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 bread of display]. Here is explicitly stated that all of this is done for 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 came back to him toward evening, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive 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 land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the 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 shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike; for I am the Lord your 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) - [one might wonder] should this be taken literally?

"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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