Part of the Learning Series, Seasons of Responsibility: Interreligious Conversations on Environmental Justice and Repair

Sources | Presentation

There are ways to exist in harmony with all of creation that cultivate the soul and a relationship with the Divine. Hussein Rashid and Rabbi Gordon Tucker bring Muslim and Jewish texts into dialogue to explore how religious traditions resist transactional relationships with the earth and with one another. Drawing on the sabbatical vision from Leviticus and a Muslim sources on overtaxation, they reflect on restraint, renewal, and the dangers of extraction. Timed with converging sacred moments—the beginning of the Jewish calendar, Persian New Year, and the close of Ramadan—this session offers a shared language for ethical living in a fragile world.

About the Speakers

Hussein Rashid, PhD, is a free range academic, currently affiliated with Union Theological Seminary. He is a board member of the Interfaith Center of New York. He specializes in working on Muslims in US popular culture and Shi’i theologies of justice. He has served in various academic and culturally creative capacities, most recently as Project Director of The Arts of Devotion at the Smithsonian’s National Muslim of Asian Art. He has taught at Virginia Theological Seminary and Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He is also a producer of the PBS Digital Series American Muslim Stories and of the award-winning New York Times op-doc The Secret of Muslims in the US.

As vice chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement, Rabbi Gordon Tucker focuses on enhancing Jewish life at 91�첥, enriching our study of Judaism with the joy and deep understanding that only lived experience can provide. A leading scholar and interpreter of Conservative Judaism, he also articulates the enduring power of 91�첥’s compelling approach to Jewish law and Jewish life, while strengthening 91�첥’s religious leadership through partnerships with organizations in the Conservative Movement and beyond.

About the Series

Across Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions, spring is a season of reflection, renewal, and ethical commitment. Grounded in holidays from Tu Bishvat and Lent to Ramadan, Holi, and Passover, this interreligious series explores responsibility, repair, and leadership in the face of urgent ecological challenges. Together, participants consider how religious wisdom can inspire ethical action and collective hope. 

Leviticus 25:39 informs us that impoverished Israelites are the responsibility of their kinsmen. The Israelite community is required to take in those who are destitute, integrating them into their households as hired or bound laborers (כְּשָׂכִ֥יר כְּתוֹשָׁ֖ב יִהְיֶ֣ה עִמָּ֑ךְ), but not as slaves. Ties are broken between them and their Israelite masters during the Jubilee year when these servants (who I reiterate, are not slaves according to Leviticus) are set free. Leviticus 25:43 insists upon humane treatment, expressly prohibiting ruthless behavior toward them. Fittingly, as a reminder that God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt (Leviticus 25:42), no Israelite is permitted to enslave a fellow Israelite who is indigent. This is in marked contrast to the Israelite debt and chattel slaves referred to in Exodus 21:2 and Deuteronomy 15:12 who can be bought and sold by other Israelites.

Disturbingly, the historical memory of the Exodus does not forbid Israelite ownership of Israelite and non-Israelite slaves. But more unsettling is Parashat Behar’s insistence that Israelites take care of their impoverished kinsmen turning them into hired laborers (Leviticus 25:39), while non-Israelites can be purchased as slaves and held in perpetuity with no recourse to freedom (Lev. 25:45). This dichotomy forces us to confront an unacceptable ethnic distinction whereby Israelites experiencing hardship are taken in and employed as hired workers; non-Israelites are enslaved, whatever the circumstances. Memories of the Egyptian taskmasters reverberate for me here in an inverted image of Israelites lording themselves over their non-Israelite neighbors in allowable relationships of master-slave. And while there is no narrative material in Behar to flesh out what this master-slave relationship actually looked like after the Exodus, the mere fact that the biblical account in Leviticus permits Israelites to enslave anyone at all feels utterly unjust. Shouldn’t our liberation from Egypt teach us that we must never enslave others, no matter who they are? Are we doing enough to confront this passage in Behar and acknowledge that the Israelites participated in maintaining the institution of slavery?

