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of Egypt as an example 
of a society that deprives 
people of liberty, enslaving 
populations and making the 
many subject to the will of 
the few. Time and again the 
Torah explains its laws as 
ways of preserving freedom, 
remembering what it was 
like, in Egypt, to be deprived 
of liberty.
The Torah is also 
committed to the equal 
dignity of human beings in 
the image and under the 
sovereignty of God. That 
quest for equality was not 
fully realized in the biblical 
era. There were hierarchies 
in biblical Israel. Not 
everyone could be a king; not 
everyone was a priest. But 
Judaism had no class system. 
It had no equivalent of Plato’s 
division of society into men 
of gold, silver and bronze, or 
Aristotle’s belief that some 
are born to rule, others to 
be ruled. In the community 
of the covenant envisaged 
by the Torah, we are all 
God’s children, all precious 
in His sight, each with a 
contribution to make to the 
common good.
The fundamental insight 
of parshat Behar is precisely 
that restated by Piketty, 
namely that economic 
inequalities have a tendency 
to increase over time, and 
the result may be a loss of 
freedom as well. People 
can become enslaved by a 
burden of debt. In biblical 
times this might involve 
selling yourself literally 
into slavery as the only way 
of guaranteeing food and 
shelter. Families might be 
forced into selling their land: 
their ancestral inheritance 
from the days of Moses. The 
result would be a society 

in which, in the course of 
time, a few would become 
substantial landowners while 
many became landless and 
impoverished.
The Torah’s solution, set 
out in Behar, is a periodic 
restoration of people’s 
fundamental liberties. 
Every seventh year, debts 
were to be released and 
Israelite slaves set free. After 
seven sabbatical cycles, the 
Jubilee year was to be a time 
when, with few exceptions, 
ancestral land returned to 
its original owners. The 
Liberty Bell in Philadelphia 
is engraved with the 
famous words of the Jubilee 
command, in the King James 
translation: “Proclaim liberty 
throughout all the land to all 
its inhabitants.” Lev. 25:10
So relevant does this vision 
remain that the international 
movement for debt relief for 
developing countries by the 
year 2000 was called Jubilee 
2000, an explicit reference to 
the principles set out in our 
parshah.

THREE THINGS 
TO KEEP IN MIND
Three things are worth 
noting about the Torah’s 
social and economic 
program. First, it is more 
concerned with human 
freedom than with a 
narrow focus on economic 
equality. Losing your land 
or becoming trapped by 
debt are a real constraint 
on freedom. Fundamental 
to a Jewish understanding 
of the moral dimension of 
economics is the idea of 
independence, “each person 
under his own vine and fig 
tree” as the prophet Micah 
puts it. (Mic. 4:4) We pray 
in the Grace After Meals, 

“Do not make us dependent 
on the gifts or loans of 
other people … so that we 
may suffer neither shame 
nor humiliation.” There 
is something profoundly 
degrading in losing your 
independence and being 
forced to depend on the 
goodwill of others. Hence 
the provisions of Behar are 
directed not at equality but at 
restoring people’s capacity to 
earn their own livelihood as 
free and independent agents.
Next, it takes this entire 
system out of the hands of 
human legislators. It rests on 
two fundamental ideas about 
capital and labor. First, the 
land belongs to God:
“And the land shall not 
be sold in perpetuity, for 
the land is Mine. You are 
foreigners and visitors as 
far as I am concerned.” Lev. 
25:23
Second, the same applies 
to people: “For they [the 
Israelites] are My servants, 
whom I brought out from 
Egypt, they cannot be sold as 
slaves.” Lev. 25:42
This means that personal 
and economic liberty are not 
open to political negotiation. 
They are inalienable, God-
given rights. This is what lay 
behind John F. Kennedy’s 
reference in his 1961 
Presidential Inaugural, to 
the “revolutionary beliefs for 
which our forebears fought,” 
namely “the belief that the 
rights of man come not from 
the generosity of the state but 
from the hand of God.”
Third, it tells us that 
economics is, and must 
remain, a discipline that 
rests on moral foundations. 
What matters to the Torah is 
not simply technical indices, 
such as the rate of growth or 

absolute standards of wealth, 
but the quality and texture 
of relationships: people’s 
independence and sense of 
dignity, the ways in which 
the system allows people to 
recover from misfortune, and 
the extent to which it allows 
the members of a society to 
live the truth that “when you 
eat from the labor of your 
hands you will be happy and 
it will be well with you.” (Ps. 
128:2)
In no other intellectual 
area have Jews been so 
dominant. They have won 
41% of Nobel prizes in 
economics. They developed 
some of the greatest ideas 
in the field: David Ricardo’s 
theory of comparative 
advantage, John von 
Neumann’s Game Theory (a 
development of which gained 
Professor Robert Aumann 
a Nobel Prize), Milton 
Friedman’s monetary theory, 
Gary Becker’s extension of 
economic theory to family 
dynamics, Daniel Kahneman 
and Amos Tversky’s theory 
of behavioral economics, and 
many others. 
Not always, but often, the 
moral dimension has been 
evident in their work. There 
is something impressive, 
even spiritual, in the fact 
that Jews have sought to 
create — down here on 
Earth, not up in heaven in 
an afterlife — systems that 
seek to maximize human 
liberty and creativity. And 
the foundations lie in our 
parshah, whose ancient 
words are inspiring still. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 

served as the chief rabbi of the 

United Hebrew Congregations of the 

Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teach-

ings have been made available to all 

at rabbisacks.org.