Behar
How can we go back to Source?
Reflection by Ariel Yisraelah Hendelman, the Or HaLev Team:
"In the Torah portion of Behar, meaning `on the mountain,` YHVH speaks to Moshe, instructing him to convey more important messages to the people. As the title suggests, Moshe is atop Mount Sinai for this conversation. Perhaps Moshe, in this scene, represents the aspect of us that craves peak, spiritual experiences. The peak experiences are wonderful, but we also need to integrate to have what we might call `seamless practice` that we can bring into our everyday lives. Because the truth is that we are not always on top of the mountain; we are more often trudging through the valleys, weary feet on the earth. So what’s the remedy according to Torah?
The earth itself needs Shabbat. The ground underneath our feet must be in rhythm with the rest of us – the contemplative and the ecstatic need to be balanced and harmonious. This Shabbat for the land is called shemitah, which occurs every seven years. We allow the land to lie fallow and to deeply rest. But there is something more – the Yovel, or jubilee year.
Just like the counting of the Omer we’re in now, which spans seven weeks or 49 days counting up to the 50th day, Shavuot, Yovel is an expanded counting in years until we reach the 50th. Yovel literally means `ram’s horn,` which we sound here to mark Yom Kippur. In fact, all of the laws of the Yovel year take effect on Yom Kippur.
It’s as if the land is not only receiving Shabbat, a soulful rest, but also receiving Yom Kippur. According to the Maharal of Prague, this is because Yovel and Yom Kippur share the same theme – going back to Source. Things return to their original configuration. On Yovel, the slave who sold himself beyond the specified six-year term goes free, and the field that was in someone’s family for generations but had to be sold because of poverty goes back to where it belongs. On Yom Kippur, a person returns to their natural state of tahor, an embodied soul that is unsullied.
In light of the above, the time period of counting the Omer offers us the same opportunity. If we engage mindfully in the spiritual refinement and restoration that these weeks offer us, Shavuot will find us returned to Source on the mountaintop. May it be so."