Parashat B’har / פָּרָשַׁת בְּהַר, & Years of Rest and Return

     This week’s Torah portion,  Behar,  is the 32nd (32/54 or 52, depending on the year: this year, it’s 54…) reading in the annual cycle, and the 9th parashah, second to last in the book of Vayikra/Leviticus.  Normally it is doubled up with the coming week’s parashah, Bechukotai, but this year being a leap year, it is read separately.

   This portion (Leviticus 25:1-26:2) has the Shmitah year, which is the resting of the land every seven years, and the Year of Jubilee, which is the seventh Shmitah year (ok, actually, Shmeni is eighth, which is pretty neat, considering that it is the year after the 7th, aka the 8th, when the shmitah year takes place…).

   I am convinced that both the release of servants every 7 years, and the release of debts with return of land to original families, every 50, were an integral part of preventing inequality from piling up, as it has now, here in the USA.   This idea motivated my original acre/person idea in Project Do Better, even if that idea has been mostly removed from the Do Better manifesto, sadly.

         What do you think our world would look like if we followed the release of debts every 50 years? 

     I look forward to hearing your opinions on this matter, Thoughtful Readers.

We can really  Do Better.

-Shira   

 

     Last week was: Parashat Emor / פָּרָשַׁת אֱמוֹר, What Authority Stands For ,

Action Prompts:

    Share your thoughts on how to build buy-in and create a more equal, or at least less inequitable, society, please.   Writing, by the way, is my personal contribution to Project Do Better. 

What would yours be, if you had time?

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

 

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BsCs

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.