No doubt, it is difficult for us to come to terms with a biblical text that draws stark distinctions between the treatment of Israelites and non-Israelites, not to mention its allowance of slavery. Indeed, this has led some commentators to overlook references to slavery in this parashah, or to rationalize these references as representative of a type of slavery entirely distinct from Egyptian slavery. Some have even gone so far as to say that the practice of Israelite slavery ceased to exist, that is, despite the absence of any clear biblical prohibition. But where does that that leave us?

Recently, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, for Shabbat morning services at , one of the oldest synagogues in the United States, where I had the opportunity to think about these verses in Behar and contemplate how they might speak to us today. The congregation dates to 1749 and the synagogue structure to 1792. Rebuilt after a fire in Charleston in 1838 and replaced in 1840 by the structure that remains in use, the colonnaded majestic building on Hassel Street in the heart of downtown Charleston is an architectural marvel and a testament to a Jewish community with deep roots in the South. At the rededication ceremony in 1840 the head rabbi, Reverend Gustavus Poznanski, said, “This synagogue is our Temple, this city our Jerusalem.”[1] And yet, as I was soon to learn, the building and rebuilding of this edifice, as is the case with many buildings in Charleston, was built by slaves.[2]

In recent years Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim has publicly acknowledged its complex and painful connection to Black slavery in America. During the 18th and 19th centuries Charleston’s Jews owned slaves, fought with the Confederacy against the Union, and preached from their pulpits that the Bible supported the ownership of slaves. Such recognition led to the display of a plaque outside the synagogue in 2021 that begins with a quote from Mishnah Yoma 8:9 about the necessity of reconciliation between peoples. Drawn from the ritual framework of Yom Kippur that is centered around atonement, the reference defines ethical harmony as rooted in the restoration of relationships born through a process of acknowledging our errors in the hope that forgiveness ensues from those we have wronged.

So too with our verses in Leviticus. Like the community of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, we need to name the injustices and moral shortcomings of biblical passages that made way for the institution of slavery to continue long after the Exodus. Remembering the Exodus should not only be linked to the idea of freedom, but also to the memory of our own misdeeds. To be ethical readers of the Torah entails a critical recognition of the unsettling texts within it in the hope that we can then acknowledge our own imperfections. Reflective engagement with our biblical texts makes us better human beings. It allows us to see our own moral shortcomings so that we can live in productive relationships with those we may have harmed.

Shabbat Shalom

[1]

[2]Barry Stiefel, “David Lopez Jr.: Builder, Industrialist, and Defender of the Confederacy,” American Jewish Archives Journal, 2012.

I heard the sound again, re-checked my phone, but still, no message.  It took three rounds of this cycle to realize that the chirping wasn’t coming from my cell phone—it was coming from a real live bird in Riverside Park! My brain had become wired to hear “tweet” and think that the more likely option in my day-to-day urban life was a text message on my phone, as opposed to an actual bird.

This tweet was the wake up call I needed to realize how disconnected I had become from the natural world—from the land, its sounds, and native inhabitants. I was ungrounded, and the birdsong was like a springtime shofar blast for sensory overload. It was the nudge I needed to spend more time outdoors, to mute my phone’s pings and dings, and to look at the biblical concept of shemitah (release) with fresh eyes and newly attuned ears.

In Parashat Behar, God tells the Israelites that when they enter the land that God will give them, “the Land shall observe a Sabbath of the Adonai”—veshavta ha’aretz Shabbat l’Adonai (Lev. 25:2). This becomes known as the shemitah year. For six years, you can work to your heart’s content—you can sow, prune, and gather, but in the seventh year, the land shall have a full, complete rest: shabbat shabbaton yihiyeh la’aretz (Lev. 25:4)!

