Behar 5776 - English

By Rabbi Guido Cohen

Asociación Israelita Montefiore Bogotá, Colombia.

This week’s Parashah contains an interesting affirmation, recurrent throughout the Torah, about how the people of Israel are the “servant” of God.  The word used by the Torah to speak of the bond of service of Israel to God is ‘eved’, which is also used to refer to the slave.  It stands out that after reading the entire book of Exodus, where it emphasizes the liberation of our people, this week’s Parashah chooses the figure of master and slave to describe de bond between God and the Jewish people.  

Was it not the point of the story of Shmot to make us feel free?  What is the meaning of being free if we are to return to another form of domination?  Of course the domination from God is not the same as from Pharaoh.  We could imagine that after the oppression felt in Egypt, to submit to a more benevolent, generous, just, and loving master sounds like a more attractive plan than to return to a land of boundless oppression.  

Even so, the idea of defining ourselves as ‘servants’ of God is somewhat strange to me.  But it is in the reference to that bond that our Parashah finds a way to explain this complicated question.  The last verse of Chapter 25 says: “For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt…”

The context of this verse is precisely the rules for slavery.  To close a series of verses that explain the relationship between a Hebrew and his servant who is also a part of the people, the Torah chooses these words.  And the interesting thing is that throughout the Torah, in the case of the Hebrew slaves, there is the possibility of being automatically freed after a certain amount of years.  At different points in the Torah, the way it works and the amount of years necessary changes.  In Shmot we speak of 7 years and here in Vayikra it seems that only after 50 years is the slave released.  But in both cases there is an ongoing idea: that slaves are slaves only for a while and then they continue as slaves only through their own determination.

What does this have to do with the people of Israel being ‘servants’ of God?  Personally, I find this reference more interesting if when we read ‘servant’ or ‘slave’ we think slave according to the logic of the Torah for slavery.  In this case, slavery to God would be different than to Pharaoh not only because of the quality of the master, but because of the rule that manages the bond.  We are servants of the Holy One by obligation only for a limited amount of years.  This might be a reference to our childhood where Jewishness is not a choice and we are what our parents make us.  But after some time (adulthood? Bar Mitzvah?), Judaism is a voluntary choice for everyone.  Once it is made, it obviously generates duties and responsibilities.  But it is always voluntary at the beginning.  After the Enlightenment and the modern world, nobody is Jewish by force.  Maybe as little ones we start out marked by the practices and teachings of Judaism without questioning ourselves if we are interested in it.  But there comes a point in our lives where, like the Biblical servant, we are asked if we want to continue being part of this pact and this wonderful bond. 

It might take us our whole life to answer, and in the meantime we will continue working even if only to be safe.  But what we can never say is that we did not choose this.  The fallacy that he who chooses Judaism is only the one that adopts it through the process of ‘giur’ makes no sense in our times.  Today we are all Jewish by choice; we choose to submit voluntarily to that pact, to someone who is our master as long as we dedicate our lives to His service.  Not from imposition or violence, but from the most valuable of choices that is the one made in freedom, may we choose to serve God with sincerity and devotion. 

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Guido Cohen