Message from the Editor: Rabbi Hoffman requests that readers pray for him (Yehoshua ben Yonina), among the other ill of Israel, for a complete and speedy healing. Thanks for your understanding and assistance.

Out of this World

By Rabbi Joshua (Extraterrestrially known as the Hoffer) Hoffman

Parshas Behar begins with the laws of Shmittah and Yovel. The first verse of the parsha reads. “The Lord spoke to Moshe on Mount Sinai, saying” (Vayikra 25:1). Rashi famously asks, what does Shmittah have to do with Mount Sinai? He answers that Mount Sinai is mentioned here to teach us that just as the general principles and details of shmittah were given on Mount Sinai, so too were the general principles and details of all the mitzvos given on Mount Sinai. The Chasam Sofer, as quoted by his son the Kesav Sofer, says that the mitzvoh of shmittah was chosen to convey this teaching because it is the best proof that the Torah itself was given by God on Mount Sinai. The Torah tells us that when the people ask, “what will we eat in the seventh year,” God responds that he will bless the land so that it will produce enough crops in the sixth year in order to sustain them for three years (Vayikra 25:19-21). This promise, which entails a change in the course of nature, can only be made by God, Who created the universe and is therefore able to change its natural course as well. Rabbi Shimon Schwab zt”l, in his Ma’ayan Beis Ha’Sho’eva, expands on this idea from a somewhat different angle, and the interested reader is encouraged to study that source.

The Ramban, in his commentary to Behar, cites Rashi and asks why shmittah was chosen to teach about the rest of the Torah, and further questions Rashi's assertion that we can derive from shmittah that all of the mitzvos, in their general principles and details, were given at Sinai. He therefore offers a different explanation for the reference to Mount Sinai in our verse. He says that, in actuality, shmittah is the only mitzvoh in which we find that both the general principles as well as the details were given at Sinai. In Parshas Mishpatim, we are told “and in the seventh year you shall leave it (the land) and relinquish it” (Shemos 23:11), which is the general principle, and in Parshas Behar we find the details. Parshas Mishpatim contains the bris, the covenant, which God made with the people, but which was abrogated due to the sin of the golden calf. After the nation received atonement while still at Sinai, they were commanded to build the mishkan and renew their covenant with God. This renewal is recorded in Parshas Behar and Parshas Bechukosai, and Behar therefore begins with a reference to Sinai. Ramban then mentions, and agrees with, the Ibn Ezra who says that shmittah is mentioned here because its observance is a conditio sine qua non for the nation's retention of the land that they were planning to enter. I would like to suggest a further reason for the mention of shmittah as well as yovel at this point in the Torah, by referring to the section immediately preceding Parshas Behar, in Parshas Emor.

At the end of Parshas Emor we read of the mikalel, the man who cursed God and who was put to death as punishment. The parsha begins by saying that this person “went out.” Rashi mentions several explanations of what this means. One explanation is that this man “went out of his world,” meaning that he lost his portion in the World to Come. In another explanation, he says that he went out of the beis din, the court, of Moshe. He contended that he had the right to encamp with the tribe of Dan since his mother came from that tribe, but he was denied that right by its members because his father was an Egyptian and tribal status depends on one’s paternal lineage. He then went with his claim to the beis din of Moshe and the decision went against him. In reaction, he went out of the beis din and cursed God.

What can be derived from the case of the mikalel is the importance people place upon their nachalah, their piece of earth, to the extent that denial of it can lead someone to curse God. The Torah, in response, presents the laws of shmittah and yovel which regulate the sale and purchase of land with the overriding law that ultimately in the yovel year, no matter what happened previously, each man will return to his ancestral land. This law helps give a person a sense of stability in this world, and serves to prevent a recurrence of the act of the mikalel, who, when he discovered that he lacked roots among the nation, “went out of his world.”