The concept of shemitah was radical in its original context in the Ancient Near East. For an agrarian society, dependent on self-sustaining agricultural production, it was a bold move requiring immense faith and forethought to leave land fallow every seven years. In fact, one reason for the decline of the flourishing Neo-Sumerian economy of Mesopotamia in the early second millennium BCE was the high alkaline content of the soil in areas of the Diyala River region. Irrigation was overutilized, crop output faltered, and the economy failed.^[1] Thus, it was indeed radical for our Israelite ancestors to put their faith, fortune, and future in God’s hand. It was brave of them to trust that God’s land would produce more productively, if it had the opportunity for a shabbat shabbaton—a period of complete rest.

As radical as shemitah may have been for the ancient Israelites, perhaps the concept is even more radical for us today. We work “from the office” and “from home”—which actually means that we work wherever we are. We literally carry our work with us in our pockets. We sow at the supermarket, we prune on the pick-up line, and we gather while we wait for the green light. We toil until we can’t tell the difference between a sparrow’s trill and a sputtering social-media troll. It’s hard enough for us to stop working at 5PM, and to shut our laptops for twenty-five hours over Shabbat. But a full year of complete rest from production?! Preposterous!

The Italian commentator Seforno (1475–1549) notes that “during the shemitah year, the farmer, instead of ‘serving’ the soil which requires cultivation, will instead turn his efforts to serving God directly. Just as the weekly Sabbath is a day set aside for intensive service of God, so the shemitah year is to serve the same purpose.”^[2] Seforno seems to imply here that it’s challenging to simultaneously serve God while also dedicating oneself wholly to one’s labor. (Thanks for the validation, Seforno!) The farmers were only able to dedicate themselves fully to God when they set down their scythes.

How then might we serve God, if we don’t have our own farms to leave fallow, and if we don’t work in fields that allow us to set down our pruning shears every seven years? Perhaps we can infuse our lives with the spirit of shemitah through recognizing the blessings of nature and respecting the inhabitants of the land—from the birds that tweet to the seeds that grow. And we don’t even have to wait seven years to do so.  Shemitah offers us a vision of a world in which we can live in harmony with our environment. Perhaps it’s an idealistic dream, yet it’s one worth envisioning and pursuing for the sake of our ancestors, ourselves, and our children in generations to come.

I started with a bird, and I’ll end with a seed. Researchers at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura recently harvested a crop of dates grown on palm trees from 2,000-year-old seeds retrieved from archaeological excavations.^[3] The Ketura ancient palm grove has a few trees—the most senior, nicknamed Methuselah, was planted in 2005 from a seed found at Masada during the excavations led by Yigal Yadin in 1960s. Since then, thirty-two seeds have been planted and six germinated, miraculously reviving an ancient variety of date. These special fruits resemble modern dates, and have a very sweet taste, like honey.

These miracle seeds didn’t just rest for one shemitah year—they rested for two millennia! Imagine for a moment, a weary rebel or a tired mother near Masada, plucking a date from a nearby palm tree and sucking its honey for a boost of energy. Then dropping that seed on the ground, only for it to be re-discovered 2,000 years later, and then planted and harvested anew—so we today can savor its sweet honey and its even sweeter story.

Let the story of these date seeds give you hope: hope for a time when we can all enjoy the blessings of shemitah, and hope for a world where people live in harmony with our land and its inhabitants.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

^[1] Levine, Baruch. The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus. Pg. 272, Excursus 10. 

^[2]

^[3] , Jerusalem Post (August 14, 2021).

Now I should not have needed to review the parashah to come up with this question because in May 1997, Behar was my bat mitzvah portion. And yet every year when these parashiyot come around, together or separately, I feel a bit of shame. I do not remember chanting the words or studying them. I do not remember if they spoke to me or what I said about them from the bimah.

What I do remember is Cantor Brindell, of blessed memory, who went into the hospital in the hours after my service and died on Shabbat morning the following week, teaching me the trope for the haftarah. I remember its opening words, “וַיֹּ֖אמֶר יִרְמְיָ֑הוּ הָיָ֥ה דְבַר־יְהֹוָ֖ה אֵלַ֥י לֵאמֹֽר, And Jeremiah said that the word of God came to him saying . . . ” (Jer. 32:6). I remember being so proud to lead a service in front of my family, friends, and all the other middle schoolers I invited to the service. I remember relatives coming in from near and far, and I remember my mom on the bimah speaking to me in her official role as synagogue president.

