This Dvar Torah was delivered by Kobi Bloom for Shabbat Behar-Behuklotai on 22 Iyar 5780/16 May 2020.
There have been some moments over the last few months where I have absolutely marvelled at things I have never seen before. I live in Bondi, and to see the beach empty has been completely surreal. The world-famous Bondi Beach without a soul on the sand or in the water, during school holidays, on a 27-degree day. I never imagined I would ever see that in my life. It reminded me of what this land may have looked like, only a few hundred years ago. It made me think about the traditional owners of the land, the Cadigal and Bidigal people. I thought about what their lives must have been like and how beautiful it must have been to be deeply connected to a land as majestic as the Australian coast. It made me think about all that has been taken away from Indigenous people in Australia and as a result of colonialism across the world. It made me think of ownership, land and rights.
The Torah has a lot to say about all these things. The covenantal language is all about the decedents of Abraham, inheriting Eretz Israel. The Torah sets up a legal system with an active market where there are laws of trade, agriculture and ownership. It very much recognises that we live in a world where people own things, including land.
This week’s parasha, Behar-Behuklotai seems to provide an ethic that underpins and intentionally undermines these notions of human ownership. The Torah cares not for your possessions, certainly not your land. The line that makes this clear is, “Ki li ha’aretz כי לי הארץ,” the land belongs to God. Interestingly, Judaism takes this notion further, nothing is yours and everything belongs to God.
Rabbi David Kasher from the Ikar community in Los Angeles speaks fondly about his time in Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Students at his Yeshiva lived a very modest lifestyle, they lived in small dorms and owned very little. Their prized possessions, often their only possessions other than their clothes, were their books, which were kept in communal study space, free for anyone to borrow. These books, however, were all the same, so you needed to write your name in them to know which book is yours. Obviously! The problem, however, was that the students were taught that it is inappropriate to write in a book “Property of Kobi Bloom” instead, students wrote on their books, a verse from Psalms, Lashem ha’aretz umloah להשם הארץ ומלואה – everything on this earth belongs to God. Clearly this makes it tricky for Yeshiva students to find their books so, the loophole is, to write, “everything in this earth belongs to God but if you happen to find this book please return it to Kobi Bloom.”
So, there you have it, Tanach rejects the idea that property, inviable human ownership actually truly exists. The clearest example for this is the Yovel, the Jubilee Year, which we learn about in this week’s parasha. We cease work every seven days on Shabbat. We learn that we must not work our land and all debts are forgiven every seventh year, this is called the Shmita. Then, after seven times seven years have passed, we have the Yovel, the Jubilee year where all landowners return to their original holding. In ancient Israel, this meant all tribes and people went back to the original places allocated for them when the Children of Israel first entered the land. This system, this massive reset button, meant that no one can ever amass inordinate, disproportionate wealth or land ownership. The Parasha says, “But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me (Leviticus 25:23).”
I think that we certainly need to reckon with this as Zionists, especially now. One of the key questions of the Israeli Palestinian conflict has always been, who gets the land? Tragically, this question has always been linked to demographics, nationalism and identity as opposed to the divine connection to the land described in the Torah. Jews and Palestinians have worked and harvested the land, cared for the land, lived and died on the land for generations. Humans have created innate connections to land throughout the history of humankind, whether that be in Bondi or Be’er Sheva. I think the Torah suggests that we should not be concerning ourselves first with questions over who owns the land, rather the question that the Torah asks is, how can we love the land and how can we love each other. How do we ensure that we can give the land rest and let it heal like with the shmita. How can we ensure that wealth disparity doesn’t create poverty like with the Yovel. If you are still tempted to ask the aforementioned question and dismiss the notion that the answer is “Ki li ha’aretz כי לי הארץ,” the land belongs to God, perhaps this week’s parasha asks us to answer consider the inverse, the land belongs to nobody.
Shabbat shalom.
Kobi is a Jewish educator, father and footy-enthusiast.
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