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CHUMASH
Parshas Behar-Bechukosai - Revi'i with Rashi
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In today’s Chumash, we learn about what happens if someone is so poor he sells himself as a slave!
We are not allowed to treat him like a slave, and make him do things like put on our shoes for us or do things we don’t really need just so he will be busy. We have to treat a Jewish slave in a much nicer way, like a regular worker. We even need to make sure his children have food to eat. If we need someone to do work like a slave, we need to buy a non-Jewish slave.
Just like with fields and houses, in a Yovel year a Jewish slave goes free.
If a non-Jew who lives in Eretz Yisroel buys a Jewish slave, the Torah tells us to pay the non-Jew so he can go free. We shouldn’t wait until Yovel (even though non-Jews who live in Eretz Yisroel ALSO need to keep Yovel) because he might learn to act like a non-Jew.
When we buy him back, we need to make sure we don’t make a Chillul Hashem, and pay the non-Jew a fair price. Since he thought he was buying a slave until Yovel, we should pay him back for whatever time there is left.
We aren’t allowed to see a non-Jew treating a Jewish slave badly without doing something about it.
But if nobody buys him back, he goes free in Yovel, like we said. Because Yidden are HASHEM’S servants, and shouldn’t be servants to other people!
We also start Parshas Bechukosai today, since it’s a double parsha!
Hashem promises that if we put a lot of effort into learning Torah and follow the mitzvos the Torah teaches us, Hashem will give us many brachos!
Hashem will make rain fall for our fields during times when the rain won’t bother anyone, at night when people don’t usually need to be outside. Hashem will even make the rain fall just on days when everyone is home, like late Friday night!
Even though this isn’t a lot of rain, Hashem will make the fields grow plenty of food — and Hashem promises that we will feel safe and be able to enjoy it!
Hashem will keep us from needing to be afraid. Hashem will send away the wild animals, and make other armies stay away from us. If we go outside of Eretz Yisroel to fight, we won’t even have to kill the enemies — they will kill each other! We will be much stronger than the enemies, and the more careful we are with the mitzvos, the stronger we will be!
Hashem will give us many healthy children, in reward for working hard to learn and follow the Torah. In fact, Hashem will help us by making the mitzvos so much a part of us that it will be hard to do an aveira!
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In Kapitel Kuf-Yud-Alef, the pesukim are in the order of the Alef-Beis! The first half of the first posuk starts with the first letter of the Alef-Beis, and the second half of the posuk starts with the next letter. Each half of a posuk starts with the next letters. (The last two pesukim have 3 parts, with each part starting with the next letter.)
Dovid Hamelech says: “Koach Maasav Higid Le’Amo, Lases Lahem Nachalas Goyim.” (The first part of the posuk starts with Chof, and the second half starts with Lamed.) “Hashem told Yidden the great things He did, so He could give them a land that the Goyim lived in.”
What does this mean?
The first Rashi in Chumash tells us that Hashem made the Torah start with — not mitzvos — but the story of how Hashem made the world and promised to give Eretz Yisroel to the children of the Avos. This way, if the Goyim get upset that we took Eretz Yisroel, we will tell them what the Torah says: That HASHEM made Eretz Yisroel, and Hashem let the Goyim live there, but then He wanted the Yidden to have it, and so He gave it to Yidden!
That’s what the posuk is telling us: Hashem told the Yidden this story, so that we will be able to have the “Nachalas Goyim,” the land of Eretz Yisroel that the Goyim lived in, without them being able to say that we took it without permission.
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TANYA
Likutei Amarim Perek Nun-Alef
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In the beginning of Perek Lamed-Hey, the Alter Rebbe brought a mashal:
A Yid is like an oil candle. The fire is the light of Hashem, the Shechinah. The wick is the body of the person. The oil is the mitzvos.
Every Yid wants to be a candle that is lit! We do this by making sure that we have plenty of “oil” for our candle. When we have plenty of mitzvos, the light of Hashem can shine on us!
What does it mean that the light of Hashem should shine on a Yid? Isn’t Hashem everywhere?
