Weekly D'var

PARSHAT BEHAR-BECHUKOTAI
Cara Gutstein

This week’s double parsha, Behar-Bechukotai, is bursting with content. It is here that we get the laws for Shmita/the Sabbatical year and Yovel/the Jubilee year. We also read specifics on land valuation, release from servitude, gifts to the Temple of animals and land. But central to the parsha are the vivid descriptions of the life the people can expect if they follow God’s commandments and the terrible outcomes if they stray. 

The blessings for a life of obedience are idyllic. From verses 5 and 6: 

And the curse, which is so bad it is customary to read it in a lowered voice: 

And on it goes. For 26 psukim, there is disease, barren land, bread that never satisfies, your children will die and you will have to eat your sons and daughters, you will be scattered, you will waste away at the hands of your enemies, you will stumble over your brother Israelite. 

Reading this parsha today, with our vantage point, with all that is happening to Am Yisrael at home and in Israel, it’s not hard to connect with the curse of this parsha. 

Smitten before our enemies? Wasting away in the hands of our enemies? Stumbling over our brother Israelites? It’s all a little too present. 

After a few close readings, I was left wondering what are we to do with this tochecha, this rebuke, for straying from Torah? How do we not throw up our hands, descend into depression or excess or indifference?  And to make it worse, the rebuke is directed to you-plural- “etchem” and so this is not merely something we have to address as individuals but as a people? 

Just a few worries for an already anxious Jewish mother. 

Throughout the relentless list of frightening outcomes, though, one word repeats. The word “keri” appears seven times during the rebuke and does not appear anywhere else in the Torah, only here, in this parsha. “Keri” is translated in different places as indifference, distance, rebelliousness, irregularity, refusal, and coldness, among others. But it’s not exactly clear what “keri” means, and in that muddy place, that very Jewish place of could be this? Could be that? I think there is actually some comfort to be found. 

Keri - kuf, resh, yud, is used seven times in the parsha -generally in the construct 

“If you walk with me ‘keri’.” Each time the disastrous stance of ‘keri’ is ignored, more devastation is heaped on the people, actually sevenfold punishment is heaped on the people, because of their original sin and for the sin of not recognizing the ‘keri’ and changing their ways. 

Clearly, showing Keri, walking with keri, ignoring the obvious keri, is disastrous. 

Rashi gives us multiple possibilities for understanding this word- 

First, he notes that keri can be understood as part of the root - kuf, resh, heh - from the shoresh “to happen” “to chance,” Likrot. If we walk with God as a mere mikreh, a happenstance or a chance, that makes any adherence to Torah temporary, or intermittent and inconsistent. That “doing good by chance” approach to Torah is therefore rebuked. 

Rashi also offers the outlook of 10th Century grammarian Menachem (ben Yaakov ibn-Saruq). Menachem connects the keri from this parsha to two phrases from Proverbs - “hoker raglecha” and “yikar ruach.” Hoker and yikar come from a two-letter root k–r, meaning “prevent, refuse, withhold.”¹ Rabbi Avraham Fischer of Darchei Noam clarifies, “Thus, Hashem warns–If you walk with Me in refusal, I will withhold My protection from you.”

The Rambam agreed with Rashi’s first suggestion, that the error of walking with God b’keri was to see our history and future as “by chance,” and connected to mikreh. 

Rabbi Sacks explains Rambam’s understanding. He writes that Rambam understood this to mean that if we approach our mitzvot by chance, then God will leave us to chance, and it is this chance, this mikreh, that is the curse.² Rabbi Sacks offers another understanding. If we see this tochecha or curse not as a mikreh or chance but as a mikra - from the shoresh kuf, resh, aleph - or “to call”  it is a summons to our destiny. He writes, “But if you believe you are here for a purpose, your life will take on the directedness of that purpose. Your energies will be focused. A sense of mission will give you strength. You will do remarkable things. That was the special insight Jews brought to the world.”³  

Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild, a contemporary British rabbi, introduces a third way and shoresh to connect keri to a different and nuanced understanding. She cites Rav Yisroel Salanter, a 19th century rabbi and founder of the musar movement. He understood this key word, “keri” to be from the root kuf - resh - resh, like karir, meaning cold. So the curse is because we are dispassionate and distant about observing the mitzvot.⁴

Considering these possible meanings of keri, I believe, actually offers us some comfort. 

If keri is chance, mikreh, then we must resolve to act with purpose. 

If keri is refusal or withholding, then we must do Torah generously and wholeheartedly. 

If keri is coldness, then we act with warmth. 

Rabbi Morris Gutstein, always a source I consider, wrote, 
“What we have in this section of the Torah is not even reprove but advice. We have criticism and warning and not fatalism and curse.” 

So I can choose to read this parsha as a reminder and strive to act with conviction, generosity and warmth. But what of the nagging fact that this endeavor is a group project? The blessings are for us collectively. The curses are directed to us as a people too. 

There is a great deal of discussion about this, and scholars have much to say about our collective responsibility for one another citing texts from the first parsha, Behar. And that is worthy of more study. 

For now, I think an experience my son Teddy shared recently gives us some direction. In celebration of finishing most of his final exams, he went with a friend to watch the Tottenham vs. Manchester United Europa league soccer final. The way he described the energy of the crowd, the chanting, the euphoria when the only goal was scored, the pleasure on his face and in his voice brought all of us, just sitting in the kitchen and listening to a retelling, into that aura of joy. One goal, far away, cheered by many, shared with more, it was a collective positive energy rippling outward, and maybe that’s a model to consider. 

So may it be with Torah. May our individual efforts of acting with purpose, connection and warmth help us all toward a life of blessing. Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek.

¹ https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/stubbornness-and-chance/
² https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/bechukotai/in-search-of-the-why/
³ https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/bechukotai/a-sense-of-direction/
⁴ https://rabbisylviarothschild.com/tag/keri/