Bat Kol International, Weekly Torah Nuggets
Parashat Behar-Behukotai | Leviticus 25:1 – 27:34
You must treat the 50th year as the Jubilee. You must not sow your fields. You may not reap its aftergrowth, and you may not pick the grapes that you had set aside. It is the Jubilee year. It remains holy for you (Lev 25:11-12).
The Sabbath is one of the keystones of the Jewish wisdom and is particularly valued by Bat Kol. This gift from God the Creator to humanity – and the whole natural world – is such a vital concept that it is extended beyond one day of rest every week to a year of rest every seven years, and a special year of jubilee every 50th year (7 lots of 7).
What trust it must be to leave your productive land fallow for a whole year, but how wise for the restoration of the natural balance! The instructions in this parashah for the year of jubilee go beyond resetting the natural environment to balancing human relationships and giving second chances to people. What a goal for a better world!
Reflection:
Following the injunction of my Creator, how do I make time to sanctify and refresh my everyday life, to re-create not only my soul, but the society and environment I live in?
Mary-Anne Johnson, Tasmania, Australia
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“Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies.”
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate, No. 4