Parashat Behar

By Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in the produce thereof. But the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath unto the Lord, you shall neither sow your field, nor prune your vineyard. [Lev. 25:3-4]

Although I don't ordinarily write the Shabbat Shalom column of the portion of the week on gematria (the mystical teaching derived from the relationship between Hebrew letters and their numerical equivalent), you don't have to be a great devotee of mysticism to realize that the Torah ascribes great significance to the number seven. And in this week's portion of Behar, we see the number seven take on some very unusual responsibilities, and symbolic meanings.

Shevah, the Hebrew word for seven, is comprised of three letters, shin, bet, ayin, and these same letters, in the same order, also spell the Hebrew word sovaiah, which means completion, satisfaction, satiation. In other words, inherent in the number seven lies the concept of completion and satisfaction. This would mean that even before we were commanded to keep the seventh day holy, the number seven in and of itself already reflected the concept of wholeness; having reached the number seven we could see in it a sign that the cycle had been completed. I may not know why, or what, or when, or how, but nevertheless seven is the goal for which one must strive, the ideal towards which one must yearn.

The Torah begins to reveal the mystery of seven with the Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week.

And the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy..[Gen. 2:3]

On the most fundamental level, the seventh day is a day of rest, a day of individual freedom from the ordinary and sometimes pressuring demands of a work schedule, of an employer's rule.

The Sabbath is also testimony to the Divine creation of the world, to the notion that we are creatures of only one Lord-Creator, that we dare not serve any other mortal creature. Vis-a-vis humanity, every being is equal and free. This fundamental freedom extends to Gentile servants who, on the seventh day, are entitled to rest, "like you "(Deut. 5:14), to beasts and animals, which cannot be used on the Sabbath, and even to plant life, which cannot be plucked on the Sabbath. And the Sabbath has become a day of Torah study and family-community togetherness, a day for mind and spirit, a "foretaste of the world to come."

In a sense, this relationship between six days of imperfection, and a seventh day of perfection, encapsulates the message that even though the world may be imperfect now, it is our ultimate dream and task that the world will be perfected in the future. When we speak of the Sabbath as the Jewish contribution to civilization, it doesn't merely mean that we gave the world the notion of one day of rest in seven in which every human being could retain a measure of humanity. The deeper message of the Sabbath is its union of perfection, its message that the cycle of "tomorrow and tomorrow" must lead to a better world of peace and harmony. Only then will the cycle be complete!

This message of seven holding out our goal of individual freedom and universal harmony repeats, and profoundly resonates, throughout our Jewish tradition. The final festival of the biblical year, the climax of the biblical days of celebration, is Shevuot, the Holiday of Weeks, referring to the seven weeks between Passover and Shevuot. Indeed, the days and weeks of this period are counted by observant Jews by biblical mandate, which only enhances their significance. Passover is generally thought of as our Festival of Freedom, but that is really "jumping the gun." Remember that the first Passover Seder was conducted ÉiÉn Egypt on the night of the 15th of Nisan. Passover is freedom promised, but not yet freedom realized. Hence, the matzoh we eat on Passover is not only the food that accompanied us to the desert, but also the "poor bread which our ancestors ate in Egypt."

It is only seven weeks later, when we celebrate the Festival of the First Fruits, that this holiday period comes to completion, to fruitation, if you will. Seven weeks bring us from the promise of redemption to its realization, from idolatrous Egypt to the divine gift of Torah.

Remember too, that Passover comes out on month number one, Nisan, whereas Rosh Hashanah appears on month number seven, Tishrei. If the Sabbath reflects a march of days on our cycle to completion, and Shevuot reflects a march of weeks, Rosh Hashana reflects a march of seven months. Pesach merely expresses a dream of national freedom; Rosh Hashanah, anniversary of the creation of the world and birth of humanity, the day on which the piercing sound of the shofar calls "every creature to understand that You (G d) are its Creator," expresses our goal of universal redemption.

As with days, weeks, months, so with years. We count each of six years until we get to the seventh year, the sabbatical year called the Shmitah, subject of the quote above. But our symbolism of seven doesn't stop here. After we count seven such cycles of sabbatical years, getting to forty-nine years, we arrive at the Yovel, commonly called Jubilee. [Lev. 28:8-34] During this climax of seven times seven years, the land of Israel returns to its original owners, the descendants of the families amongst whom the land was originally divided when Joshua conquered the land. If the sabbatical reflects individual freedom, Yovel reflects national redemption, the return of the land of Israel to its destined inhabitants, the families of Israel.

Hence the number seven, from Sabbath to Jubilee, from days to cycles of years, expresses our optimistic faith that we must continually strive to perfect a still imperfect world, that we must move from individual to national to universal freedom and redemption. The Jubilee year reflects our belief that change is not only possible, but is divinely mandated, and that our task in this world is to bring about the ultimate change into redemption.

Shabbat Shalom