COMMAND THE ISRAELITE PEOPLE TO

BRING YOU CLEAR OIL OF BEATEN OLIVES FOR LIGHTING, FOR KINDLING LAMPS REGULARLY.

(Vayikra

24: 2)

To bring to you clear oil of

beaten olives – This

section is repeated, because the menorah

is

next to the table in order to illuminate the table bearing the lehem ha'panim

the sake of setting up the table: the oil for illumination and the loaf for

setting upon the table.

(RaShBaM

on Vayikra 24:2)

Rabbi

Hayyei taught: Olive oil – and not sesame seed oil or oil from nuts, and

not oil of radishes, and not almond oil, rather olive oil from your olives.

Rabbi

Abin said: It is like the parable of the king whose legions had mutinied

against him, but one of his legions had not. The king said: "Dukes,

governors, and officers shall arise from that legion which did not mutiny

against me." Similarly, the Holy One Blessed be He said: "This olive

tree brought light to the world in the days of Noah, as is written, The dove

leaf (Bereishit

8:11)."

(Vayikra

Rabbah 31)

Economics, Justice, and Holiness

Deborah Greiniman

Only too rarely does a book of general

interest come along, which illuminates the Torah's wisdom in a striking,

challenging, and empowering manner. Such is my reception of the book Guns,

Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (New York:

Norton, 1996), by the American scientist and author, Jared Diamond.

In the book's central theory, Diamond

suggests a system of causes which explain why the peoples of South-West Asia

(including our own region), and eventually Europe achieved world-wide hegemony,

placing the "undeveloped" countries under their imperial rule. He

claims that the development of civilizations in specific localities is

determined by the presence of easily domesticated flora and fauna in the

natural environment, rather than by inherited racial traits of human

populations. The achievements of the Europeans and of their descendants in the

New World have nothing to do with the alleged intellectual superiority of the white

race. On the contrary – Diamond tends to believe that hunter-gatherers, who

must exercise their understanding of nature's secrets in ever-changing

circumstances and on a daily basis, are likely to be more intelligent

than agriculturalists.

While developing this

conclusion, Diamond tracks the rise of civilization as founded upon the

development of agriculture. (Even if this notion is not Diamond's own original

idea, I am grateful for the clarity with which he sets it out.) He explains

that hunter-gatherer societies are relatively egalitarian. While they do posses

a certain hierarchical structure – tribal chief, patriarch, etc. – high-status

individuals in hunter-gatherer societies do not enjoy significantly better standards

of living than do those whom they rule. Society members create sophisticated

mechanisms for the settlement of conflicts. After all, when people are

constantly busy with the search for nourishment, they do not have time to

nurture feuds.

Agriculture's great advantage is that

it allows people to store food for future use, granting nutritional security to

most of the population and creating the possibility of storable surpluses. People

no longer have to wander in search of food, and some society members can get

away with not directly contributing to the nourishment of the group. Agriculture

creates the basis for a settled community in which whole groups of people are

engaged in activities that are not immediately concerned with the procurement

of food, such as priests, artists, artisans, governing officials, and soldiers

who can win control over territories and peoples. Such societies are

stratified, because unequal crop-yields and the trade in agricultural surpluses

invite unequal accumulation of natural resources, and, in addition, those of

higher status can use their position and power to extract taxes from the other

members of the community.

This short account of Diamond's theory takes

me directly to this week's parasha, and to the series of parashiyot which

describe the social arrangements that were supposed to characterize future society