Yes, of course Hashem is everywhere! But there are some places where Hashem is easier to see or feel. We have a mashal for this from our neshama and guf, where the main chayus is felt in the head.
The Alter Rebbe tells us that there are two kinds of chayus which the neshama gives to the guf. One kind of chayus is the same for every part of us, that just makes us alive, and a second kind of chayus gives each part of us exactly the kochos it needs (like the koach for our eyes to see, or for our ears to hear).
The main place where this second kind of chayus is in the head. All of the kochos are there, hiding. They spread out to the right parts of the body so it will work the way Hashem made it. Even the heart, which is so important, gets its chayus from the head!
This will help us understand what it means to have the Shechinah rest in a certain place, like in the Beis Hamikdash or in a Yid who is doing mitzvos and serving Hashem.
How can we understand this from our own Neshamos? Because there is a posuk, “Mibesari Echezeh Elokah” — “from my body I can see Hashem.” The Alter Rebbe shows us that by looking at ourselves and how our neshama and body work, we can understand Hashem better! In a person, the main chayus of the neshama is in the head, and it goes from there to the rest of the body. So too the main chayus of Hashem first rests in Torah and mitzvos, and in the Kodesh Hakodoshim when the Beis Hamikdash is standing, and goes from there to the rest of the world.
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Today is thirty-eight days of the Omer!
When we go to sleep, our Neshama goes up to Hashem to get new chayus. When we wake up, our Neshama is still sleeping — only a little part of it is active. To wake the neshama up so it will shine in the whole body, we need to daven!
The Rebbe tells us today that if we don’t daven with Avodah, the way we should, our neshama stays a little bit tired, and doesn’t shine as bright as it can. When a neshama is bright, we do mitzvos with a chayus, we have a geshmak in Torah, we are more aidel, and when we do Shlichus, it brings Yidden closer to Yiddishkeit!
If chas veshalom we don’t daven the way we should, Yiddishkeit starts to feel boring. It’s hard even to do mitzvos we are USED TO doing! We don’t enjoy learning Hashem’s Torah and we don’t feel very aidel. When other people look at us, they won’t see how beautiful Yiddishkeit is, and so Shlichus doesn’t work right.
So we need to make sure to do our best to daven right!
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Today’s mitzvah (Mitzvas Lo Saasei #235) is not to lend a Yid anything with interest. “Interest” means that he has to pay back more than what you lent him. For example, you can’t give your brother a cookie and tell him he needs to give you back TWO cookies at the next Shabbos party.
The Torah tells us this mitzvah many times, showing how important it is! One of those pesukim is in Parshas Behar: אֶת כַּסְפְּךָ לֹא תִתֵּן לוֹ בְּנֶשֶׁךְ וּבְמַרְבִּית לֹא תִתֵּן אָכְלֶךָ
The mitzvah is explained in Perek Hey of Mesechta Bava Metziyah.
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In today’s Rambam, we learn more halachos about paying back loans.
Perek Tes-Zayin: When you pay back a loan, it is important to know that until the person GETS the money, it’s YOUR job to make sure nothing happens to it. For example, if Reuven borrows a pencil from Shimon, and then puts it back on Shimon’s desk when he’s done, it’s Reuven’s job to watch over the pencil until Shimon gets back to his desk. If it rolls off the desk and disappears, Reuven needs to pay him back for the pencil.
BUT, if Shimon said “Just put it on my desk when you’re finished,” then even if it disappears, it’s not Reuven’s fault.
Perek Yud-Zayin teaches us halachos about what happens if someone passes away, and his children find a note saying that someone owed him money. If the other person says he paid already, he has to take a shevuah (a very serious Torah promise) that he is telling the truth.
One interesting halacha is that if someone has a shtar written in Australia, and he brings the shtar to get paid back in America, he needs to pay back Australian dollars and not American dollars. But if it doesn’t say where it is written, and the person says it is for Australian dollars, he needs to make a shevuah that the shtar was really written there.
Perek Yud-Ches teaches us about when a person can’t pay back the loan, and there was no mashkon: We can take away his property to pay back the loan, even property that he sold already.
