Behar-Bechukotai
What do we rely upon?
Reflection by Carrie Watkins, Or HaLev's US Community Manager
"The Hasidic Master the Mei HaShiloach writes that this week’s parsha is concerned with three main subjects: shmita - letting the land rest, yovel - which involves freeing slaves, and not lending with interest. The Mei HaShiloach say these three subjects represent larger categories of olam, shana, and nefesh, of place/objects, time, and person. `In all three,` he writes, `God is warning Israel against putting their trust in anything in the world that, from our human view, it might seem possible to rely upon` (מי השלוח, חלק א, ספר ויקרא, בהר ב׳). In a civilization that commodifies and profits from land and products of the land, time, and other people, we can forget that ultimately, none of it belongs to us or can be controlled by us. And so the Israelites are commanded to build that reminder into their civilizations. Everything, eventually, returns to its Source.
This is also why this section in the Torah ends with `I am Hashem your God who took you out of Egypt,` since the word Egypt, mitzrayim, in Hebrew comes from the word for narrowness or limitation. `This is to show,` he shares, `how pleasures of the world that do not come from Holiness are rooted in narrowness and constriction.`
Or HaLev’s most recent week-long meditation retreat took place in Egypt itself, in the Sinai Desert. Those of us who were there learned a teaching and practice from Rav James called `not me, not mine.` It’s a practice of noticing everything that arises in our present moment awareness and saying to it `not me` or `not mine.` Not as a rejection of ourselves, but as a true acceptance of the nature of what we really are. Recognizing ourselves and reality not as a collection of objects we attempt to control but as processes always changing and returning to the Source. This recognition can lead us out of the narrow place and towards liberation.
Wishing you a Shabbat of finding joy in the beauty and complexity of the world that surrounds us, not because we can control it, but precisely because we can’t."