in the Land of Israel. The Torah views the world from an explicitly wilderness

view-point. It speaks to a people that has temporarily returned to a nomadic

existence, a people which gathers its food daily, wandering through the immense

no-man's-land that separates the great Egyptian civilization from the Promised

Land. From this external perspective, the Torah creates an ideal society that

is attuned to its environment. According to the Torah, it was Joseph, one of

Israel's founding fathers, who designed Egypt's economic system. This system

concentrated ownership of all resources in the hands of the centralized

government, which enslaved vast sectors of the population including,

eventually, the Hebrews themselves. Undoubtedly, the Torah completely rejects

this system, despite its illustrious inventor. However, God does intend Israel

to abandon the relatively egalitarian nomadic life it knew in the wilderness

and to adopt the ways of a settled society upon their entry to the Land. The

Torah foresaw the problems that would attend conversion to an agricultural

economy; social stratification, unequal distribution of resources,

concentration of capital in the hands of the regime leading to the corruption

of values, widespread poverty and servitude, exploitation of the poor by the

wealthy, repression of the weakest elements of society – the widows, orphans,

strangers, and hired laborers.

In a remarkably bold and idealistic

fashion, the Torah tries to pre-empt all of these ills with the help of social

legislation, the most radical, no doubt, being the laws of the Sabbatical and

Jubilee years. These were set to periodically shatter the expected social

inequalities, more or less returning everyone to the original distribution of

resources while establishing a break from everyday concerns that could be

devoted to Torah study. It is as if in the Sabbatical year everyone returns to

a kind of nomadic life in which nature's bounty becomes available to all,

irrespective of social status. Even during the regular years the Torah does not

rely upon the occasional generosity of the land-owners; it applies easily

understood, hard and fast rules to execute the redistribution of food to the

needy, regardless of the root causes of their impoverishment. The laws of pe'ah

and leket make the edges of a field as well as the field itself into

a public space into which the poor may freely enter to gather food, further

limiting private property for the good of society in general.

The Chief Rabbi of the U.K., Rabbi

Jonathan Sacks, points out in his book, The Dignity of Difference: How to

Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (London-New York: Continuum, 2002), that

the Torah actually views the free market and private property in a favorable

light and is reconciled to the unavoidable inequalities they bring. One might

say that the Torah's ideal society shares something with Thomas Jefferson's

vision of a society of free and independent farmers. (Except, of course, that

the Torah requires the existence of priestly and Levite classes, which do not own

land and are supported by taxation of the people so that they can be free to

engage in the worship of God, conflict resolution, Torah study, cultural

creation, etc.) However, such a society will not be able to sustain itself, and

will not bring honor to the Name of God which is called upon it, if its

inequalities become so drastic that they corrupt its values, distract its

members from the worship of God, cast down some of its sons and daughters into

poverty, and even enslave the poor to their creditors and the strangers and

aliens to their employers.

I find a nice expression of the proper scale

of values in a single verse that occupies a crucial juncture in our parasha. In

the middle of the description of the festivals, between Shavuot and Rosh

Hashanah, the Torah interrupts itself to mention:

And when you reap the harvest of your

Lord your God. (Vayikra 23:22)

RaMBaN explains:

That is to say that when you arrive at

the land and reap the first Omer of the harvest [to be offered at the

Temple], do not count the edge of he field as available for the omer,

and do not gather the gleanings, so that the mitzvah (of the omer)

should not have priority over these prohibitions [regarding the edges and the

gleanings].

That is to say, despite all the

largesse that is supposed to characterize the service of God, one may certainly

not add to the mitzvah of the omer at the price of diminishing the

quantity of food which belongs to the poor by right, which they need to

survive. The apparently illogical placement of this verse, and its repetition

of the verse from parashat Kedoshim (19:9), underlines the idea that Torah

considers the observance of its social legislation to be no less important than

the observance of all of the festivals, including Shabbat, with all of their

attendant rules and regulations. These social laws are not thought of as

belonging to a separate category of "commandments between man and his

fellow man." Rather, together with observance of the holidays and of

kashrut, they are integral elements in life of a people that strives for

holiness.

Today, when we have returned to our

Land after living a nomadic life in the Diaspora, how long can we ignore the

Torah's demand that we establish a society whose every son and daughter can live

in dignity, in which all will find leisure that allows them to contemplate the

words of the Torah and wave the omer before God?

Deborah

Greiniman edits Nashim, a journal for the study of women and gender in

Judaism. She is an editor in the National Academy of Sciences, and also writes

and translates.

