Bechukotai (Leviticus 26:3-27:34) May 28, 2022/27 Iyyar 5782

This parasha, the last in the book of Leviticus, deals with some pretty heavy stuff. As the name, meaning "According to My laws" indicates, the first half of the portion is comprised of the blessings and curses that await the Israelite nation depending on whether they obey God's commandments or not (the second half is a list of the standard values of people and property for the purposes of monetary offerings for the upkeep of the Temple). The blessings are pretty standard - rain at the right time, ample harvests, prosperity, and peace and tranquility in the land. All good things. And then, we come to the other side of the equation. The list of curses is extensive and detailed. We are threatened with drought, invasion, mayhem, cats and dogs living together, the full gamut of chaos. Our sins will be punished sevenfold, though God will never forsake us, even as we are cursed to eat the flesh of our children.

Even with the promise of God remembering us, this whole business of curses seems pretty horrific. Indeed, Ibn Ezra opines that the reason for the blessings being generally-stated and the curses specific and terrible is to frighten the listener. So, why does God need to threaten us? And isn't obedience based on fear of terrible consequences pretty contrary to the first half of the equation? We should follow the laws because it's the right thing to do, not because we're afraid of divine retribution. But that's not the whole picture.

The first verse of the portion says "If you follow My laws and keep My commandments and do them" (verses don't line up perfectly with sentences, as this sort of introductory standalone dependent clause works in Biblical Hebrew, but not in English). You see, it's not just about following laws. It's about living the laws and making them part of our lives. That is the nature of Jewish law. The very name "halakha" means something like "The Way" - the root is the same as the word for walking (as it happens, the Islamic legal system, shariʿa, has a similar connection, sharing its root with the Arabic word for "street"). Mitzvot and halakha are not just things we are supposed to do, they are ways in which we are meant to live our lives. The punishments threatened here are not the acts of a spiteful cruel God. They are meant to be a warning about straying too far off the path. Just like on a hike, staying on the marked trail is the safest option. Once you go off the trail, you never know what the conditions might be, and going too far might lead you off a cliff or find you lost in the woods. The mitzvot and laws that we are given are meant to give us an identity as Jews, something to guide us and help us know who we are as a people and to connect us to the long chain of Jewry throughout the ages.

The second or third century (it's not clear exactly when it was compiled) collection of halakhic midrash on Leviticus known as Sifra posits that the threat of sevenfold retribution is related to a seven-stage abandonment of God. When we stop studying the laws, we come to regard them as no more than folkways. Eventually, we stop performing the mitzvot, and we separate ourselves from those who do, lessening our self-awareness of our non-observance. Once we abandon the praxis of the mitzvot, we deny the Divine origin of the laws and then the covenant between God and the Jewish people, leading us to eventually reject God entirely. While Judaism is far from just a religious practice, the Jewish religion is a core part of the ethnocultural rubric of Jewishness. In our rush to integrate with the wider society, we need to maintain our distinct identity as members of the Jewish people, with all the history and practice that entails. At the end of The Last Samurai, there is a scene of treaty negotiations between the Meiji Emperor and an American ambassador relating to the sale of American weapons to equip a new, Westernized Japan. After considering the traditions in which the now-dead rebel samurai believed, the Emperor ends the negotiations, telling the ambassador "I dreamed of a unified Japan, of a country strong and independent and modern. And now we have railroads and cannon, Western clothing. But we cannot forget who we are, or where we come from." This is the lesson of the curses - if we abandon our way of life, the end result can only be the loss of our identity.

This is not to say that we should, as some strict communities of Jews do, close ourselves off from the outside world, lest we be "corrupted" by its influence. That too is counterproductive. As Rabbi Marc Angel says in his commentary on Pirkei Avot (specifically the directive to "know how to answer a heretic"), insulated religiosity is like a plant grown in a greenhouse, unable to cope with the weather outside in the natural world, so that when it is transplanted outside, it succumbs to the elements. By integrating ourselves into the community at large, we learn how to strengthen our identity so that it can withstand the challenges to it that are bound to come when we do interact with those outside our group. At the same time, however, we have to maintain our identity as Jews, and the mitzvot are part of how we do that. In a previous d'var Torah, I talked about the importance of understanding not just what to do but why we do it. That is also part of what the midrash in Sifra is getting at here. Practice without context is empty, but without the practice, the context can only last so long. If we don't know the point of the commandments, even if we don't always fulfill them, we risk starting on a path towards abandoning the identity the commandments give us.