09 May PARSHAS BEHAR: FORECLOSURE ON YOUR SOUL

Selling Your
Integrity, Your
Love and Your
Soul
The Mortgage
“My buyer told me
that he lived in the same house for 10 years.
When I checked, I found out he’d still be
there today if the Governor hadn’t pardoned
him.”
“The sellers told me their house was near
the water. It was in the basement.”
“If you think no one cares you’re alive,
miss a couple of house payments.”
“There is no longer a need for the neutron
bomb. We already have something that
destroys people and leaves buildings intact.
It’s called a mortgage.”
Owner to a house hunter: “Yes, the kitchen
is a bit small, but with a mortgage like this
you won’t do much cooking anyway.”
Fields and Homes
The Torah portion of Behar discusses the
laws concerning sale of land in the Holy
Land.
After the Jewish people entered the land of
Israel in 1273 BCE (the year 2488 since
creation in the Jewish calendar), Joshua, the
Jewish leader, assigned a plot of land to
every tribe and family, as recorded in the
book of Joshua. If a Jew fell upon hard times
and was compelled to sell his ancestral field,
the Torah — the constitution of Judaism —
gave him the right to redeem it two years
after the purchase date.
The seller would return the money to the
buyer and receive his field in return. If he did
not redeem it, the field would return to him
automatically with the arrival of the Jubilee
year.
What was the Jubilee year? After the Jewish
people completed the settling of the land of
Israel 14 years after entering it, they began
counting their years in cycles of fifty. Every
50th year was observed as a Jubilee year
during which ancestral plots of land that had
been sold during the previous 49 years,
reverted to their original owner. Almost no
sale or gift in Israel was legal for longer than
49 years.
This was the law concerning the sale of a
field. What happened if a poor Jew was
forced to sell an ancestral home located
within a walled city in Israel? Here the law
changed dramatically. This home, the Torah
states, could be redeemed only until the first
anniversary of the sale. Thereafter, it
remained the property of the buyer in
perpetuity, and did not return to the seller
with the arrival of the Jubilee year (unless the
buyer chose to sell the home back to the
original seller.)
How about if a Jew sold an ancestral home

located in an un-walled city? Here the law
constitutes the “best of both worlds” of the
two former cases. The home could be
redeemed immediately after the sale, just
like a home in a walled city. And even if it
was not redeemed during the first year of the
sale, it could still be redeemed afterwards, till
the arrival of the Jubilee year when it returned
to its original owner, just like the law
regarding the field.
Income vs. Dignity
What is the logic behind the three different
laws concerning the sale of 1) fields, 2)

homes in walled cities, and 3) homes in un-
walled cities?

One of the great biblical commentators, the
13th century Spanish sage, Rabbi Moses ben
Nachman, known as Nachmanides, explains
the rationale in a rather moving way.
Selling your personal home due to
impoverishment affects not your income (a
home does not produce regular profits), but
your dignity. Selling your field due to
poverty, on the other hand, might affect your
income (a field produces regular profits) but
not your personal honor. To preserve the
dignity of an impoverished individual who
was forced to give up his home, the Torah
allows him to redeem it immediately after
the sale, throughout the entire first year, as
soon as he comes up with the money. After
the year is up, however, he certainly relocated
to another home; now the buyer is entitled to
hold on to his purchase as long as he wishes.
It cannot be redeemed any longer.
Concerning a field however, which affects a
person’s income rather than his dignity,
short-term redemption was unnecessary. The
Torah’s only concern was that the field be
returned to its original owner upon the arrival
of the Jubilee year, in order not to deprive a
person and his family of their natural source
of income.
Homes in open cities, says Nachmanides,
were often used for farmers and guardians of
fields. Thus, they were treated like the fields
themselves and needed to be restored to their
owner by the Jubilee year. Yet since their sale
(just as the sale of full-fledged homes in
walled cities) was embarrassing for the
seller, they too could be redeemed
immediately after the sale, even before the
passing of two years.
The Psychological Dimension
All of these laws applied only when the
entire Jewish nation was living in Israel, each
tribe dwelling on the land designated to it.
When the first Jewish tribes were exiled from
their homeland, some 2600 years ago, the
Jubilee year laws and plot-sale laws were no
longer applicable. Yet each mitzvah and law
in the Torah consists of a psychological and
spiritual dimension, as well as a physical and
real-life dimension. It is this dimension that

