Bechukotai

Welcome to Heather’s blog 2.0. I’m hoping that by having this blog have a point I will be more readily willing and able to keep up with it? Mostly I just want to know what the parsha is every week so this is the easiest way to do it. I guess we’ll see. Life is busy, friends. I’ll do my best. Shteig!

What a great week to start a parsha blog. Parshat Bechukotai essentially threatens us with cannibalism if we don’t study Torah so I’m glad that I can help contribute to the non-cannibalism of the Jewish people by studying Torah aka reading my blog. You’re welcome, reader. You owe me one.

This week’s parsha is both unpronounceable (in English) and terrifying. Hashem tells us if we are good and do mitzvot then he will reward us with various forms of prosperity and security…then goes on for a VERY long time (32 verses) about what will happen if we don’t act in a proper way. Exile, insecurity, destruction of material goods, and the classic “you will eat the flesh of your children” are all on the agenda. To be blunt, I am not a huge fan of threatening punishment if one does not do as one is told. First of all, it is ineffective. Has the threat of prison stopped people from murdering others? No. Secondly, it doesn’t flow too well with the idea of a loving and caring creator. I am no theologian however so I will leave those kinds of questions to the smart people/I don’t really care that much. Religion is not so academic in my world and I don’t intend it to ever be.

What I did find comforting while reading was the idea of consequences. Not consequences in that “if I don’t do this someone will punish me,” rather the idea that my actions will affect someone else. Almost every rebuke given by Hashem for not doing the mitzvot are community oriented. Fields, crops, holy sites, and wild stock are all essential parts of the community and directly at risk. If someone messes up then everyone is in jeopardy. We live in a selfish world where we (myself definitely included) think that we can make stupid choices because YOLO or it’s my life or whatever. Every stupid choice, or smart choice for that matter, impacts someone else. Every. Single. One. Unless you live in a cave and all your family and friends are dead, God forbid. You want to sleep around, do drugs, drink a lot, drive without a seatbelt, be obnoxious in class, say rude things, steal because “hey it is my problem and I’m not really doing anything to anyone else.” Guess what? You are wrong. Family and friends see you and get hurt. Maybe you have children, younger siblings, students, or friends that look up to you. Maybe you are distracting and/or influencing people around you. Maybe you are hurting someone and you just don’t have the foresight to see it. Since the parsha focuses on the negative, I also did. But the same can be said for all the good things we do. Just want to throw that out there before everyone starts yelling at me for being so negative all the time. Everything we do has a consequence so be the best person you can be. I realize I need to take my own advice, so please don’t yell at me for that either.

The parsha ends with some words of hope, though. Even if we mess up and start eating our children (sorry, I’m obsessed with that one) we can make up for it. We can try again tomorrow so let’s all wake up each day and not get too stuck on whether what we did yesterday is permanent. Spoiler alert, it isn’t. Unless you really did eat your children...in which case that is probably permanent.