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Expires 5/17/91 FURNITURE 557-8840; Bloomfield Hills 1914 Telegraph north of Square Lake Rd. just past Carl's Golfland 338-7716 The Prophecy Of Doom Torah Portions: 'Behar' and Bechukotai' SHLOMO RISKIN Special to The Jewish News I never promised you a rose garden," annnounce the realistic advertisements of the Jewish Agency, pro- moting aliyah to Israel despite the objective dif- ficulties involved in re- settlement. In a far more devastating fashion, however, this could well be the subtitle of the Pentateuch, though ultimately the Torah does promise survival and guaran- tee redemption to the Jewish people — but with a great deal of suffering and tragedy along the way. And in this week's double Torah portion, Behar and Bechukotai, we are faced with what is known as the toche- cha, the Divine chastise- ments and curses, which are destined for the children of Israel if they do not collective- ly keep the commandments and perfect the world under the Divine Kingship: "You will plant your crop in vain, because your enemies will eat it . . . you will flee even when no one is chasing you . . . I will send wild beast among you, killing your chil- dren, destroying your live- stock, and reducing your population, so that your roads will become deserted . . . You will huddle in your cities .. . will send the plague against you, and give you over to your enemies . . . You will eat the flesh of your sons and make a meal of the flesh of your daughters . . . (Leviticus 26:14-40)." What makes these words all the more searing is that, dur- ing the Nazi Holocaust, we literally experienced the un- speakable horrors described by the above verses. But what makes the prophecy of doom inexplicable is what comes before and after it in a seem- ingly baffling and illogical biblical sequence: the details of the laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, the toche- cha (chastisement) itself, and then the laws of vows in which an individual pledges his worth to the Holy Temple. What do these issues of ag- riculture and intentions have to do with Jewish tragedy? I believe the key to under- standing why the biblical se- quence is so puzzling can be found by paying closer atten- Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chief rabbi of the city of Efrat and dean of Ohr Torah Institutions of Israel. tion to what the Jews ex- perienced in World War II. The Nazi despots first and foremost declared that Jews are not free, are slaves of the state. They forcibly removed us from our homes and pro- perties, re-located us in slave- labor camps, and attempted to rob us of every vestige of our self-respect. How fitting it is that pre- ceding the catalogue of Jew- ish enslavement is the bibli- cal prescription for human freedom: every seventh year it is forbidden to till your soil and all slaves must be freed. Every Jubilee (50th) year, the land is returned to its original The key to understanding the biblical curses can be found in the Jewish experience in the Holocaust. owner. What emerges from these laws is that human be- ings are neither servants of their neighbors nor even of the land; we are all servants only of God, and therefore we are free. Indeed, even the very land itself must be allowed to en- joy a fundamental freedom, a right to be. In the words of the Bible itself — subsequently inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia — "And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty through- out the land to all its in- habitants (Lev 25:10)." Had we only succeeded in getting across the message of the Sab- batical and Jubilee years to the rest of the world, the Nazi concentration camps would never have surfaced. And if the Sabbatical and Jubilee years teach us that an individual cannot sell even the worth of the work of his hands to any other in- dividual, the laws of inten- tions teach us that it is only the Almighty to whom we can vow our physical output. After the Holocaust, when a Jew was not worth a truck or even half-a-cent, it is impor- tant to hear that our physical labor has value to God. May we become as in- numerable as the stars and succeed in teaching the world the message of the in- estimable and ultimate value of every human being created in the Divine image. Shabbat Shalom. ❑