Leviticus - Cycle One - 2501-2602 - Behar

In BeHar private ownership is not as important as we might like. There’s a new status quo; that of divine consciousness. God is brought down to earth. And finally, the use of numbers helps to pierce through the fog and abstractions caused by language.

First, in BeHar, God tells us how (in the future) we will manage the land we are being given. But wait, the previous portions are in the present and the past. To review, they show an evolution towards consciousness that is non linear in terms of time. BeHar certainly blends in with these portions, further emphasizing that the past is the present is the future.

To continue, in BeHar, God grants our land a year of rest every seven years; a Sabbath of Sabbaths. The land is personified. We are the land. The land is us. The jubilee, a time of release, is to be every 49 years; 7 times 7. During the jubilee, each man returns to his hereditary property and to his family, to the hearth. Therefore, land can not be sold permanently, only with an appropriated value until the next jubilee. There is more. You should help a brother if he becomes impoverished, never take interest from him and keep him as a slave only until the jubilee year. His spirit shall not be broken.

The message is clear. Nothing can be owned. Not the land, our money or other people. We can’t even own ourselves. Everything bought is temporary and must be treated as such. The end of that temporary state (after 49 years) is not loss or death, simply one more step in a continual release to God. Unfortunately, if you own, you can be owned in turn. In trying to posess others and/or the land, you only become a slave and dispossess yourself. You are owned like hereditary property.

But what is hereditary property? In BeHar, it is that which is never released, the land to which slaves can return, that primal place, constant, solid, impermeable, the divine that we can know on this earth. There, after 49 years of cleansing we can check in, regroup, re-establish a status quo that recognizes the natural connection of man with God, rather than man without. First though there must be release, of our land, our scars, our joys, our thoughts, our fears, our failures, our masks, our pretenses, our egos, our judgments, our memories, good and bad. Then, cleansed, we can drink in the iron and moisture of nature, honor it, let it be. The purest spark is here for us, that understanding of who we really are, that yearning to join with a finer light. We just have to do the work.

My question is, why do we have to wait 49 years? It doesn’t seem fair. It does makes sense. If the goal of Torah is divine consciousness (and it is) we need to focus on the sefirot, on a cleansing and this takes time. But time? What is time? Don’t the portions show that the past is the present is the future?

This is my explanation of the 49 years. In the Torah, the equation 7 times 7 is mentioned for a reason. We are asked to investigate. Given divine distance (or sod) any equation can be made infinite. Like a line, it can move forward or in reverse and still join with itself. The process of 7 times 7 times 7 times 7, etc joins with 7 divided by 7 divided by 7, etc. Only our closeness (our perspective of time) can create an illusion to the contrary. To start bringing this down to earth, 7 times 7 is the same process as 7 divided by 7. The number one is at the center. I could write more here but needless to say, this means that the jubilee can be (through words) every 49 years and/or (through numbers) every one year, that God, in some form, is here now. So, while words can infer that God is one, numbers can almost prove it.

In conclusion, BeHar brings the light of God to us this minute; we only need to check in, be present and aware. May our wandering continue to be our eternal work, in our heads, on the land, in our hearts and towards that hereditary property to which we are always returning. May we continually do the ritual counting and cleansing in the white space between moments. And may we be at one with the earth. God is with us in the past present and future, with love for an eternity.