Shabbos Parashas Emor/Behar - 5775

Shabbos Parashas Emor/Behar - 5775

Rabbi Hal Miller

Until the morrow of the seventh week you shall count, fifty days, and you shall

offer a new meal-offering to Hashem. [Vayikra 23:16]

You shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom throughout the land for all

its inhabitants. It shall be a Yovel for you. [Vayikra 25:10]

Once again we have different readings in Israel and in the rest of the world. Next week,

we will more or less be back on track. This week we see a command to count to fifty in

both parshas. What is the connection between these two counts?

In Emor, our verse and the one preceding it are the commands to count fifty days and

also count seven weeks from Pesach to Shavuos, plus a directive as to what we must do

once we reach the end of the count. In Behar, our verse and the one following it command

us to count fifty years from yovel to yovel, and what we must do once we reach the end of

that count. The format is nearly identical, so there must be some connection also between

the "what we must do" parts as well.

What are the "what we must do" parts? In Emor, we bring the omer, a "new meal-offering",

then we hold a feast at the end of the count, at the time of the Giving of the Torah. In

Behar, we are prohibited to harvest, and we release debts. At first glance, they don't seem

very similar. But what do these "must do"s really mean? In a word, 'freedom'.

What does the "new meal-offering" connote? It is the Two Loaves, the first bread of the

new season. It's nice to take a moment to thank Hashem for allowing us another season,

but the meaning is deeper. This offering actually achieves something specific. It releases

the entire new year's grain crop for our use. The new crop had belonged to G-d. We are

only allowed to use it once He releases it to us. The Omer offering brings about this

release. It 'frees' the crop.

What does the feast commemorate? The Giving of the Torah. Before that, we were slaves

in Egypt, newly 'freed' from that servitude. But that isn't the freedom we note here (that was

Pesach). Here, we are being released from the status of nobodies, and made into a

nation, the Chosen People. We were freed from a lowly status, and raised to a higher level.

How does being prohibited to harvest indicate freedom? We could say that it frees us

from work, the way Shabbos does once a week. But we know that the year of Shemittah

and the fiftieth year of Yovel are not identical to the weekly Shabbos. Yovel frees all

who are encumbered in materialistic debt, which as anyone who has owed money and

pays it off understands is definitely a form of freedom. Yovel frees servants from their

status of servitude, even those who after their six year debt was paid had chosen to

remain with their masters under the Torah rule on the matter. Yovel frees the land,

returning sold plots back to their original family ownership as divided by Yehoshua

when the land was first conquered.

But these things, the debts, servitude and land, are not the only freedoms involved.

Yovel frees all of us, not just those who owe, who sold or who were indentured. It

releases us from the status of materialism. It makes us return to our roots. It returns us

to nationhood and frees us from the ties to This World. It prepares us, individually and

as a nation, for the World to Come.

At Sinai, we became a people, a people with a specific heavenly mission. Each year

after the Omer we are freed from the morass into which we have fallen, in order to

again receive the Torah and to renew our efforts in that mission. Every fifty years, we

are called upon to free ourselves from the same morass, not just for a day but for the

entire year. We are freed to dedicate our efforts to renewing our Torah learning and

our efforts in our mission. In a word, both of our parshiyos are about freedom.