And so I find myself 26 years later, 9 years into my rabbinate, going back to the words that I must have studied with the rabbi, trying to figure out what messages I forgot, or missed, all those years ago.

Reading through it, I can see why the portion didn’t quite speak to me.  Slavery and the creation of a slightly more moral system than the norm in the ancient world are major themes. I suspect my pre-teen self said, “I guess Torah is sort of outdated” and moved on. Rereading it today, I can easily notice relevant concepts such as shemittah, giving the land a Shabbat-like rest, and the jubilee year when we return land to folks who have become disenfranchised and prevent systemic inequality. These concepts are relevant to me today because observing Shabbat has given shape to my week, the year I spent observing ^[1] shaped my relationship with the origins of my food, and learning about systemic injustice has shown how radical the return of land could be. I do not blame the educators, because while I did not receive the message that my Torah portion was filled with relevant wisdom, I received a more important message loud and clear: Judaism, its people, culture, and rituals, are deeply meaningful and relevant. The friendships, the cycle of holidays, the marking of time, I never once questioned that my life had more joy and meaning because I was part of the Jewish people.

Today I meet many young people who have not been taught Judaism’s relevance to their lives.  They have not had the chance to live the Jewish calendar, to build strong Jewish friendships, to feel pride in belonging to something that sets them apart from others and knowing what beliefs or behaviors set them apart.

In my work as a community rabbi, first at Hillel and now leading a Jewish community organization for 20s and 30s in the Philadelphia area, I have taken on the mandate to convey this message: that Judaism is relevant, exciting, and meaningful—not just as an identity that they can name but as a way of life that shapes the choices they make and how they spend their time. Teaching the words of the Torah in one-off and ongoing classes is one way we do this. We also model the values of shemittah and jubilee, such as giving time for self-care, running programs on environmentalism, and pushing for economic justice.  We try to make the Jewish calendar accessible and fun through holiday celebrations. And we hope that if one of the young people we serve is in trouble, they will turn to each other, as our parashah models: “If one of your kin is in straits and has to sell part of a holding, the nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what that relative has sold” (Lev. 25:25).

In my 20s I led a lot of Birthright trips and each trip would have 5–10 folks who decided to have an adult b’nei mitzvah ceremony on the trip. I would often say, too many people see the b’nei mitzvah as the end of Jewish education, and as the pinnacle of Jewish living. 12 or 13 is too young for that, and so are 18 or 22 or 25. There is no age which should serve as the culmination of our Jewish education. If we are lucky we will have the chance to go back to each parashah and holiday for decades, noticing new things about the texts and rituals, and about ourselves and our communities each year.

This is one of the biggest blessings of our calendar, the chance to go back year after year to the same texts and rituals and continuously analyze, critique, and celebrate these gifts of the Jewish inheritance. In this week’s second parashah, Behukkotai, the Torah shares some of the blessings and challenges of our covenant with God and states “I will be ever present in your midst: I will be your God, and you shall be My people” (Lev. 26:12). What a gift to have our entire lives to connect with God’s presence in new ways, through text, community, and practice, in our ever-renewing commitment to God’s everlasting covenant.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

^[1] To learn more, see this blog post written by Rabbi Ariella Rosen (RS’15) for a 91�첥 class assignment.

