I remember a video, one of those we see so much on the internet and that often get forwarded on WhatsApp or Instagram. Interestingly, this video talked about how everyone dies. Among the images that were shown, you could constantly hear the phrase "Everyone dies" or "Everyone dies." The tone with which they repeated the phrase was stirring and even disturbing. Everyone dies. Everyone dies.
I recalled this when I reviewed our Parashat Behar and reread the story about Shnat Shmita and Shnat Yovel, the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee year. Obviously, it refers to the Jewish Jubilee, which was the year when the land rested, and it prescribed that all debts, all credits, returned to zero, as well as the lands returning to their original owners. It was going back to a beginning and shuffling the deck again, gathering all the cards and starting a new game.
The idea of "everyone dies" resonates very strongly because that's what Parashat Behar ultimately conveys to us. We don't own anything. We don't own our lives, we don't own our possessions, we don't own absolutely anything that the Lord lends us for the duration of our lives. That's the concept.
We are with a borrowed body that we must take care of and return, just as when we borrow something, we take care of it more simply because it's not ours. We enjoy a borrowed world that we also have to return much better than we received it, and we're not achieving that.
Shnat Yovel and Shnat Shmita were the years when the land rested. An innovative concept that arrived hundreds of years before fallowing was implemented in Europe, in a clear message that we must treat nature with the care and respect with which we treat a loved one or an object lent to us for a time. We cannot extract everything it offers us, destroy it, alter its natural state, damage the ecosystem, and then pretend it's ours and that what we did was okay.
In some way, we have to become aware, and the Torah has been asking us to do so for 3,000 years. It asks us to be aware of what our real influence is on the world around us and what we must change to take care of it.
We must get off the pedestals to which we climbed with the misconception that we are the Kings of Creation, according to which we possess everything and dispose of everything, to understand that coexistence not only with the environment but between one human being and another is necessary, between one creed and another, it is necessary, between different types of skin and different ways of thinking, it is necessary. It sounds obvious, but for many, it still isn't.
We are passing through this world, and in this passing through, the only thing, the only thing, the only thing that concerns us and that we must do is to make things better, not worse. It's Tikun Olam, it's repairing the world, not making it worse. It's making these lives, our lives and the lives around us, not a hardship, not something we suffer through, but a better world and taking care of each other to make this possible.
Shnat Yovel and Shnat Shmita, the Jubilee year and the Sabbatical year. Two concepts that should be incorporated into our daily lives, into our everyday lives, so that we can somehow thank and return all the wonderful things we were given.
At 231 days from October 7th, we continue to ask and demand for the return of the hostages who still cannot enjoy this beautiful world and this beautiful life that we received on loan.
Am Israel Chai! The people of Israel live!
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Gustavo Geier