Drash Cards for Bechukotai 5774
• Today:B3P = Behar, Bechukota, Bond, Piketty to once again demonstrate timelessness of the Torah
• Going backwards. Piketty — Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Inequality rising and from people who actually don’t produce anything.
• Krugman NYT last week: top 25 hedge managers made in 2013 twice as much as all the kindergarten teachers in the country.
• Bond – From Russia with Love on the way home last Friday. Kerim Bay takes Bond to some gigantic Byzantine church. Reminded me that the equalization of capital in the mid 20th century may have been a historical aberration.
• What does the Torah tell us about that?
• Bechukotai – blessing and curses. If we do not listen and follow the commandments – chaos and destruction.
• Behar: Sabbatical year and Jubilee year. What happens in the Jubilee year: property reverts to its owners of 50 yrs prior (except for a house in a walled city).
• God says “The land belongs to me.. you are transient sojourners and temporary residents dwelling with me” (Ch 25, v 23)
• Ishbizter: “God created the Yovel so that each person could return to his place and portion allotted to him from God…In the Yovel each one will recognize that that portion of his fathers was given by God”
• Nehama “The sovereignty of God over everything in the univser and the equal rights of every person within it to enjoy the Creator’s largesse is the kenote of the Jubilee legislation..we are admonished to abide by the principles of justice and honestry, which alone should reign in the world and which should not be crowded out by man’s selfish greed”.
• Imagine what the world would be like if every 50 years we had a partial Jubilee.