PARSHIOT: WEEKLY TORAH PORTION
Parashat Behar–Beḥukotai: A Spiritual Humanistic Jewish Reading
Shabbat Shalom uMenuḥa!
This week’s Torah portion, Behar–Beḥukotai, plants us squarely on contested ground. In one breath it blesses the soil with a sabbath of rest and proclaims a jubilee that wipes away debt; in the next it permits the perpetual enslavement of foreigners. If ever there were a text that forces a choice between “still true” and “flat-out wrong,” this is it.
What Still Rings True
First, the radiance. Shmita, the sabbatical year, insists that the earth is not our quarry but our partner. Every seventh year the fields themselves exhale; they are left fallow so life can regenerate. Imagine the audacity of an Iron-Age people declaring that productivity must surrender to planetary healing! And then comes Yovel, the jubilee. After seven cycles of shmita the shofar blasts, debts are forgiven, land returns to its original stewards, families fractured by poverty come home. The Torah dares to reset the economic board, declaring that no fortune—good or ill—gets to fossilise forever.
For us, these ideas remain a summons. Climate scientists plead for carbon “time-outs”; economists call for debt relief that lets entire nations breathe. The Torah is talking our language here, and we should say amen with every tree we plant and every justice campaign we join.
What We Must Reject
But the same scroll that hands us these gems also normalises slavery based on ethnicity. “From the nations around you you may acquire slaves,” it says—words that chill our modern souls. No historical footnote softens them. They are wrong. They were wrong then for the enslaved, and they are wrong now for anyone who studies this text in good faith.
Humanistic Judaism refuses to varnish that wrongness. We do not explain it away; we expose it. The Torah, like the people who wrote it, could reach prophetic heights and still stumble into moral blindness. Naming that blindness is an act of loyalty—not to the text, but to the humans whose dignity it overlooks.
Living With Both Truths
So how do we, a community that treasures both critical reason and spiritual depth, hold a portion that is half-revelation, half-travesty?
- We let the light shine. Shmita and jubilee inspire us to craft ecological sabbaths, to push for debt cancellation, to imagine prison-release programs that sound a literal liberty throughout the land.
- We keep the darkness visible. We remember that slavery is not a relic; trafficking persists. Our advocacy, donations, and ballots must shout a louder no than the Torah’s ancient yes.
- We learn from the tension itself. A tradition capable of both brilliance and brutality can sometimes (but not necessarily) teach humility. It reminds us that our own convictions, too, can be judged. Therefore we cultivate an ethic that can revise itself—ever expanding the circle of concern. As Humanists, we learn the all important phrase “I don’t know,” followed by an “I need to research this.”
A Blessing for the Week
May this Shabbat grant us the courage to distinguish timeless wisdom from time-bound failure. May we rest the land, work to release the captive, and repair the harm. And may we, like the philosopher Baruch Spinoza z’l, meet every text with clear eyes and an open heart—affirming what is valid, condemning what is undeniably wrong, and labouring together toward a world where both earth and humanity can finally, fully, rest.
Shabbat Shalom.
Martin Di Maggio, IISHJ
