By Mary Schwartz, May 28, 2022

When I started preparing for this drash earlier this week, I, of course, began with a reading of the Torah portion, Bechukotai, the last reading from Leviticus.  At first read, this is a very unpleasant portion.  The end of Chapter 26 is basically a reiteration of our Covenant with God, that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked.   The majority of this reading details the consequences of breaking the Covenant.

After the last couple of weeks, this was a very hard portion to read.  COVID deaths in the United States have surpassed 1 million, 10 innocent black people were murdered by an 18-year-old White Supremacist in Buffalo, New York, 19 innocent children and 2 innocent teachers were murdered by an angry and troubled 18-year-old in Uvalde, Texas, not to mention terrible things happening in the Ukraine, Africa and Asia.  If human beings can cause so much death and destruction, how much more could an angry God cause?

Chapter 26 has 13 verses detailing the rewards for the righteous, and 29 verses detailing the punishments for breaking the Covenant.  After all this terrible description, in verse 44, the portion says, “And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God.  I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, who I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.” 

And what does this mean?  According to the various sources I looked at, this means that we have HOPE, which is central to Judaism.  The national anthem of the State of Israel is ha-Tikvah, the Hope.  Elie Wiesel wrote many things about hope, such as, “One must wager on the future.  I believe it is possible, in spite of everything, to believe in God in a world where there has been an eclipse of God’s face…we must not give in to cynicism…To defeat injustice and misfortune, if only for one instant, for a single victim, is to invent a new reason to hope.” (quoted from Camp Ramah, New England).

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said the following, “It is not too much to say that Jews kept hope alive, and hope kept the Jewish people alive.”   He also said, “Judaism is a religion of hope, and its great rituals of repentance and atonement are part of that hope.  We are not condemned to live endlessly with the mistakes and errors of our past.”

We must work together to heal our society and our relationship to God.  God always offers us the hope that we can better ourselves and our society, if we all work together.

I will end with a quote from Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, a reform rabbi from Toronto:

“The blessings we get poured upon us in this parashah are the blessings of walking in a path that started with study but ended with action. Our loves and our commitments must be manifested outwardly. It is not enough to say “I love you.” We need to show it, too. It is not enough to say “I feel Jewish.” Those feelings need to be demonstrated in deeds.

And when we don’t, there are consequences. The lack of demonstrable love often leads to a break, a fissure, a lack of trust in a relationship. It is hard for us to hear this section not only because is so very graphic, but also because we live in a society totally resistant to consequences, reproaches, and punishments. Yet we know that love without action is only an idea. And we know there are always consequences to doing nothing.

The Book of Leviticus begins by calling us into relationship. It ends with the warning that once we are in that relationship, we must be active participants.”