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Newsletter            May 12, 2011 - 8 Iyar 5771
 

   shemmitah    

 

                         

Creating the Context
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Walter Kirn in his essay, "Good Bye, Holden Caulfield. I Mean It. Go! Good Bye!" describes a teacher using "The Catcher in the Rye" to teach his 1960's eastern Minnesota students about becoming nonconformists. "He insisted we read it twice, once at home, by ourselves, and a second time at school, together. His picture of our home lives was mistaken, though. Our houses were full of dogs and cats and siblings. There were lawns to mow and horse stalls to scrape clean and shirts to fold and even cows to milk. Flipping through "The Catcher in the Rye" and jotting our thoughts down in the margins would not be possible for all but a few of us, and maybe none of us. Sure, our parents encouraged homework - technically - but only when it involved digesting science facts or wrestling with numbers." The teacher didn't understand his students' lives, and they could not relate to his topic.

I wonder whether this week's portion that deals with the laws of the Sabbatical Year would go over in Kirn's Minnesota any better did than Holden Caulfield. How do you teach farming families in the midwest to not work their land every seventh year? "Oh! By the way; after every seven cycles of seven years there's a Jubilee year, and you can't work the land for two years in a row. But don't worry. God will provide."

For that matter, how do you teach these laws to farmers in Israel during the First Temple period? Many prophets repeated the Torah's warning that they would lose the Holy Land if they did not observe these laws, but the people didn't listen. They fought for the land, and then worked to develop their farms. They experienced the rewards and accomplishments of hard work. There was no more daily Manna with its constant lesson of trust in God. They had to feed themselves.  It would take unimaginable trust to simply stop working their land for an entire year. Did they walk out of Jeremiah's lecture with the same disconnect as did Kirn from his teacher's lessons based on a preppy New Yorker?

There's a hint in the Portion's name how to teach these laws; "B'har Sinai," on Mount Sinai. "Why is Mount Sinai mentioned in the context of the laws of the Sabbatical Year," asks Rashi? The rest of the laws in the portion answer Rashi's question and ours: The commandments include affording others opportunities to make a living and to create a sense of mutual responsibility and trust. We are forbidden to cause harm to anyone, financial or even with harsh words. The Torah demands that we create a social and economic environment that is secure for all. The laws remind us that we must nurture Sinai-like conditions, in which we all trust and rely on each other so that we can naturally develop enough trust in God to observe the laws of the Sabbatical Year.

The theme of the portion is to create a context of such beauty, honesty, and mutual responsibility that we feel as we did at Sinai: unified and secure in each other and, through that, in God. Before we can teach the laws of Shemmitah, we must nurture trust, and to do that, we must first create the context. You can't teach the Shemittah laws to a child in Monsey, Manhattan, or even Jerusalem, without the perfect context of a beautiful, warm and nurturing community built on mutual respect and responsibility. Speeches about Bitachon, trusting God, do not suffice. The children need a context; one of trust and security in human beings, before we can speak of trust in God.

This, for me, is the message of much of Jewish law: Create the context in which you can teach the more demanding laws. The human context comes first. It's the only way to teach about God.

I wish you a Shabbat in the context of a beautiful human environment that will nurture a safe and secure relationship with God.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Simcha L. Weinberg
President 
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