Bechukotai 5774 - English

By Rabbi Guido Cohen
Asociación Israelita Montefiore Bogotá, Colombia.

Parashat Bechukotai begins with a verse that the sages find extremely interesting: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season…” (Lev. 26:3-4).

The sages ask themselves, what does it mean “follow My laws”?  Wouldn’t it be enough to say “observe My commandments”? The sages who interpret the law feel somehow “bothered” when there is an Itur Lashon, a word too many, in the text.  And that is why they will try to discover the additional meaning that can be extracted from a word which, at first glance, does not play any role whatsoever, but which provides us with a chance to add more meaning to the verse in question.

Sforno, a Medieval Italian commentator, is one of the scholars who takes guidance from this particular word.  According to him, it teaches that the rules of Jewish tradition are just a path, and that human beings have to travel it in all features of life.

This is one of many answers, but all the ones that called my attention agree on something:  they see Jewish life as a path, as travel.  They understand the keeping of the commandments not as a starting point, or as a destination point, but as a quest.  And all this, inspired by this expression: “follow My laws.”

A Hassidic teacher, Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, offers us one of the nicest explanations to this question, in his Torah commentary called “The Kedushat HaLevi.”  Levi Yitzchak teaches that this verse means that we have to “walk”, or we could say “travel”, through the divine precepts, in order to climb the staircase of holiness, to rise a little more each day.

So now, path not only has the travel connotation but also that of ascent.  We walk the path of the mitzvot and we do so uphill, in an upward motion, watching the summit which we know we will never conquer.

We often elude the laws and customs of our tradition, for we see them as commandments that we must fulfill and as a closed system to which we must adhere or reject.

Frequently, we hear people saying that the mitzvot cannot be observed in part, and it is then that we fall into the dichotomy between being “observant” or “non observant”, “religious” or “secular.”  The image posed by this vision is that, between observance and non observance, an abyss exists.

The alternative we learn today is that, more than an abyss, there is a staircase.  The path of a spiritually active and challenging Jewish life is not a cliff, but neither is it an elevator.  It is made up of rungs, in the words of Levi Yitzchak, madregot, which we must conquer step by step.  In fact, that is the origin of the word halakha, from the Hebrew verb lalechet, which means “to walk”.

This Parashah teaches us that God’s commandments are paths that we must travel, rather than parcels that we must buy and incorporate into our lives, as automatons.  Surrendering gradually to the path of the Mitzvot allows us to relish each commandment and climb stairs day by day, to fill our lives with a little more holiness every day.

Shabbat shalom,

Rab Guido Cohen