Rashi very rarely stated his question. Like other rabbis, when he asked a question, very often it was only so that he could offer a particular answer or insight—as is the case here. Rashi here asked yet another question, “Were not all the commandments given at Sinai?” Quoting the ancient midrashic collection on Leviticus, Torat Kohanim (also known as Sifra), Rashi explained that “Just as [the laws] of shemittah were given at Sinai in all their detail, so too all of them [all the mitzvot!] were given at Sinai.” Rashi’s answer to his own question reinforces the historically-critically problematic traditional Jewish dogma that all the commandments—biblical and rabbinic alike, “Written” and “Oral”—were revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai. At the same time, this statement also precludes a hierarchy of mitzvot, those given at Sinai and those given later. All of them—even the details, which I submit refers to the rabbinic detailing of the commandments—were given at Sinai.

The structure of Rashi’s Torah commentary is that he wove together the biblical text, more often than not, with selected earlier rabbinic interpretations. His comments often include the details of the commandments, which he here explained themselves hark back to Sinai. As such, many of Rashi’s comments on Leviticus 25 and the laws of shemittah include “all their detail,” i.e., the rabbinic explanation of both how the commandments are to be observed and their intended moral purpose. As the first generation amora Rav explained, “The commandments were only given in order that the [God’s] creations be refined through them [their observance]” (Genesis Rabbah 44:1).

In the first half of the chapter, in verses 17-19 and 23, the Torah presents God as a landlord. This metaphor conveys that Israel’s continued security and prosperity in the Land is dependent on the nation’s observance of God’s commandments. In effect, God establishes limitations on Israelite ownership:

And you shall fear your God. For I am the Lord your God. And you will perform My statutes and My judgments you shall observe, and you shall do them, and you will dwell on the Land in security… For the Land is Mine. For you are strangers and settlers with Me.

Leviticus 17-19, 23

The chapter’s punctuation of its commandments with reminders that “I am the Lord your God” positions the Landlord to dictate the limitations of Israel’s ownership and wealth and makes further demands regarding the uses toward which we employ our wealth. Consider, for example, verse 6, “And [whatever the land yields during] the sabbath of the land will be for you to eat—for you, for your slave, for your maidservant, for your paid laborer, and for the sojourner who lives with you.” The Landlord prohibits cultivation of the land in the sabbatical year, as is the Landlord’s right. Rashi and the Rabbis explained though that God did not prohibit eating what the land itself grows without cultivation. During the sabbatical year, a landowner is not allowed to behave toward the land as if he owns it; he is not allowed to bring the produce into his home. Rather he is to eat it out in the field alongside his slave, maidservant, paid laborer, and the sojourner—all of whom share an equal claim to the land’s ownerless produce.

In verse 23, God explains that an Israelite landholding may not be sold in perpetuity, because the Land belongs to God. In verse 35, the Torah describes a situation in which one’s fellow Israelite has become destitute: “If your brother is in straits and his hand falters with you, you shall strengthen him—stranger and sojourner—and he will live in your midst.” Rashi explains that one should not wait until one’s fellow’s situation becomes too dire and desperate to help him. At that point, it may be too late. One should help when his hand falters, sooner rather than later.

Leviticus 25’s injunctions regarding Israelite wealth are designed to reinforce the philosophical worldview that everything one has comes from God, Landlord and Creator of the Universe. Thus, God gets to tell us how we use it, to what divine purpose we put it. We will never know whether or to what extent our ancient forebears kept these commandments. Based on II Chronicles 36:21, Rashi explained in his comments on Lev. 25:18 and 26:35 that the Babylonian exile occurred because Israel did not observe shemittah, and so Israel was exiled so that the Land could make up the seventy shemittah years that it was owed.

There is a modern lesson in this chapter, even for those of us‚ myself included, who own neither a farm in Israel nor Israelite slaves. Throughout this chapter, the Torah reminds us that everything we possess comes from God. The consequence of this realization is that whatever bounty I possess—large or small—is a grant from God with which I am obligated to fulfill God’s commandments, be it the modern analog of caring and providing for my slaves and freeing them, or preventing my fellow from falling into the depths of poverty, or ensuring that one has what they need in order to support themselves and their families. Like observance of Shabbat every seventh day, so too observance of shemittah and the laws of Leviticus 25 are an expression of the recognition of God as the Source and Creator of the Universe.

