Behar-Bechukothai: The Whisper

 

This week, as the Torah is read in synagogue, there is an act of stagecraft.  Suddenly, the listener’s attention is focused as the volume of the chant is reduced to a whisper. It is the tochachah, the admonition, the sequence of punishments for the rejection of Gd and the covenant. The hush tones punctuate the ugliness of the message and convey a hope that these tragedies will never come to pass.

My generation, the post Holocaust, grew up in the shadow of the tochahah.  Jews, and selected others, suffered punishments that exceeded those described in the parsha. In my home, the stories of that time were also told in a whisper and that murmur could not  help but color my religious life. How does one relate to the Gd that threatens punishment … and delivers.

The concept of discipline and instruction through penalty is antithetical to modern pedagogy.  Corporal punishment justifies the punitive acts. Violence begets violence begets violence. Our worldview wants to break that cycle of brutality. The litany of the tochachah conflicts with the modern worldview.

It is worse than that.  Failure to recognize misfortune as punishment, and failure to reform, is chastised with additional, more severe adversity and disaster. Until the penitent sees his error and repents, things just get worse; and it gets harder to see the errors while hungry, dirty, and enslaved.   How can the victim feel about the Disciplinarian after her family is wiped out; after living like a hunted, burrowing animal for years. A hush comes over the whole Jewish enterprise.

 

The survivors and their offspring are confused. Which parts of this conglomeration of text, tradition, superstition, values, assimilation, accomplishments, etc.  are at fault?  What needs to be abandoned to prevent further tragedy? What should be kept? What was worth the agony?

                                                                                

We did not raise our children like our parents raised us.  My parents did not hit me, but, rarely, they raised the threat. We did not even threaten to hit our children. Our children react to misbehavior in  their children, our grandchildren, with explanation.

The tochachah is surrounded by rules relating to economic value. The first parsha, Behar, ends with the obligation to redeem the Hebrew slave.  The Torah thereby recognizes the descent to slavery may be precipitated by circumstances.  Freedom is a commodity that may be sold… temporarily. Liberty is very valuable, but its price is finite.  The tochacha is followed by the shekel-value of people as a function of age and gender. There is a weight of silver that equals my value to the authorities.  This surround of monetary value provides a context for the tochacha. The admonition is a humiliation. Recognizing the possibility of victimhood demonstrates that we are not indispensable; we are fungible for the most part. The starkness of the human shekel-value that peaks between the ages of 20 and 50, is too abhorrent to accept…completely.  

There is another set of brackets that encase the reading. The laws of the Sabbatical year, when the land rests and the manor is open to all; and the Jubilee, when the Hebrew slaves are freed and the land returns to its ancestral status. These agricultural laws emphasize the guest status of the landlord.  Possession is a pretense.

 

I can love the Disciplinarian; the emotions are complex. Punishment helps me see my true value.