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TORAH PORTION: BECHUKOTAI

Parashat Bechukotai

June 1, 2024 | 24 Iyyar 5784

Torah: Leviticus 26:3–27:34 Triennial: Leviticus 26:3–27:15

Haftorah: Jeremiah 16:19–17:14

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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Torah portion by Bex Stern-Rosenblatt called "Joseph's Hidden Blessings", Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein asks shares insights from Hassidut in a video titled "Turning Curses into Blessings", and Ilana Kurshan reflects on the parashah through poetry in a piece called "Beware!".

D'VAR TORAH

Joseph's Hidden Blessings

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt

Parashah

Joseph is a man whose dreams come true. Joseph is a man who can reshape reality to correspond to his will. Joseph is a man who saves multiple nations. But I wouldn’t want to be Joseph. I wouldn’t want to go through what he has had to go through to get where he is. And even at his peak, at his most successful, I would not trade places with him. He is feared and revered, untouchable and apart. Even when his family returns to him, he never quite returns to the bosom of his family. He is a man apart, a troubled lad who becomes a lonely administrator. He is not my idea of blessed. 

And yet, his story hides behind the blessings in our parashah. We find it first in the phrasing of Leviticus 26:6, “And I shall set peace in the land, and you will lie down with none to make him tremble, and I shall make evil beasts cease from the land, and no sword will pass through your land.” The term “evil beasts,” חיה רעה, appears in two cases in the Torah - in our parashah and in the story of how Joseph was killed which his brothers conspire to tell his father and which his father imagines into being for his brothers. It’s a horrifying story. It’s a story of lying brothers and a complicit father. It’s a story of near murder. It’s a tragedy that breaks Jacob’s heart. 

What’s more, it’s a story about evil beasts who do not actually exist. There are no animals who tore up Joseph. Joseph is still alive. The very idea of an evil animal is hard to understand. Humans can do good and bad. Animals, even animals who kill humans, are surely not acting maliciously. In the curses section of our parashah, we find animals, this time animals of the field or wild spaces, who will cause bereavement by killing domestic animals and humans. But those animals are not classified as evil. They are simply acting according to their nature. 

When God tells us, as a blessing, that he will make evil beasts cease from the land, it is almost a threat. Hidden in the blessing is an acknowledgement of how much worse the situation could be. There are currently no evil animals planning on killing us. But imagine if there were. Being blessed, in this sense, is a realization of the fragility of our situation and an appreciation that it could be worse. Being blessed, in this case, is Joseph lucky to be alive, even as a slave sold and on the way to Egypt. 

The Joseph story haunts the rest of our parashah. We count our blessings and fear curses largely based on whether there will be food to eat. Joseph’s coup de grace for Egypt was finding a way to store food from year to year, to have abundance even in a time of curses, of famine. In the context of last week’s parashah, God provides us with food when we let the land lie fallow for Shmita and the Jubilee Year. In the context of the Joseph story, Joseph provides us food whe the land cannot be made fruitful. God’s blessing that we shall “eat the long-stored supply and you shall take out the long-stored in favor of the new,” promises that after Joseph and after a Shmita year, we will still survive and thrive. Rather than God taking us out of Egypt, it is us who will be taking out food. We all become little Josephs, managing our own grain supplies with God’s help.  

Joseph and his brothers do not seem blessed. They are the ones who started our descent to Egypt. They are the ones who acted as evil animals, condemning their own brother. None of them really lives happily ever after. Their father’s final remarks to them can hardly be called blessings. 

And yet we choose to bless our children that they be like Joseph’s children, like Ephraim and Mannaseh. God chooses to present the ideal world, the best of the best, to us with the tragedy of the Joseph story hiding behind it. Perhaps, we are invited to believe that we are blessed even when life seems cursed. Perhaps we are reminded that, like Joseph, we can transform years of scarcity into years of plenty. Perhaps, we can hold out hope that our children will be like Ephraim and Mannaseh even when we are like Reuben and Simon.

HASSIDUT

Turning Curses into Blessings

Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein

Insights from Hassidut

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Rabbi Daniel Silverstein teaches Hassidut at the CY and directs Applied Jewish Spirituality (www.appliedjewishspirituality.org). In these weekly videos, he shares Hassidic insights on the parashah or calendar.

WHITE FIRE: POETRY ON THE PARASHAH

Beware!

Ilana Kurshan

If you don’t keep my laws, says God, Beware!

I’ll rain down curses, misery, dismay,

I’ll loose the wild beasts upon your fields,

Your cattle and your kids will be their prey.

 If you don’t keep my laws, says God, beware!

The heavens will stop up and yield no rain,

Your crops will wither, trees will not sprout fruit

With lips parched, you’ll lament this woeful bane. 

If you don’t keep my laws, says God, beware,

I’ll smite you sevenfold for all your sins

Your enemies will come at you with swords,

You’ll fall into their hands, to your chagrin.

If you don’t keep my laws, says God, beware,

The dough you knead will never be enough

Ten women will have one oven to bake

With loaves doled out by weight, you won’t feel stuffed.

If you don’t keep my laws, says God, beware,

So starved, you’ll eat your children’s wasted flesh

Their hollow lifeless eyes will stare back: How?

And you won’t have the words for such distress.

If you don’t keep my laws, says God, beware,

I’ll scatter you around the earth. Your land,

Laid desolate, will rest for all the years

You kept not my sabbatical command. 

If you don’t keep my laws, says God, beware,

Your hearts will grow so faint, you’ll quake in fear,

The sound of driven leaves will make you jump,

Thus humbled, you will realize: God is here. 

God will not walk away, because God cares,

Serve God with love, If not, with fear. Beware!

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The Talmud teaches that the Torah was given in black fire on white fire (Y. Shekalim 6:1). The black fire is the letters of the Torah scroll, and the white fire is the parchment background. In this column, consisting of a poem on each parashah, I will try to illuminate the white fire of Torah – the midrashim, stories, and interpretations that carve out the negative space of the letters and give them shape.

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