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Today we learn more halachos about Shechitah. One halacha we learn today is that Shechitah must be done by a PERSON. If a knife fell and shechted an animal, even if it did a perfect job, the animal is not kosher.
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In Hayom Yom, we talked about davening with avodah.
How do KIDS daven with avodah? We hear stories of big Chassidim who learned Chassidus all morning and then davened for many hours! We’re not ready to do that yet! What can we do to make our davening better?
The Rebbe told us many times that when we look in the Siddur, the holy letters that we are saying make it easier to think about Hashem so that we don’t think about other things when we daven.
Also, when we say the words out loud, instead of just whispering them to ourselves, it helps us have more kavanah.
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The eighth posuk of the Yud-Beis Pesukim is Veshinantam.
This posuk tells us that parents and teachers have a responsibility to teach Torah all the time and everywhere!
Veshinantam Levanecha — You should teach the Torah to your children and your students
Vedibarta Bam — And discuss the words of Torah
Beshivtecha Beveisecha — When you are sitting in your house
Uvelechtecha Vaderech — And when you are traveling
Uveshachbecha Uvekumecha — And when you go to sleep, and when you wake up!
We might look at this posuk and think that we will do what the posuk says when we get older. We aren’t parents or teachers yet! We can ask our parents to do it, but we can’t do it ourselves.
But the Rebbe says that Veshinantam Levanecha IS for kids too!
When we share the words of Torah we know with another child who doesn’t know it, we are also teachers!
To be good teachers, we need to make sure to learn in a way of Veshinantam! The word Veshinantam comes from a word that means sharp and clear. We should make sure that the Torah we know is very clear in our minds, and that we are behaving according to what we know!
Der Rebbe Redt Tzu Kinder vol. 5, p.294
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One of the hardest parts of keeping all of the halachos of Torah is being different from other people.
The Medrashim say that starting from the very moment of Matan Torah, the Goyim were already laughing at the Yidden for keeping all of the mitzvos. The same is true today, that people laugh at us or criticize us for following what Hashem asks us to do.
That is why the beginning of the whole Shulchan Aruch is what Yehudah ben Teima says: “Be bold like a leopard!” That means not to be embarrassed by what other people think. By keeping the mitzvos, we WILL look different than others. They might laugh at us, and say that we are doing something wrong. If we let that stop us from doing even just a few mitzvos, it will eventually be hard to do ANY mitzvos.
At the time of Matan Torah, the Yidden stayed strong in their Emunah in Hashem. They realized that since Hashem runs the world, He knows what is best. We need to behave the way Hashem tells us to!
The same is true today. Even if other people think we are strange for following the halachos of Torah, we should be bold like a leopard and not worry about what they think.
That’s why this is the beginning of the Shulchan Aruch, because it is the yesod that makes keeping the whole Shulchan Aruch possible.
See Igros Kodesh vol. 18, p. 49
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לעילוי נשמת הרה״ח ר׳ דניאל יצחק ע״ה בן ר׳ אפרים שי׳ מאסקאוויץ
שליח כ"ק אדמו"ר נשיא דורנו למדינת אילינוי
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At the time of the Geulah, when Hashem will make incredible nissim to take us out of Golus, we will all be so excited to praise Hashem! The Navi Yeshaya tells us that we will say to each other:
צַהֲלִי וָרֹנִּי יוֹשֶׁבֶת צִיּוֹן כִּי גָדוֹל בְּקִרְבֵּךְ קְדוֹשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל
Tzahali Varoni — Shout with joy and praise!
Yosheves Tzion — Everyone who lives in Yerushalayim (meaning all the Yidden) should do this!
Ki Gadol Bekirbeich Kedosh Yisrael — Because Hashem is great among the Yidden!
This is the third posuk that talks about how the Yidden will praise Hashem when Moshiach comes, and all of these pesukim are part of Veyitein Lecha, which we say together on Motzei Shabbos.
See Yeshaya perek Yud-Beis posuk Vov
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לע"נ התינוק זאב ארי' ע"ה בן יבלט"א הרה"ח ר' שניאור זלמן שי' גליק
נפטר ב' מנחם אב ה'תשע"ג
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