This piece was originally published in 2017.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

The Torah is such a fundamental part of us as a people that it’s easy to forget how implausible it may seem that any document written 2,500 years ago would be relevant to modern life. Core assumptions since then have been overturned—about gender, power, nature, and society (to say the least!). Why would we think the Torah has anything to say to us? Why do we feel the draw of God’s covenant as instantiated in this outmoded text?

Indeed, the Torah itself constantly reminds us that it was not intended for us Diasporic Jews. Again and again, the language of the Torah ties itself to settlement in the Land of Israel. To give two examples from this week’s Torah portion: “if you observe My laws . . . you shall rest on the land in security” (Lev. 25:18); “I am God your Lord who brought you out of Egypt to give to you the land of Canaan in order to be your Lord” (Lev. 25:38). Is the Torah even relevant beyond the specific borders of the Land of Israel?

The Mishnah (Kiddushin 1:7) takes a strong stand on the issue, by distinguishing between “mitzvot dependent on the Land” (e.g. Shemittah, the once-in-seven-years agricultural rest; certain priestly gifts) and “mitzvot not dependent on the Land (e.g. Shabbat, tefillin).

The Talmud (BT Kiddushin 37a–b) tries to find some Scriptural criteria that puts any particular mitzvah into one category or the other, and in so doing undermines the very distinction it is trying to demonstrate. For example, the Talmud uses Deuteronomy 12:1 as the basis for the Mishnah’s division: “These are the laws and rules that you must carefully observe in the land (eretz) that God, the Lord of your fathers, is giving you to possess, as long as you live on earth (adamah).” In the end, the Midrash there concludes that “as long as you live on earth” means that many mitzvot apply in all lands, not just the Land of Israel. But by bringing this verse, the Talmud reinforces the potential alienation: after all, the Hebrew terms eretz and adamah are often synonymous and so it’s all too easy to read the passage as saying that the laws must be observed “in the land . . . as long as you live on the land”—clearly implying the necessity of being in the Land of Israel.

In other words, the reader realizes, through the Talmud’s counterproofs, that so much of the core of Judaism is made, in the Torah, dependent on the Land of Israel! As later Judaism’s most famous heretic, Baruch Spinoza, concluded when he tried to read the Torah anew with as few prior dogmatic assumptions as possible, “the Law revealed by God to Moses was simply the laws of the Hebrew state alone, and was therefore binding on none but the Hebrews, and not even on them except while their state still stood” (Theologico-Political Treatise, Preface).

Another example of the implausibility of the Torah: God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be “like the stars of heaven” (Gen. 22:17). It is true that there are roughly 14 million Jews in the world, which sounds like a lot when you think about Abraham and his family. But compared to the 7 billion people in the world, it is extremely hard to square God’s promise for keeping the covenant with the demographic reality. Our Temples were destroyed, our people scattered and murdered throughout time—we are hardly “a great nation, mighty and numerous” (Deut. 26:5).

Which just brings us back to the original question: Why do we still look to words that may have no relevance to us for meaning? Why do we still cling to God’s covenant despite all the evidence that suggests it is null and void?

One answer might be that we are simply stubborn. To act as if the covenant still remains true, that the laws are still incumbent on us even beyond the borders of ancient Israel, that the Torah simply has anything to say to us at all—these are extraordinary acts of stubbornness and even hubris, defying all reason and evidence. Simply put, it is pretending that the world has never changed. This stubbornness I find strangely comforting. As Jews, we are anchored to the past like few others, and in some ways this has allowed the Torah to be ever-relevant for us.

Perhaps another way to think about it is through the nature of a covenant as a relationship between two parties, us and God. In this way, our turning to the Torah is a way of never giving up on this relationship. Even when God’s promises seem strained, even when God’s law seems not to speak to us, we are unwilling to give up on our divine partner. It’s a relationship that we know in our hearts, despite Scriptural prooftexts to the contrary, transcends borders in time and space and keeps us strong through the worst hardships.

