Shabbat Behar-Bechukotai
As some of you know, I grew up with Mr. Rogers. In Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood you were “special just because you were you.” But as many of us grew up and left his TV Neighborhood, we began to think the loving universe Mr. Rogers described didn’t exist in the “real world.”
A few weeks ago, listening to a wonderful podcast called “Finding Fred” I had a chance to revisit the lessons Mr. Rogers taught so many millions of children – including how to navigate divorce, war, assassination, bullying, and racism. The love he spoke about wasn’t soft and fluffy – it was a “muscular love.”
When he said, “you are special just because you are you” he invited us to maintain our sense of self-worth in the face of life’s many hardships, and in a society that wanted us to believe our value was bound up with how much we earned, or productive we were.
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This week, we read about a special period of time, called the shmita year — an agricultural cycle when people were to let their land rest every seven years before they were allowed to work it again. Our parasha begins:
God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath l’Adonai — a time of rest for God.
Commenting on these words, Rashi notices the phrase “sabbath l’Adonai” come up not just here, about the shmita year, but also earlier when Torah ordains the weekly Sabbath that we celebrate today.
Why do we need to be reminded these times of rest are l’Adonai, for God?
These days, many of us are doing nothing – not to rest, but because we are trying to survive a pandemic. Many of you have told me how hard it is to do nothing right now: the feelings of pain, loneliness, boredom, frustration and helplessness. Your anger and grief about all you can’t do – attend birthdays or funerals, hug your families and friends; your deep desire to be, to do something.
Alongside these feelings of loss, we experience another loss: When we aren’t doing anything, we sometimes come to believe we have lost our value, perhaps even our connection with that thing that is greater than us, which some of us call “God.”
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So, Torah comes to remind us the shmita year and the day of Shabbat are sacred, are l’Adonai. It invites us to be aware, even in the midst of the immense challenges we are living through, there is a way to feel our value and connectedness – not only in doing – but at times, just…in being.
This is an invitation for our time. It asks us to deepen our capacity to give love and fuller presence to the people in our life. Or to notice the natural world – a particular flower, or bird song that we hear from our window or during our time outside. Or to pay attention to our bodies, to the sensations and emotions inside of us – responding to them not with judgment, but tenderness.
Regardless of how we receive Torah’s invitation this week, perhaps we can at least hear God’s loving and compassionate voice, reminding us: “you're special just because you're you.”