Haves and Have-Nots, Then and Now

B'Har



Leviticus 25:1 - 26:2






Précis: The parasha begins with a description of the Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee (Yovel) Year. In the 50th (Jubilee) Year, we are to “proclaim liberty throughout the land” and property is restored to its the original owners. The parasha continues with the prohibition against unlimited slavery, as well as the rules for the treatment of those who are slaves.


Leviticus 25:10 “And you will hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof; it will be a jubilee to you, and you will return every man to his possession, and you will return every man to his family.”


The word “liberty” (in Hebrew “d’ror”) may more properly be understood as “release.” According to Baruch A. Levine, in Leviticus JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989, p. 171) the term literally means ‘to move about freely,’ and in application refers to the freedom granted to those bound by servitude. This makes sense in the context of the Jubilee, where all are “released” from the burdens of crushing, unpayable debt.


It is interesting that the Biblical system of Jubilee and release is being read now, when debate is omnipresent in the United States about what to do with our nation’s debt. Our text is an important instruction: liberty and freedom require that a society lives in economic balance. The jubilee system is designed to keep Jews from being permanent debt slaves. So every 50 years, the land (the principle wealth of Israelite society) reverts to its original owners, and those who have been dispossessed are entitled to return their ancestral land.


But the jubilee system was also designed to keep individuals from accumulating too much wealth! This was a system in which there was a balance maintained between the extremes of poverty and wealth.


Today, of course, we don’t officially have “debt slaves.” But we do have enormous and growing disparities between the “haves” and the “have nots” with a steady erosion of the middle class. While many modern commentators doubt whether or not a Jubilee Year was ever actually observed, few can doubt that the moral lesson of this concept is critically important today. As a society, we must live within our means, and simultaneously recognize that extreme disparities between the “haves” and the "have nots” is inimical to a just and prosperous society.