“If You Will Say: What Will We Eat?”

CHIDUSHIM ON PARSHAT BEHAR BY MOREINU HARAV ELIEZER BERLAND SHLIT”A:

“IF YOU WILL SAY: WHAT WILL WE EAT?”

“If you will say: What will we eat in the seventh year?  Behold, we will not sow and not gather in our crops!” – shmitta (the Sabbatical year) is higher than all other things, “If you will say: What will we eat?”  What will we drink?  Start crying like babies, like a one-year-old baby.  “If you will say” – this is the loftiest verse.  What is, “If you will say”?  Says Rabbi Eleh Lopian, ztvk”l – everyone go to his grave, he passed away on 20 Elul – “If you will say,” then you will lose everything.  If a person asks a question, he loses everything.  Because Hashem says to observe shmitta!  What do you think, that you’ll die of starvation?  This is what they understand!  This is what their cat-intellect or monkey-intellect understands.  They need an intellect transplant.  There is shmitta, so we will not sow?  What will we eat?  What will we drink?  Will we die of starvation?  Will the babies die?  If so, this is the reason for the churban (destruction [of the Temple]).  “If you will say” – here are found all the secrets of why there is the churban, why we do not have a Temple.  Why?  “What will we eat” in another hour?   What will eat in another second?  What will eat in another day?  What will eat tomorrow?  Someone’s wife asked him, “What will eat tomorrow?”  Immediately he gave her a bill of divorce.  But also the second one asked him the question, so you can’t divorce two [wives].  However, if a person asks, “What will eat tomorrow?  What will eat in another hour?  What will eat in another day?” he already isn’t a Jew, because he doesn’t have faith in Hashem, who feeds and sustains every day, from a louse’s eggs to an oryx’s horns – at all.

“DO NOT SUBJUGATE HIM WITH HARD LABOR”

What do we see?  We see that the Torah says to have mercy.  The Torah says that if you take a woman captive, “you shall not enslave her.”  “You shall return each man to his ancestral heritage and…each man to his family.”  If you don’t allow him to go home, there will be exile; you’ll all go in captivity.  You will all be slaves.  And you need to send a Hebrew slave home.  You send [paid?] a million dollars, it doesn’t make a difference, if this is a Hebrew slave; and if this is Canaanite slave, it’s worse.  If this is a Canaanite slave, and you bought him for a million dollars, and his tooth is loose, then tell the owner to release him.  Tell someone to give you a blow on the tooth.  Then tell the Jewish owner to release him, and this Jew will release him; you are free.  The Torah is only mercy, endless mercy.

Because if it’s a Hebrew slave, he needs to wait until the yovel (the Jubilee year) if [his ear] has been pierced [as a long-term slave].  If this is within six years, he is also free.  Even if he is a slave for fifty years, after fifty years, he is also free.  However, if this is a Cushite [a non-Jew], then after a day he goes free.  Now you come there and see that he is miserable, this elderly Cushite, and then you want to take revenge on this wealthy man; you know that he spent a million dollars on this Cushite.  You give the Cushite a knock on his tooth, only the tooth.   How much is a tooth worth?  A hundred dollars?  It comes loose a bit.  Now he says to the owner to let him go, and that’s it.  In a single second.  In a single second, the Cushite is freed.

Hashem doesn’t want there to be slaves.  He doesn’t want one to be enslaved, that also the Cushite will not be enslaved.  Hashem doesn’t want any [of this], not for the Cushite to be enslaved, and not for the Jew to be enslaved.  If you do this – we read about all of this in [Parshat] Mishpatim – then Hashem says, if you don’t release the slaves now – because they released them and then re-enslaved them – then now, that’s it.  Now you will have exile.  You will all go away in captivity.  You cannot enslave a Hebrew slave; for this, you’ll go into exile mamash.  Because all the exiles, everything that we experienced in Auschwitz, is all because we enslaved Hebrew slaves.  A punishment is not written regarding a Canaanite slave – also for this, there will be a punishment; but a Hebrew slave is certain punishment.  It’s forbidden for you to enslave a Hebrew slave; it’s forbidden for you to work him.  “Do not subjugate him with hard labor.”  And if this is a half-slave half-free man, then he cannot eat the Pesach offering until you free him.  Then you will be obligated to free him.

The shiur underwent editing.  If an error is found, it should be attributed to the writer, and not, chas v’shalom, to Moreinu HaRav shlit”a.

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