Parashat B’har
A New World
The
reinterpretation of the term “forever” encourages us to strive for new
realities within our own lifetimes.
By Rabbi Asher Brander
The following article
is reprinted with permission from the Orthodox
Union.
The primacy of the Oral Law has always been the bedrock of
our belief system. Torah Shebichtav
(Written Law) without Torah Sheba’al Peh
(Oral Law) is likened to a body without a soul. Thus, when Oral Law seems to
contradict the Written Law our sense of textual loyalty seems violated.
Our parshah is home to one of the classic examples of this
apparent incongruity. The Torah states, “You shall sanctify the fiftieth year
and proclaim freedom throughout the land for all of its inhabitants; it shall
be the Jubilee year (Yovel) for you.”
What are the implications of this freedom?
The Torah teaches that a Jewish servant works a six-year
period of service. At the seventh year, “if the servant shall say, ‘I love my
master...I don’t [want to] go free,’ then his master shall bring him to the
court…and he shall serve him forever (le’olam).”
The Torah Sheba’al Peh, however, clarifies that the term
“forever--le’olam” means until Yovel. How so? Ibn Ezra (12th century
Spanish commentator), cites a verse from Kohelet
(Ecclesiastes) which implies that the world olam
can mean a period of time. Since Yovel is the longest block of time in the
Jewish calendar, the word olam, taken in the sense of “a long time” is
appropriate.
But even if Ibn Ezra is technically correct, we must still
ask why the Torah opts for the more ambiguous “olam” when it could simply say,
“Yovel.” Why create confusion in the first place?
The words of the Ramban (Nachmanides) on this topic are
cryptic: “The enlightened one will understand that ‘forever’ (le’olam) is
literal--for one who works until Yovel has worked all the days of the world
(olam). In the words of the Mechilta
(legal midrash on Exodus): Rebbe says, Come and see that the world is only
fifty years old as it says, ‘And he shall work forever--until the Yovel.’”
Ramban is describing the nature of the world. In some
mystical way the world only exists for fifty years. Rabbeinu Bechayei (late 13th
century Spain) cites the Kabbalists who say that fifty represents the circle of
life.
On a national scale, consider the power of fifty days. In
fifty days, the Jewish people were transformed from a bedraggled nation of
slaves to recipients of the Torah. We attempt that same metamorphosis each year
during Sefirat Ha’omer as we count
off fifty days from Pesach to Shavuos.
Similarly, the Levite may only serve in the Beit Hamikdash (Temple) until the age of
fifty. At some level, his world, too, has been completed at that age.
This is the powerful message of Yovel. Each seven-year shemittah (sabbatical) cycle represents
a rung, a new level achieved within the world while Yovel, which follows the
seventh shemittah year, represents the dawn of a completely new world.
Even for the rational Jew, unaware of the mystical notion of
the Yovel cycle, the message of Ramban still rings powerful--a Jew need not die
in order to arrive at a new world; rather, he can transcend worlds in his
lifetime.
How fitting it is that at Yovel, the Jewish servant is
forced out. He who has lost his sense of destiny and independence must be
taught that a Jew is never consigned to such a fate. A new world with new hopes
beckons.
How many times do we set boundaries for our spiritual goals?
“This I can do, but I’ll never do that,” we claim. But slow and steady
spiritual progress ultimately creates a nyer
velt, a new world, a progress that allows us to be the very personality we
“never” could be. That is the goal of life. We must take a moment, look at who
we are, who we can never be and figure out a way to get there.
Rabbi Asher Brander is
rav of Westwook Kehillah in Los Angeles, California.
