(Leviticus 26:12)
Iyar 26, 5778/May 11, 2018
The book of Leviticus concludes this week (parashat Bechukotai) with a dramatic and terrifying crescendo. The nation of Israel is scheduled to enter into the land of Israel in the very near future. The Torah has been transmitted to the people, the Tabernacle has been built, the Divine service within the Tabernacle has begun, and the very next and final step in the preparations for entering, conquering and settling the land of Israel, will be the formation of an army, which, as we will see, is described in the opening chapters of the book of Numbers. This why the Torah, at this portentous moment in the nation's progress, presents a long list of dire ramifications should the nation fail to fulfill its commitments in the covenant it made with G-d at Mount Sinai.
"But if you do not listen to Me and do not perform all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes and reject My ordinances, not performing any of My commandments, thereby breaking My covenant then I too, will do the same to you... " (Leviticus 26:14-16) is how the painfully long list of debilitating calamities begins, and continues over the next thirty verses. Virtually every potential disaster that can visit a people makes its appearance on this list. More than three thousand years later the nation of Israel still bears that scars that testify to the devastating prophetic truth of each and every word of each and every one of these verses. In Hebrew, these verses are referred to as kellalot - curses - but, in truth, they are not curses at all. The horrors described are not acts of vengeance or retribution, (G-d forbid!) exacted by G-d upon a wayward people. They are nothing more and nothing less than the inevitable ramifications that will result when a people strays from its walk with G-d.
The "curses" begin with the physical health of the nation, (a reflection on its spiritual decline), the resulting subjugation by its enemies, the rejection of the people by the land itself, which turns a cold shoulder to the nation, cutting of its bounties and its blessings, and concludes in exile, in isolation, in the atomization of the nation, the transformation of a proud, prosperous, sovereign people into fragmented remnants, scattered across the globe. Even more traumatic than the detailed, 'no-calamity-left-unturned' description that Torah presents us, when reading the words, is the very fact of the painstaking meticulousness of the lurid descriptions. The devil, or in this case, the dehumanizing deconstruction of a people, is in the details. These are the details of demoralization, and the details themselves can become a net that ensnares us in a web of hopelessness and despair, the real monster that can devour us all.
It is no coincidence that the blessings which precede the "curses" in our parasha are short, sweet, and to the point. There is no need to be inundated with a sea of blessings. The good things in life, the things which are promised us when we walk in G-d's way, and adhere to His Torah, are a simple pallet, which the Torah presents to us, not in thirty verses, but in eleven:
"If you follow My statutes and observe My commandments and perform them, I will give your rains in their time, the Land will yield its produce, and the tree of the field will give forth its fruit. Your threshing will last until the vintage, and the vintage will last until the sowing; you will eat your food to satiety, and you will live in security in your land. And I will grant peace in the Land, and you will lie down with no one to frighten you; I will remove wild beasts from the Land, and no army will pass through your land; You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you; Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I will turn towards you, and I will make you fruitful and increase you, and I will set up My covenant with you. You will eat very old produce, and you will clear out the old from before the new. And I will place My dwelling in your midst, and My Spirit will not reject you; I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people. I am HaShem, your G-d, Who took you out of the land of Egypt from being slaves to them; and I broke the pegs of your yoke and led you upright." (ibid 26: 3-13)
Peace, prosperity, crops in our fields and food on our tables; security and a strong army that pursues our enemies; families blessed with many children, a renewed covenant with G-d and G-d's embrace and presence felt throughout the land; the promise of His dwelling place in our midst; freedom, independence - an upright nation! These are the blessings of a nation that walks with G-d, which "follows [His] statutes and observes [His] commandments and performs them." Having only earlier this month celebrated Israel's 70th Independence Day, and this Sunday celebrating Jerusalem Day, the fifty-first anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem, which will be marked by, among other gestures of gratitude, unprecedented numbers of Jewish worshipers ascending the Temple Mount - this people, the children of Israel, of whom G-d said, "that despite all this... I will not despise them nor will I reject them... [but] I will remember for them the covenant made with the ancestors, whom I took out from the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be a God to them. I am HaShem," (ibid 26:44-45) are grateful. Thank You, G-d! Thank You for our land! Thank You for all our blessings!
-The Temple Institute
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