Shabbat Blast

Dear CBO Families.

In today’s society we don’t have the strongest connection to the land we live upon. We have become city dwellers who later spread out and formed residential communities. However in the time of the bible having land was most important. Most of our Torah portion, Parshat Behar outlines practices related to land ownership. Our ancestors lived in an agrarian society where land ownership brought power. If an individual had fallen on hard times and was in debt he might as a last resort sell his land. The Catch 22  was that he would never have a chance to work as farmer owning land again and would live the rest of his life in servitude of another powerful landowner.

During this time, society could have been broken down into two classes-rich people who owned land and those were in a state of permanent poverty due to loss of land. This has parallels to today’s society of a large upper class and a growing lower class struggling in a state of perpetual poverty.

Our Chumash (Etz Chayim) gives us insight as to how the Torah could fix this problem by saying, “Anticipating the human misery and social instability this would lead to. The Torah provides a plan. In the 50th year, families would reclaim the land they had held originally and later sold.” (Etz Chayim 738) By doing this, the monopoly of Land ownership is broken up. There are a couple of reasons for this; the first is that the planet and all who live on it belong to God. Therefore, people cannot truly possess the land or other people since all of it belongs to God. Another reason for the 50th Jubilee year was that according to Rav Kook “it helped to restore the sense of unity that once prevailed in Israel and to restore self-respect to the person who had sunk into poverty and a sense of failure.” (Ibid)
The Jubilee year helped remind people of the idea that who they were as a person was not defined by their economic value. We get so obsessed with money today and class standing and material possessions. Judaism and God are here to help us return to our roots as human beings and to see the value in ourselves as compassionate people who are put on this earth to help one another and bring joy into each other’s lives.
 
Wishing you all a joyous Shabbat,

Cantor Kowitz

REMINDER
Please remember to complete the Membership Package which includes the synagogue membership information and hebrew school registration forms..

If you have not already done so, it is imperative that you return the entire COMPLETED package to the synagogue as soon as possible.

Thank you for your cooperation.

SERVICES
Friday, May 24 - Thursday, May 30

Click the links below to view some of
our upcoming events!

Shappot Luck

Israel Day Parade

Texas Holdem at TISM

National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey in Times Square 

Science and Judaism: Tradition and Modernity Shavuot
 

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