Or perhaps our stubbornness reveals a deeper truth, that in some fundamental way, the world has never changed. The experience of being human and the exploration of answers to those questions that humans ask are still the same. Our lives have the same ingredients—relationships, births and deaths. Despite the drastic differences between the world of the Torah and ours, they are so overwhelmed by the continuities that the ancient wisdom naturally speaks to us.

I prefer to live in the absurdity. I know full well that my biblical ancestors would find my form of Judaism incomprehensible, that I cling to texts that speak directly to them and not me. For me, this is our triumph as a people, to continually reclaim our tradition and our covenant and to demand that it applies to us now, that it speaks to us directly, that it encircles and enriches our lives, that it contains the very word of God. This is not a conviction based on rationality; it is rather a “leap of faith.” It is a reflection of our stubborn disposition—and yet it is at the core of everything that is beautiful and powerful in our tradition.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

This is the fourth in a series of commentaries linking Parashat Hashavua, the weekly Torah portion, with parashat hashavua, a Modern Hebrew idiom for the event or story that dominates the week’s news.

Growing up in Philadelphia, I often went with classmates to Independence Hall, where I swelled with pride to see that the Liberty Bell bore engraved words from the Torah:

 “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof.” (Lev. 25:10)

Recent translations prefer, instead of liberty, the more precise (but less stirring) word release; Etz Hayim notes that the Hebrew word deror derives from the Akkadian anduraru, and that the custom of proclaiming “a moratorium on debts and indenture, thereby releasing those bound by servitude” has its likely source in the edicts often issued to this effect by Mesopotamian kings upon ascending to the throne (740). Jacob Milgrom’s monumental three-volume commentary on Leviticus informs us (quoting scholar Dietz-Otto Edzard) that Ancient Near Eastern monarchs, like the Torah, aimed to “prevent the collapse of the economy under too great a weight of private indebtedness.” But whereas the kings’ forgiveness of debt was subject to royal whim and generally restricted to royal retainers, Leviticus makes the release from debt at the Jubilee “immutable and periodic” (the Jubilee takes place every 50 years), and imposes its laws upon every Israelite (Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, 1407).

Reading Parashat Behar this year, my mind was drawn to an item in the news that on the face of it bears little relation to the matters discussed in the Torah, but which upon reflection highlights very similar concerns. “Actor Pleads Guilty to Felony in College Admissions Scandal,” . Felicity Huffman is one of “50 celebrities, business executives, sports coaches and others who have been charged in the nation’s largest-ever college admissions prosecution,” the article says. The actress admitted paying $15,000 to arrange for her daughter’s SAT exam to be corrected by its proctor before submission. Another parent charged in the case pleaded guilty to paying the mastermind of the admissions scheme $250,000 so that his son would be recruited to the men’s water polo team at the University of Southern California, despite lack of ability in that sport. News accounts in recent days have indicated that more parents and coaches may soon be indicted. So far, no students have been charged, and it is not clear how much they knew of the conspiracy surrounding their college admission.

“This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life,” said Ms. Huffman—the transgression apparently being that by lying on her daughter’s behalf, she involved her in a criminal conspiracy, exposed her to the contempt of friends and classmates, and—perhaps—made a mockery of injunctions by parents, teachers, and society not to lie or cheat. Press coverage of the incident has used the scandal to shine a light on alleged sins of society as a whole. These relate directly to what the social reforms put forward by Leviticus were trying to accomplish.

The first matter at issue is equality of opportunity—a declared commitment of broad segments of American society, and particularly of colleges and universities. Disparities of wealth and income remain enormous in the United States today; while dispute rages on whether the government should take concerted action to redistribute wealth, there seems to be a broader consensus that society should do what it can to “level the playing field.” Head Start programs and other educational ventures seek to ensure that children at least start off with a chance to better their circumstances.

