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UJCL Parashah Commentaries
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BECHUKOTAI 5768 Va-yikra - Leviticus 26:3 - 27:34 May 24, 2008 – 19 Iyyar 5768 By Rabbi Pablo Berman,
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PARASHAT BECHUKOTAI or the Secret of ListeningIf one can learn how to listen correctly, one has learned the most profound secret. I once “listened” to this phrase, and I have always remembered it. What is most difficult is to know how to listen, to look into the other one’s eyes and really understand what it is that such person is trying to transmit. Not all of us succeed in this endeavor, and many times, unfortunately, what we hear enters through one ear and exits through the other. Instead of transforming our auditory sense into a conduit of understanding, we only use it as a conduit for the entrance and exit of sound waves. We don’t listen; we just like for people to listen to us. For speaking, yes, we are well prepared.
In the essence itself of Judaism, listening is the central concept. From the first chapters of the book of Genesis, when the Lord asks Abraham to “listen” to his wife Sara’s voice, up to God Himself listening to Ishmael’s suffering in the wilderness, beside his mother Hagar. From Rebbeca’s request to her son Yaakov, that he listen to every word she will say, up to Leah thanking God for having heard her plea, reason why she will name her son Shimon, “the Lord heard”. From Yitro, Moses’s father-in-law, encouraging his son-in-law to listen to every advice he will give him so that he may guide a complex people through the wilderness, up to the “Shema Yisrael” appeal, the text of the Torah always calls us to listen.
In words of the Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891):
Parashat Bechutokai, chapters with which we finish reading the third book of the Torah, Va-yikra, poses the fact of “listening” and “not listening” to the voice of God. Each one of these possibilities has its consequences, as everything else in life.
In Judaism, we are called to listen, to understand, “do and listen”, such is the conviction of a nation that says na’aseh v’nishma, “we shall do and we shall listen”, at the foot of Mount Sinai. Nevertheless, Rabi Shimon Bar Yohai tells us, in his Midrash, that Moses, a little worried at hearing this, asked the people of Israel:
Is action even possible without having heard what the action is, without understanding what it is that we have to do? Listening brings us down to action; understanding exactly what it is that we are hearing, there lies the most profound secret. In view of what the people answered: “we shall do what we shall hear”, and Moses was then reassured, knowing that the people of Israel had understood the message.
“You don’t want sacrifices nor offerings, You have opened my hearing”, says the Psalmist, because this is, at the end, what God asks of us: to open our hearing, listen and understand; to open our ears to the voice that speaks to us, and open our hands to the one who needs us.
Shabbat Shalom Umeborah, Rabbi Pablo Berman |
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This Parashah commentary was done by the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean, and may be reproduced quoting its source.
Forwarded by Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, from Kol Shearith Israel Congregation, Panama. |
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