Parshat Behar - Bechukotai
Overviews
Behar
The Torah prohibits normal farming of the Land of Israel every seven years. This "Shabbat" for the Land is called "shemita". After every seventh shemita, the fiftieth year, yovel (jubilee), is announced with the sound of the shofar on Yom Kippur. This was also a year for the Land to lie fallow.
Bechukotai
The Torah promises prosperity for the Jewish People if they follow
Insights
The Key to the Foundation
“If you will follow My decrees… I will walk among you; I will be a
In the uplifting prayer of Hallel we say that the “stone that the builders’ ‘hated’, became the rosh pina.” Rosh pina is typically translated as “the foundation stone”, but the literal translation is “head of the corner”. The “head” of something is far from its “foundation”. Maybe we could find a better concept for “rosh pina” than “foundation stone”?
When a stonemason builds he wants cuboid stones, ones of a shape that will fit nicely into his construction. Anything else is “a stone that the builders’ hate”.
In his 12-volume A Study of History, British historian Arnold Toynbee describes the Jews thus: “There remains the case where victims of religious discrimination represent an extinct society which only survives as a fossil…by far the most notable is one of the fossil remnants of the Syriac Society, the Jews.”
According to Toynbee the Jews are the “stone that the builders hated.” We don’t fit into any neatly schemed historical theory. We are a useless “fossil.”
But there’s one place in building that you don’t want, and you can’t use a regular cuboid.
When you get to the pinnacle of a building you need a keystone, a wedge-shaped stone that will lock together the rest of the stones in the edifice.
The Jewish People are that keystone, the apex of the entire building of the world.
The Jewish People, the “misfit” of society, the “fossil” of history becomes the “rosh pina” — its keystone.
