Parashat Bechukotai 5768

With this week’s Torah portion Parashat Bechukotai, we come to the end of the book of Leviticus. The parashah ends with a familiar biblical assertion. God says: If you obey my laws, I will shower you with blessings and, if you do not obey my laws, I will bring curses upon you. For me, this simple statement of theodicy—this simple explanation for why good and bad happens in our lives—is troubling and rings untrue.

I do not believe in a God that blesses people who do good and curses people who do bad. This neat sense of balance in the world may give us humans a sense of control or power in the universe (i.e. if we just do good, then good things will come to us), but the problem is that it is simply untrue. Sorrow and pain sadly touch all of our lives, whether we are good people or not. To suggest otherwise is to deny many of our fundamental human experiences.

The Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, itself expresses many different contradictory theologies (beliefs in God) and theodicies (explanations of good and bad in our world). So, while this theology of blessings and curses is often read as the dominant theology of the Hebrew Bible, it is certainly not the only way our foundational text looks at God’s relationship with us. The ancient Jewish rabbis, as well as the rabbis of the Middle Ages and Modern eras, wrestle with Bechukotai’s concept of God in their own writings. We, today, stand in a long line of tradition when we engage in this wrestling, as well.

This past week, I had the honor of hearing my teacher, Dr. Tamara Eskenazi, speak briefly on this week’s parashah. She explained that while she does not believe that God blesses us, she does believe we have the choice as to whether or not we want to be blessings in the world.

What does it mean to be a blessing?

We become blessings when we recognize that we are created in the image of God and act in ways that bring a sense of the Divine into our world. In this week’s parashah, God promises us peace, abundant food, respite from wild beasts, and military victories. And I think, what if we, ourselves, become agents of peace, providers for the needy, champions for the poor, and advocates for the disenfranchised.

If we look beyond the belief that God gives us blessings and curses, then we look toward a world in which we recognize our own power to become blessings in our families, in our work, in our homes, in our communities, and in our world. May each of us recognize the Divine spark within us and from that spark learn to be a blessing. Through us, may shefa brachot, abundant blessings, flow into our world.