “They would eat, drink, and rejoice, and wear crowns on their heads like free people.” Yovel was a time of equanimity and brotherhood. Absent was the grievance, the violence and the vengeance that usually occur in connection with slaves being freed.

The same dynamic expresses itself in Yovel’s restoration of ancestral lands. While the concept may be foreign to the modern mind, which regards land as just another commodity, in Biblical times selling one’s ancestral land was an unimaginable tragedy. It was a step that only the desperately poor would take, and even then only out of total desperation.[2]With land representing the major source of wealth, a person who sold their ancestral land in Biblical times usually condemned themselves to a life of destitute poverty. Yovel doesn’t only restore these individuals physically to their land. It straightens out the inequalities of the past, and repairs the apparent injustice that results when certain people are condemned to abject poverty while others prosper and grow wealthy. This is not a prospective vision, like that of shemitah, but one that seeks to rectify the past as well.

Although the spiritual vision of Yovel is more ambitious than the shemitah cycles that proceed it, the two have a symbiotic relationship. One cannot leap to higher levels of holiness without laying a foundation and attaining the necessary intermediate stages. Israel can only come to Yovel by going through the transformative spiritual process of shemitah beforehand. Year after year, cycle after cycle, the shemitah process transforms Israel, restores it to its holy Source and the deepens its Divine character. Until eventually, the holy nation seeks not only to correct its path going forward, but even to rectify even past shortcomings, failures, and injustices.

“And you shall count for yourself seven shemitah years, seven years seven times. And the days of these seven shemitah years shall amount to forty-nine years for you. And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim freedom [for slaves] throughout the land for all who live on it. It shall be a Yovel for you, and you shall return, each man to his property, and you shall return, each man to his family.”

[1]This may be a Torah source for the aseret yemei teshuva.

[2]See Melachim Aleph, 21, where Navot declares “G-d forbid that I would give the inheritance of my forefathers to you!”

Food for Thought

Rav Hirsch (Commentary on the Torah): The Yovel year…. [is] to bring the social and political rebirth of the nation with all its healing and restoring effect on the internal and external relations of the nation, as a miraculous gift from G-d’s Almighty Grace. All the wrongs and the whole diversity of different classes with its resulting contrasts of opulence and wretchedness, of independence and dependence, which the unequal distribution of wealth have brought to the internal social life of the nation, all the precarious situations unto which the nation has fallen in its political relations to other states, all this, Yovel is to wipe out and clear up. The nation is again to be established by the Grace of G-d, socially healthy, and politically free, even as it was on the first day its national life was started on the basis of G-d’s laws. It is to progress in this fresh internal and external freedom and independence granted afresh by G-d, from Yovel to Yovel, until it reaches the goal where its national life shines forth so brightly amongst the other peoples of the world, that it invites all the nations to throng to it, to learn from it the institutions of G-d, which alone guarantee justice and freedom and eternal peace on earth. But this great national rebirth of the nation, to be obtained from G-d, must be met on the other side by the two great acts of restitution and regeneration which are in human hands: restoration of ancestral lands and freeing slaves, and both not as human-political measures, but proclaimed by shofar blasts in the Name of G-d, as the effect of the justice of His Rule and of His fundamental right of possession.

Questions for Discussion/Further Thought

1. Does Yovel indicate the Torah’s opposition to economic inequality? Why or why not?
2. The Torah refers to Yovel as ‘Shabbat.’ How does Rav Kook understand this comparison?
3. How does a person who is growing spiritually relate to their future? To their past?
4. The Torah says that in Yovel, we are to “Proclaim freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” What famous American artifact bears this verse? Do you think Rav Kook would agree with its use?
5. Does Yovel teach us anything about how we should observe Shabbat?
6. Does Rav Kook’s analysis of Yovel and shemitah remind you about any concepts related to teshuva?

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You shall not make idols for yourselves, nor shall you set up a statue (lit. פסל) or a monument for yourselves… (Vayikra 26:1)

Shemonah Kevatzim (Vol. 1, Pg. 179)

On a simple level, this verse prohibits forming a physical representation of the Divine. The truth is that this prohibition represents a much broader category, against whose poisonous influence we must be exceedingly vigilant. The danger of a פסל, a physical idol, is that it repudiates G-d’s transcendent and infinite nature. By definition, an idol is a counterfeit, an impossible attempt to ensnare the Infinite within the frail and limited capacity of the human imagination.