For stranger and citizen alike

You

God:

The God of the stranger and the God of the citizen, the noble are not

preferred to the wretched (Job 34:19).

(Seforno

Vayikra 24:22)

One

standard for stranger and citizen alike: A gentile who comes from a

foreign land and separates himself from it is called a ger [stranger],

from gargir [a berry] which has separated from the tree. He whose

fathers are of the city is an ezrah [citizen], as in the verse, well-rooted

like a robust ezrah [native tree] (Tehillim 37:35). He

is similar to one planted from ancient times – and so it says that the law will

be the same for all of them.

For

I am the Lord your God: If you followed this law then I am

your God, and from the affirmative statement we learn a negative one: When

someone does not follow this law it is as if he is denying that

God is his God, and has rejected the essence of faith. It is known that all of

the beliefs and laws of the nations are interpretations of the Torah, and the laws

of the Torah are among the principles of faith. When we do not follow them we

desecrate the Name [of God], and those who could protest [transgression of the

law equating strangers with citizens] but do not desecrate the Name, lend honor

to idolatry, disparage Moses' Torah, and diminish Israel's wealth: for the

entire world is dependent upon laws.

(Rabbeinu

Behayeiy on Vayikra 24:22)

All Torah that is without Labor…:

Rabbis Yishmael and Shimon bar Yohai

The

Rabbis taught: And you shall gather in your new grain (Devarim 11:

14)

– what does this teach us?

Since

it is said, Let not this book of Torah cease from your lips (Joshua 1:8) –

"We

learn from the verse And you shall gather in your new grain – act in

accordance with the custom of the land [i.e., work for a living]"; these

are the words of Rabbi Yishmael.

Rabbi

Shimon bar Yohai says: "Can a man plow in the season of plowing, sew seeds

in the season for sowing, harvest in the harvest season, thresh in the threshing

season, winnow when it is windy – what shall become of the Torah? Rather, when

Israel does God's will their work is performed by others, for it is said, Strangers

shall stand and pasture your flocks (Yishayahu 61:5). But

when Israel does not perform God's will, they have to do their own work for

themselves, for it is said, and you shall gather in your new grain. Not

only that, but they have to do the work of others, for it is said, and you

shall serve your enemies (Devarim 28:48)." Abbayay said: "Many did as

Rabbi Yishmael [said] – and succeeded, as Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai [said] – and

they did not succeed."

(Berakhot

35b)

On Delusions and False Messiahs

 [After] Bar Koziba (Bar Kokhba) reigned

for two and a half years, he said to the Rabbis: "I am the Messiah."

They

told him: "It is written that the Messiah will be able to pass judgment by

sense of smell, let us see if he can pass judgment by sense of smell." When

they saw that he could not pas judgment by sense of smell – they [the Romans] killed

him

(Sanhedrin

93b)

A

kokhav [star] rises from Jacob (Bamidbar 23:17) – do

not say kokhav, say kozev [disappointer].

When

Rabbi Akiva saw Bar Koziva (Bar Kokhba), he said: "That is King Messiah."

Rabbi

Yohanan ben Torata said to him: "Akiva! Grass will be growing from your cheeks

and he will have yet to arrive."

(Eikhah

Rabbah 2)

Do

not think that King Messiah will have to perform signs and wonders, bring

anything new into being, revive the dead, or do similar things. It is not so. Rabbi

Akiva was a great sage, a teacher of the Mishnah, yet he was also the

armor-bearer of Ben Kozba. He affirmed that the later was King Messiah; he and

all the wise men of his generation shared this belief until Ben Koziba was

slain in [his] iniquity, when it became known that he was not (the Messiah). Yet

the rabbis had not asked him for a sign or token. The general principle is:

this Law of ours with its statutes and ordinances (is not subject to change). It

is forever and all eternity; it is not to be added to or to be taken away from.

(RaMBaM

Hilkhot Melakhim 11:3, English from pg. 223 of Twerskey's A

Maimonides Reader)

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