Weekly Message

23 May 2024

This week’s parashah, B’har, teaches about the Jubilee (Yovel), which occurred every 50th year in biblical Israel. During the Jubilee year, Israelites who had lost their land due to bankruptcy during the previous 49 years (or their heirs) were permitted to reclaim their ancestral holdings. TheJubilee was a year of amnesty, of liberation from the past.

The countdown of 49 years to the Jubileereminds us of another countdown that we are engaged in right now, the counting of the omer, the 49 days from Pesah to Shavuot. The counting of the omer differs from the countdown to the Jubilee in that we count days, not years. It differs also in that its endpoint is not liberation but commandedness, not amnesty but the giving of the Torah. Instead of pointing to freedom from the past, the counting of the omer points to the acceptance of obligation.

But perhaps the two endpoints are not so different after all. Freedom, after all, is really freedom only if we use it to make choices and commitments. That is why the story of our liberation from Egypt culminates in our acceptance of the Torah. Only at Mount Sinai, when we used our newfound freedom, did we truly know that we had it.

In our lives too, authentic commitment is an act of self-liberation. When we rededicate ourselves to the priorities that truly matter to us, when we live according to our deepest values, we free ourselves from all the false priorities that tend to clutter up our lives. We disentangle ourselves from the superficial, trivial values that we never really chose to make our own, that make us feel like slaves.

As our ancestors found liberation in commitment, may we do the same.