Inner Dimension Parasha Teaching  

 

Behar-Bechukotai

Leviticus 25:1--27:34

1st Aliya

25:1--25:18

2nd Aliya

25:19--25:28

3rd Aliya

25:29--25:38

4th Aliya

25:39--26:9

5th Aliya

26:10--26:46

6th Aliya

27:1--27:15

7th Aliya

27:16--27:34

Haftarah

Jeremiah 16:.19--17:14

 

Glossary of Names

 

Aharon--Aaron

 

B'Har Sinai--on Mount Sinai

 

C'na'an--Canaan

 

d'ror--liberty

 

egel--calf, young bull

 

Gan Eden--Garden of Eden

 

Halachah--Hebrew Law

 

kadosh--holy

 

kohen/cohen--priest

 

Kohen Gadol-- High Priest

 

minchah--meal-offering

 

Ohel Mo'ed --Tent of Meeting

 

Sh'mini--eighth

 

Yom Kippur--Day of Atonement

 

 

 


vaYikra (Leviticus) 25:1

1st Aliya

HaShem spoke to Moshe on Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the Children of Yisra'el and say to them: When you come into the Land I give you, the Land shall observe a Sabbath rest for HaShem.
At Mount Sinai, G-d's majesty and power were so manifest that it was clear that the determining factors in human material success are G-d's will and man's worthiness. The Land's rest in the seventh year, too, teaches that the primary force in the universe is G-d, not the law of nature.

vaYikra (Leviticus) 25:19

2nd Aliya

The Land will give its fruit and you will eat your fill; you will dwell securely upon it.

HaShem offers assurance that those who let their Land lie fallow will not suffer famine and be forced to travel abroad to purchase food.

vaYikra (Leviticus) 25:29

3rd Aliya

If a man shall sell a residence house in a walled city, its redemption can take place until the end of the year of its sale; its period of redemption shall be a year.

This redemption is almost diametrically opposed to that of a field or a house in an open town. Whereas a field cannot be redeemed for the first two years, but may be redeemed at any time thereafter, and a house in an un-walled city may be redeemed even immediately.

vaYikra (Leviticus) 25:39

4th Aliya

If your brother becomes impoverished with you and is sold to you; you shall not work him with slave labor. Like a laborer or a resident shall he be with you; until Jubilee Year shall he work with you. Then he shall leave you and his children with him; he shall return to his family, and to his ancestral heritage shall he return.

Rather than the Jewish man becoming a slave, they become "indentured servants," who for a specific period of time, are not free to resign their employment, but whose masters must treat them with such delicacy and consideration that the Sages said, "One who buys himself a (Jewish) slave buys himself a master."

vaYikra (Leviticus) 26:10

5th Aliya

You shall eat very old grain and remove the old to make way for the new. I will place My Sanctuary among you, and My Spirit will not reject you. I will walk among you, I will be G-d unto you and you will be a people unto Me. I am HaShem your G-d...

G-d assures His Children that three-year-old grain will be superior to two-year-old grain. The Temple in Jerusalem is the dwelling place for the "Shechinah", yet His presence will dwell with the righteous--meaning that G-d will even be closer to the righteous than to the angels.

vaYikra (Leviticus) 27:1

6th Aliya

HaShem spoke to Moshe, saying: "Speak to the Children of Yisra'el and say to them: If a man articulates a vow with HaShem regarding a valuation of living beings, the valuation of a male shall be: for someone twenty years to sixty years of age, the valuation shall be fifty silver shekels, of the sacred shekel.

There is no "market value" that can assess a value for human beings to measure it, the Torah assigns the amounts to be paid, based not on health, strength, earning capacity, or commercial value of the subject, but solely on age and sex. In the fulfillment of this kind of vow, one pays a valuation prescribed by the Torah, a payment that goes to the Temple treasury, to be used for maintenance or any other expenditures, as specified.

vaYikra (Leviticus) 27:16

7th Aliya

If a man consecrates a field from its ancestral heritage to HaShem, the valuation shall be according to the seeding: an area seeded by a chomer of barley for fifty silver shekels. If he consecrates his field from the Jubilee Year, it shall remain at its valuation.

If the field was consecrated at the start of the fifty-year-cycle; and it is redeemed before any crop-years have elapsed, the redeemer pays the full valuation of fifty shekels. The valuation goes down according to the number of elapsed years.

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