And yet humanity can engage in this same delusion without creating any physical idols. An immature and limited conception of G-d [1] is just as much of a פסל. When a shallow conception of G-d takes hold ahold among humanity, by virtue of habit and an undeveloped manner of thinking, and humanity later advances to a higher stage of consciousness, tremendous anguish results. The consequence is kefirah, denial – not of G-d, whose true essence is unknowable and who, a priori, can never be defined, but of the pre-conceived and immature notions of G-d which have polluted humanity.

The purpose of kefirah’s existence is to uproot the shallow and limited conceptions of Divinity from life and thought. He who recognizes the root of disbelief will extract its honey and return it to the source of its holiness. Gazing upon it, he beholds not unrequited evil, but the majesty of the terrible ice – the heavenly kefirah (lit. כפור שמים, a provocative allusion to Iyov 38:29, where the phrase literally means “heavenly frost”).

Commentary

Rav Kook’s provocative thesis is that a non-believer can never really reject G-d, since by definition a created human mind can neither define nor accurately perceive G-d’s essence. The most a non-believer can do is to deny a form of G-d which he has developed in his own mind. After all, in order to negate a concept, one must first delineate that which he denies, prior to declaring that it does not exist. And once a person paints a static picture of G-d, it is that static (and therefore shallow) picture that he rejects and refuses to accept.[2]

Rav Kook thus assigns metaphysical (or metahistorical) value to kefirah, whose ultimate purpose is to purify humanity from immature conceptions of G-d. A sensitive soul can “extract the honey” from disbelief and “return it to the source of its holiness.”

But do we still have a theory that allows us to see a value in atheism? Professor Alan Brill[3]claims that Rav Kook was happy to see late nineteenth century atheism wake up the Jewish world and spur the masses to a more purified and refined conception of G-d. But what about the ‘new atheists’ of the twenty-first century, “whose methodology consists in criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity.”[4]In Professor Brill’s world “Rav Kook assumes that there would be an advancement in perception[5]….He did not assume that they would remain un-evolved.” What about the people who smashed their idols and simply walked away?

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Rav Kook does not explain why humanity fell into an immature and limited conception of G-d in the first place. What do you think he has in mind? Could it have anything to do with Christianity?
2. In last week’s parshah, we learned that someone who blasphemes G-d is subject to the death penalty. How do we understand this in light of Rav Kook’s analysis? Shouldn’t we say that it’s impossible to blaspheme G-d, and the most one can do is curse one’s limited conception of G-d?
3. What kind of person is qualified to “extract the honey” from disbelief and “return it to the source of its holiness”? What kind of dangers are involved?
4. The Torah is full of descriptions of G-d speaking, acting and (apparently) expressing emotion. How do we reconcile that with the idea that G-d is transcendent and unknowable?[6]
5. Are you convinced by Rav Kook’s analysis of where kefira comes from? Why or why not?

[1]Lit. קבוצה בצורה מיוחדת וידועה

[2]Based on https://www.etzion.org.il/en/kefira-our-day.

[3]https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/hitchens-atheism-and-rav-kook

[4]The Great Partnership (pg. 11), Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

[5]Rav Kook writes elsewhere that “Disbelief must come out in the form of civilization to uproot the memory of G-d and all the institutions of divine worship … and upon the desolate ruins wrought by disbelief, will the exalted G-d-knowledge build its palace.”

[6]See the end of the first chapter of Rambam’s Yesodei haTorah – “[A]ll such [descriptions] and the like which are related in the Torah and the words of the Prophets – all these are metaphors and imagery. [For example,] “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh” [Psalms 2:4], “They angered Me with their emptiness” [Deuteronomy 32:21], and “As G-d rejoiced” [ibid. 28:63]. With regard to all such statements, our Sages said: “The Torah speaks in the language of man.” This is [borne out by the rhetorical question (Jeremiah 7:19):] “Are they enraging Me?” Behold, [Malachi 3:6] states: “I, G-d, have not changed.” Now were He to at times be enraged and at times be happy, He would change. Rather, all these matters are found only with regard to the dark and low bodies, those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is dust. In contrast, He, blessed be He, is elevated and exalted above all this.”