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Orchard of Delights
means “sanctified”). Thus, choice, in and of itself, seems to be
fundamentally connected to the concept of holiness.
This is especially true when it is God who chooses. It is important
to note that most of the concepts we associate with holiness, such
as the Hebrew language, Torah, Shabbat, the Jewish people, the
Land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple, attained this stature
because God chose them. In order to deepen our understanding of
this relationship between choice and holiness, we will now explore
each of God’s choices one-by-one.
The Hebrew letters and the Torah are in their own class as they
both existed before the creation of the world. As we discussed in
Bereishit, God created the world using the Hebrew letters. Indeed,
according to the mystical tradition, the letters are conduits of infinite
Divine wisdom and the building blocks of creation. It is through these
letters that make up the Torah that God’s will is revealed to the
Jewish people and all humanity. The Torah actually existed before
the world was created as the Zohar (2:161b) teaches: “God looked
into the Torah [the blueprint for creation] and created the world.”
Ultimately, God sanctified Israel by giving it His unique Torah and
Israel chose to sanctify itself by receiving the Torah and living by its
laws.
The root word for holiness and sanctification appears in the Torah
for the first time when God designates the seventh day – Shabbat –
as holy:
And the heavens and earth were completed and all their
array. By the seventh day God completed His work that
He had done, and He abstained on the seventh day from
all his work that He had done. God blessed the seventh
day and sanctified it (vayikadesh, from the infinitive verb
“to be holy”), for on it He rested from His work, which
God created to make. (Genesis 2:1-3)
Thus, the seventh day became not only the culminating act and
implicit sanctification of the entire Divine creative process, but the
cycle of seven was established as the primary pattern for all temporal
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behar ר ַה ְּב
£The Sabbatical Year: The Sabbatical Year: The Sabbatical Year:
££
From the Practical to the MysticalFrom the Practical to the Mystical
From the Practical to the Mystical
The Torah portion of Behar deals exclusively with the Shemittah
(Sabbatical year), which falls every seven years, and the Yovel (the
Jubilee year), which takes place every fifty years. The concept of 13
Shemittah and the elucidation of its laws were considered so important
that Shemittah is the only commandment to have an entire weekly
Torah portion devoted to it. While the Sabbbatical year had fallen
into disuse from both a conceptual and practical perspective over
the last two thousand since the destruction of the Temple and the
subsequent exile, in the last century renewed Jewish settlement
of the Land of Israel has made it necessary to again observe and
contemplate the practical and deeper implications of the seventh
year.
The single most important idea to grasp about Shemittah is that
practically, spiritually, and even mystically, it is the cornerstone
of Torah society. Like all the other mitzvot the Sabbatical year is
ultimately meant to manifest and fulfill Judaism’s spiritual values,
underscoring the fact that in Judaism religious practice and belief are
not divorced from daily life. Loving and honoring God goes hand in
hand with loving one’s fellow man, and in fact the two are dependant
on one another.
The primary spiritual message that the Sabbatical year teaches is
that all human striving and achievement must be in tune with the
Divine cycle and plan for humankind. Just as we are commanded
to work for six days and rest on the seventh day, likewise we are
commanded to work the land for six years and on the seventh allow
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