Bulletin Behar

Welcome • ohtcv ohfurc
Shabbat Shalom • ouka ,ca
Shabbat Parshat Behar
17 Iyyar 5784 • May 25, 2024
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We extend our congregation’s sympathy to our friend
Ruth Jason and her family on the loss of her husband
Phil Jason k ”z
May his Memory Be for a Blessing
lurc urfz hvh
Contributions may be sent to Beth Tikvah’s Chesed Fund.
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Yahrtzeiten
May 25
May 26
May 29
Anniversaries
Judy Fant, Hannah Castro
Eleanor Scheffler
Jerry Bogo
May 26 Judy & Ray Fant (33)
May 28 Evelyn & Larry Hecht (63)
Gail & Peter Sherer (46)
May 31 Beth & Albert Blumberg (43)
vfrck oburfz
May 24 • 16 Iyyar Gerald Cohen – Relative of Janice Chartoff
Oscar Grusky – Father of Fiona Welles
Howard Cohen – Father of Jeanne Kagin
May 25 • 17 Iyyar Samuel Brooker – Father of Donna Lee Brooker
Rae Danoff – Mother of David Danoff
May 26 • 18 Iyyar Joseph P. Silow – Father of Michael Silow
Jeffrey Chizzik – Brother of Steve Chizzik
Nina Cohen – Aunt of Gayle Chizzik
May 27 • 19 Iyyar Cecilia Lipnick – Mother-in-law of Judith Lipnick
Helen Kagin – Mother of Stan Kagin
May 28 • 20 Iyyar Julius Snyder – Grandfather of Susan Schehr
Birthdays
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Shabbat Kiddush Sponsored by:
Debra & Michael Silow
In loving memory of Michael’s father
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Joseph P. Silow
Beth & Albert Blumberg
Thanking the Beth Tikvah community
for its friendship and support
Sharon & Gabriel Castro
In honor of Hannah’s birthday
Mavens: Steve Chizzik
Assisted by: Fran Kaufman,
Shep & Linda Scheinberg and Susan Wasserman
Sponsor a Kiddush
cuy kzn
Contact Arleen Sivakoff: 239.455.8811 - dsivakoff@aol.com
Contact Arleen Sivakoff: 239.455.8811 • dsivakoff@aol.com

Torah & Haftarah Readings:
Shabbat Emor: Leviticus 25:29–26:2 (Cycle 2) (Etz Hayim p. 742)
1. 25:29-34 2. 25:35-38 3. 22:39-43 4. 25:44-46
5. 25:47-50 6. 25:51-54 7. 25:55-26:2 M. 25:55-26:2 (p. 745)
Haftarah: Jeremiah 32:6–27 (p. 759)
Torah Commentary
D’var Torah:
Resting In Chaos - Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
On the seventh day of creation, God rested. For the seventh year, we read in
our parashah, the earth rested. We might have expected the text to say that
we rested during that seventh year. After all, we were the ones doing all the
work on the earth for the previous six, reaping and sowing and pruning.
Just as we read that God created for six days and rested on the seventh, we
might expect to find that we transformed the wilderness to cultivated land
for six years and rested on the seventh year. We stopped our work. But it is
not for our sake that this Shabbat is observed. This seventh year will be a
“Shabbat shabbaton for the earth, a shabbat for God.”
We do have our own rest. We rest on Shabbat, the seventh day, just as God
rested. And furthermore, the Jubilee year is for us. It is a reset for us, a return
to the initial conditions of entering the land. Those who were enslaved are
set free and we all return to our ancestral holdings. So why is the seventh
year not a rest for us as well as the land? How might the case of the earth
during the shmita year help us understand what God was doing during
creation and Shabbat?
The earth is an active character in the Tanakh. The earth cries and vomits,
mourns and ejects. More than that, the Land of Israel plays a special role
as home to God. Much of Leviticus has been devoted to explaining how to
keep such a home from contracting impurity and how to cleanse it when it
does. But even as the earth is an active character, even as the Land of Israel
can act to save itself, the earth does no wrong in the Tanakh. The earth
plays defense, but does not create, for good or for bad.
So why does the earth need to rest? Or rather, what does it mean for the
earth to rest? The work of the earth, as noted back in the first chapter of
Genesis, is to bring out or produce vegetation. During the shmita year, this
activity does not stop. Rather, humans stop interceding in it. The earth
gives forth whatever vegetation it happens to give forth. In the sixth year,
before shmita, the earth and the humans do have to work harder. Together,
we have to produce enough food to last us all through the period of being

fallow. As noted by Jacob Milgrom, this extra work on the final year matches
the great work of God on the final day, the creation of humans.
The counting of these years begins when we enter the land. Before then,
the earth did not need a shmita year. Perhaps, before then, the land was
already effectively in a state of shmita. The land rested until we disturbed
its slumber. The land hummed along contentedly, producing whatever
vegetation it happened to produce, until we showed up with our vines and
our seeds.
The word for earth, for land, shows up before creation. We read that the
earth was tohu vavohu, vast and void, chaotic emptiness. God’s creation,
God’s acts of separation, of seeing, of naming, turn the earth into an active
character. And perhaps, it is from these acts that the earth too needs to rest.
God rests and we rest once a week. We are the ones changing the face of
reality. But every seven years, the earth needs to rest as well. The earth needs
to drift back towards that state of tohu vavohu. The earth needs a moment,
a year, of rest in the spirit of the flood which once covered it up, destroyed
it, protected it from us, and returned it to its watery origins.
Likewise, for us and for God, we rest. We return to the beginning. We go back
before creation. For both of us, the story starts with speech. Immediately
upon existing, we are naming, dividing, creating, giving meaning. Shabbat
invites us to dip back into the vast and void and trust that the current will
carry us to a fruitful new week.
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