I despise snow in Portland. As I’ve shared with many of you, I was never really a big fan of snow when it happened in Michigan when I was growing up either. Primarily it’s because I don’t like to be cold, and I don’t like to be wet. Snow manages to combine both of those elements into one, and being cold and wet at the same time has never been my thing. In particular, I don’t like snow in Portland because it means the city will be shut down for who knows how long. It starts out beautifully idyllic, but then as things melt and freeze again, and the microclimates laugh at us for wanting any sort of consistency, we could be looking at two to four days without reliable transportation. The worst year had us trapped in our house for eight days, and that was with a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. If you ask me, snow in Portland snowballs out of control. (HA!)

It’s actually the snowball effect, not the snow itself, that I’m reminded of in this week’s Torah portion. I’m talking about a situation that continues to build on itself until it’s out of control. Whether it’s a global pandemic or a cycle of systemic oppression, when enough “snow” builds up and starts rolling away from us, it can quickly get out of hand. 

Our double Torah portion this week, Behar-Bechukotai, warns us of the implications of the snowball effect in our own lives. Behar-Bechukotai focuses primarily on the laws of agriculture and land. What makes this section of text unique is that it takes the notion of land ownership and farming and uses that to create a society in which no one group holds complete control forever. We read about the 50-year land ownership cycle, in which we are required to allow the land to rest every seventh year. In the 50^th year of the cycle, all land returns to its original owner. Imagine a farmer who falls on hard times because of a drought or poor crop. In order to sustain his family, he might sell off parts of his farm acre by acre. After 10 years he might have nothing left, and he might be forced off the land or have to find another way to make a living. According to our Torah laws, in the 50^th year this farmer would receive back all his land and become his own landlord again.

In the midst of these laws, we read chapter 25, verse 35: “If your kinsman, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though he is a resident alien, let him live by your side.” The Sifra, a midrashic commentary on the book of Leviticus, reads this verse literally as “If your kinsman stumbles.” In other words, it’s easier to support a person when they first begin to stumble than it is to pick them up after they’ve fallen. Like a snowball, problems are easier to control when they’re manageable in size before they’ve snowballed out of control.

In all the words of these parshiyot we are made aware that working to solve a problem before it becomes a catastrophe is of the utmost importance in maintaining a thriving, supportive community. As for the literal snow, well, there’s not much we can do about that.

It seems that much of the tension in our world stems from the human desire to own a tangible piece of the world. Whether this means the simple notion of a backyard vegetable garden, a commercial real estate investment, or anything in between, we have an innate desire to have something to call our own. For much of our modern history, land ownership has been a measurement of status, and the drive to own more and more has in many cases increased the divide between those who have ownership and those who don’t.

This concept was also familiar to the Israelites in their quest for the creation of a civil society. This week we read Parshat Behar-Bechukotai, the final parshiyot in the book of Vayikra. This double portion focuses primarily on the laws of agriculture and land. What makes this section of text unique is that it suggests a type of land ownership and farming in which no one group holds complete power forever.

Specifically, we read about the 50-year land ownership cycle requiring the land to rest every seventh year. At the end of the 50 year cycle, land rights returned to their original owner. No one was able to hold land acquisition above the head of someone else because equality and balance would be the rule. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook taught that the purpose of the 50th “Jubilee” year (after 49 years of seven seven-year cycles) was primarily spiritual, not economic. It came to restore the sense of unity that once prevailed in Israel and to restore self-respect to the person who may have sunk into poverty or failure.

In today’s world we pride ourselves on the systems set up to maintain balance, like our branches or government and varying income tax brackets, yet we still haven’t been able to close the gap that divides far too many of the most impoverished families and communities in our country. For the entirety of our existence as a Jewish people, the Torah has imagined a world where we’re not stratified and strangulated based on income or job description. Imagine if every 50 years (or every 7 years) we reevaluated and took a serious look at where we’ve been, what we need to continue to thrive, and how we can help others to do the same.

A while ago Duncan and I tried a farm share CSA. It became a fun little guessing game. Every week we’d wonder if we’d get vegetables we were willing to try. Would we know how to cook them? Would they all get cooked eaten before they went bad? We were living in this unknown Schrödinger’s carrot type of world with zero control over what we’d actually receive in our bag and whether or not it would actually be tasty. We spent the summer simultaneously excited and terrified about our fresh produce.

The element of surprise in relation to crops plays a role in our parshah. This week we read a double Torah portion, Behar-Bechukotai. These two portions of Torah make up the final chapters of the book of Leviticus. Parshat Behar focuses on letting the land rest. We learn about the return of land during the 50^th year and the cycle of workers and loans. In Parshat Bechukotai we read about the blessings that God will bestow upon the Israelites in exchange for following the laws of the Torah and the rebukes and curses that will come if they don’t. Tied up in both of these narratives is the idea of security – both financial and physical.

Chapter 25, verse 6 leads us into a world of the unknown: “You may eat whatever the land during its Sabbath may produce.” The Torah teaches us that in the seventh year we let the land rest. To prepare for this you might save in whatever way you can from the sixth year so that you’ll have enough to eat in the seventh. But what will happen to the land during that year when you’re not touching it? Will it produce on its own like the wild blackberries of Portland seem to do? Or will nothing happen and you’ll be left with no fruit of the land like pretty much any garden I’ve ever planted and subsequently ignored?

This is the unknown. This seventh year is the great equalizer. Wealthy or poor, green thumb or black, no one has any idea or can predict exactly what will fill the land in the seventh year. We are to live this year expecting the unexpected and hoping that we won’t starve.

If you know me, you know I am a huge planner. I like to include all options and plan for all situations. I don’t like the unexpected because it throws me off my game. I live in a defined everyday routine, and in order to manage expectations in our family, we do a lot of planning for what might happen. Adjusting on the fly (a.k.a. “going with the flow”) is one of the most challenging parts of life for so many because as human beings, we have an innate desire to know and understand, and that means planning. The Torah this week reminds us that sometimes knowing isn’t always possible. The best we can do is manage our expectations and learn to work within the circumstances we’re given.