"And If You Shall Say

Many insights and pearls for the weekly Torah portion - Behar, from the Gaon and Tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a (may he live long and good days):

"And If You Shall Say, What Shall We Eat"

"And if you shall say, what shall we eat in the seventh year, behold we shall not sow nor gather in our produce." – Shmitah (the sabbatical year) is the highest of all things. "And if you shall say, what shall we eat," what shall we drink—you will start to cry like babies, like a one-year-old baby. "And if you shall say"—this is the highest verse. What is the meaning of "And if you shall say"? Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian zt"l (of blessed memory) says—everyone is traveling now to his tziyun (gravesite), he passed away on the 20th of Elul—"And if you shall say," then you lose everything. If a person asks a question—he loses everything. Because Hashem says to keep Shmitah. What, do you think you will die of hunger? That is what they perceive! That is what their cat-like intellect or their monkey-like intellect understands. We need to implant intellect in them: there is Shmitah, so we won't sow? What will we eat? What will we drink? Will we die of hunger? Will the babies die? If so, this is the reason for the Churban (destruction of the Temple). "And if you shall say" – here lie all the secrets of why there is a Churban, why we have no Beis HaMikdash (Holy Temple). Why? What will we eat in an hour, what will we eat in a second, what will we eat in a day, what will we eat tomorrow? There was one man whose wife asked him, "What will we eat tomorrow?" Immediately he gave her a get (divorce document), but the second wife also asked the same question, and it is impossible to divorce two. But if a person asks, "What will we eat tomorrow? What will we eat in an hour? What will we eat in a day?" he is no longer a Jew, since he has no emunah (faith) in Hashem who feeds and sustains everyone every day, from the eggs of lice to the horns of the re'emim (giant wild oxen)—at all.

"You Shall Not Rule Over Him With Rigor"

What do we see? We see that the Torah says to have mercy. The Torah says if you take a woman in captivity—in captivity—"you shall not treat her as a slave." "And every man shall return to his ancestral land and every man to his family." If you do not let him go home, there will be Galus (exile); you will all go into captivity, you will all be slaves. And a Hebrew slave, you must send him home; you send a million dollars, it doesn't matter, if it is a Hebrew slave. And if it is a Canaanite slave, it is even worse. If it is a Canaanite slave and I bought him for a million dollars, and a tooth was loose, and then you tell the master to take it out—you tell someone to give you a blow to the tooth, some Kushite (African) worker. And then you tell the Jewish master to take it out, and this Jew takes it out—you are free! The Torah is only mercy, it is endless mercy.

Because if it is a Hebrew slave, he must wait for the Yovel (Jubilee year)—if his ear was pierced; if it is within six years, he is also free; and even if he is a slave for fifty years, after fifty years he goes free. But if it is a Kushite—then after one day he goes free. Now you arrive there and you see he is miserable, this Kushite is old, or you want to take revenge on this rich man; you know he spent a million dollars on the Kushite, you give the Kushite a blow to the tooth—just a tooth, how much is a tooth worth? A hundred dollars? It is wobbling a bit now, he will tell the master to take it out and that's it, in one second, in one second the Kushite is free.

Hashem does not want there to be slaves. He does not want you to enslave—that even a Kushite you should not enslave. Hashem does not want anything—not that you enslave a Kushite, and not that you enslave a Jew. And if you do this—and all this is read in Parshat Mishpatim—then Hashem says if you do not release the slaves now—because they released them and then brought them back—now we are finished. Now you will have Galus (exile)—you will all go into captivity. If you cannot refrain from enslaving a Hebrew slave, for this you will go into actual Galus. Because all the exiles and everything we went through in Auschwitz, it is all because we enslaved Hebrew slaves. For a Canaanite slave, the punishment is not written—there will also be a punishment—but for a Hebrew slave, it is a certain punishment. You are forbidden from enslaving a Hebrew slave, you are forbidden from working him hard, "You shall not rule over him with rigor." And if he is half-slave half-free, then he cannot eat the Korban Pesach (Passover sacrifice) until you free him, so you will be forced to free him.

The lesson has undergone editing, and if any error has occurred, G-d forbid, it should not be attributed to our teacher the Rav shlit"a, but to the writer, "and with us let our error lodge."

The painting is courtesy of the artist R' Yehoshua Wiseman. For purchase: www.yehoshuawiseman.com

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a Shabbat Shalom and a blessed one!!!