is still very relevant today.
What is the spiritual meaning behind
these laws?
Selling Your Career, Home and
Soul
Fields, homes located in un-walled
cities, and homes located in walled
cities, symbolize three aspects of our
daily lives:
Fields represent a person’s career and
his or her day-to-day interactions and
purchases in the outside world, in the “field.”
Homes, situated in un-walled cities,
represent a person’s internal home and
family life, which are not exposed for all to
observe.
Homes located in walled cities, surrounded
by an additional wall of protection, are
symbolic of the most vulnerable and intimate
space of a person’s life, usually guarded by
an additional fortress of privacy. This
represents a person’s inner relationship with
his core-self, his core values, his soul. His
G-d.
Here, the Torah gives us a blueprint of what
transpires when we “sell” and dispose of our
careers, homes, and selves.
Goodbye Integrity
When you sell your field, i.e. when you
allow your career and your daily external
encounters to become tarnished by
dishonesty and selfishness — you can get
away without noticing your moral
degeneration for a full two years. Only after
two years of moral and spiritual decay will
you begin to sense the void in your life. The
depravity caused by the “selling” of your
integrity will begin to haunt you. Then, when
you have become aware and frustrated, you
can liberate your field and your life. Even if
you don’t, time and life’s experiences are
likely to do the job. In the 50th year, you will
get back your field. But why wait so long?
Goodbye Love
Then comes the far more serious situation
where you “sell” your home, i.e. you lose
touch with your loved ones, your wife, your
children and your closest friends. In your
smugness you enter into your private bubble
and you alienate the people closest to you.
You give up your home.
“What is Home?” asked Ernestine
Schumann-Heink. Her answer:
A roof to keep out the rain. Four walls to
keep out the wind. Floors to keep out the
cold. Yes, but home is more than that. It is
the laugh of a baby, the song of a mother, the
strength of a father. Warmth of living hearts,
light from happy eyes, kindness, loyalty,
comradeship. Home is first school for young
ones, where they learn what is right, what is
good and what is kind. Where they go for
comfort when they are hurt or sick. Where

joy is shared and sorrow eased. Where
fathers and mothers are respected and loved.
Where children are wanted. Where the
simplest food is good enough for kings
because it is earned. Where money is not so
important as loving-kindness. Where even
the teakettle sings from happiness. That is
home. G-d bless it.
And when you dispose of your home, you
will sense the emptiness immediately. Your
life will just become far more shallow and
artificial. Since the pain will be felt
immediately, you are indeed capable of
liberating your home right after the “sale.”
Here again, even if you don’t possess the
courage to change, time and life’s journey
usually will change you. But why wait? Who
knows what can transpire till then? Will you
still have the chance to repair broken
relationships?
Goodbye G-d
Then comes the third and most serious
condition — when you “sell” your most
intimate space, when you become alienated
from your deepest sense of self, from your
core-values, from your inner relationship
with G-d. In such an event, you can sense the
extraordinary void immediately and thus
liberate your soul right away. But if you wait
for more than a year, you will likely lose the
chance to ever liberate your inner identity
again.
When you allow the external pressures or
enjoyments of life to rob you of your core
self, when you no longer dedicate twenty
minutes a day to speak your heart out to your
Creator, when you have no time for the
essence of it all, you will soon lose touch
with the notion that you ever had any
innocence to lose. You may no longer know
that there was anything to liberate.
It is painful to lose things (“fields”) in life.
It is far more painful to lose people (“homes”)
in life. But the worst pain of all is when we
lose our connection with the quintessence of
life and reality, with G-d. We simply can’t
afford to lose our souls. None of us can
afford to sacrifice our few intimate moments
of prayer and communion with G-d because
of other responsibilities or pleasures. For
without this relationship, we might one day
look in the mirror and observe a dead soul.