College has, with good reason, long been seen as a way up and out of poverty. A report issued recently by the American Council on Education entitled “” shows overall “median annual earnings of adults ages 25 and older” to be $29,100 for high school graduates—and $52,000 for those holding a bachelor’s degree. (The median rate for professional degrees is $95,000.) SAT tests, it was announced a few days ago, will henceforth include an “adversity score” that measures the hardships faced by students from disadvantaged backgrounds. That score will not figure into the results of the tests, but, according to David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, which administers the SAT, it will help colleges to “see students who may not have scored as high, but when you look at the environment that they have emerged from, it is amazing” (“”, New York Times, May 16, 2019).

Against the background of what the Times called a “raging national debate over fairness and merit in college admissions” (a lawsuit filed recently against Harvard alleges that targets for admission of members of certain minority groups constitute discrimination against those who would have been awarded slots if the criterion was merit alone), it is not hard to understand the hue and cry of protest at news that celebrity parents had bribed their children’s way into college.

Some critics, observes the Chronicle of Higher Education, are asking whether “the game was rigged” all along in favor of the wealthy, who regularly “bribe” their students’ way into college by totally legal means. Test scores have been found to correlate with wealth. Students able to take unpaid summer internships garner a further advantage that students from poorer homes cannot afford. Jennifer L. Mnookin, dean of the law school at UCLA, describes the bribery scandal as the “‘criminal leading edge” of a much more deeply rooted problem. “Elitism perpetuates elitism, ”says historian Clayborne Carson of Stanford University. Data in the Chronicle story shows that at the six private universities so far named in the admissions scandal, “all have more students from families in the top 1 percent of the income scale than the bottom 40 percent” ,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April, 2019).

There are not many portions of the Torah that lend themselves directly to statistics of this sort—but leveling the economic playing field a bit is exactly what Parashat Behar is all about. Farmers forced by accumulated debt to sell the land they have inherited from their ancestors are to have those debts forgiven. “In this year of jubilee, each of you shall return to his holding” (Lev. 25:13). Milgrom believes that a formerly egalitarian social order in the kingdom of Judah had given way to one in which “a prosperous stratum of landowners have outstripped the small farmers . . . . Those who acquire new lands by debt default live in the cities, removed in distance and in kinship from the plight of the impoverished, landless farmers . . . ” (Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, 2243). Prophets such as Hosea and Amos loudly protested this development. Leviticus in our parashah was doing the same.

But a second feature of the Jubilee rules works against the drive to share the wealth more fairly, and it too finds echoes in the college admissions scandal. Those forced by debt to leave the land inherited from their ancestors are entitled to return to it at the jubilee. Milgrom captures the issue succinctly: “the institution of the jubilee (and redemption) is unavailable to the resident alien,” who has no ancestral holding to which he or she can return. Leviticus “has unambiguously proclaimed the absolute equality (in civil matters) between native and alien,” but enforces a “blatant contradiction” caused by the fact that “the axiom of YHWH’s bestowal of inheritable land exclusively to the Israelite takes priority over the principle of the alien’s equality before the law” (Leviticus 17-22, 1408). The Land of Israel has a unique status. God has apportioned it among the tribes of Israel—and them alone.

Colleges and universities with a declared interest in improving access for the disadvantaged and for ethnic and racial minorities, historically excluded and under-represented in their ranks, also have a declared interest in keeping their campuses “in the family.” Children and grandchildren of alumni are routinely given special treatment. It also happens, of course, that alumni are a (or the) most reliable donors to those colleges and universities—and that admissions officers are reluctant to turn away children of donors who have been exceedingly generous. Universities have eloquently made the case for why diversity matters so much in higher education. They have also argued for the importance of the multi-generational emotional bonds linking alumni and students to institutions that might otherwise be more impersonal. Like Leviticus, they seem caught in a contradiction of ideals that in turn reflects divergent goals and values of society as a whole.

It’s not clear whether Leviticus’s complex scheme for debt relief and land transfer at the jubilee was ever put into practice. In the same way, disputes over college admissions will likely be with us for many years to come.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).