Behar, בְּהַר  "On the Mount"  Leviticus 25:1-26:2

 Bechukotai, בְּחֻקֹּתַי  "In My Statutes"   Leviticus 26:3-27:34

Statute Of Life From The Mountain

Poetic notes on parashot Behar and Bechukotai 5783*

Adam, where are you?

When searching for Adam,

God found Abraham and his seed

And now the  tree of life will give forth its fruit once again,

as in the Garden of Eden

The ground was cursed

The stones themselves were cursed

The eternal hills and the soul-bearing plains were cursed 

and gave birth with pain

Then God found Abraham and his seed

Now the land of God will sing from the heart of love

Egypt was Adam the Transgressor’s heir

And Egypt made the innocent child a slave

Now the slave is redeemed

And she does all that her Redeemer decrees

She moves with the rhythm of the Holy One,

never missing a beat nor a back beat,

living in concert with the inspiration

of the Holy One’s symphonic Torah

Now the branches of the Tree of Life

will become heavy with fruit

In the evening of the world’s last year,

the wisdom of this world

will be loud and boisterous 

and speak against the holy people,

who come down from the mountain

with a statute of life

The soul of a people redeemed out of Egypt is a bride

She sits by the river of a mystery Babylon

She meditates there on the notes of a song

composed for her by her beloved Redeemer

Many eyes are blinded by a veil of fears

The imagination of the nations is dark

The nations cannot conceive of the salvation

that would come from Sarah’s womb

Although the day of Israel’s salvation was small and dark,

it became expansive

That day itself will become the source of light for all creation!

In the liberation of Israel the very stars are set free

David's faith sees the colour of the music of angels

If reason stands alone without God,

its one foot stands upon the other

God will anoint His people with revelation

He will hollow his vessels of illumination for the nations

He will humble his children

to enable them to hear the word of God

He will discipline and train them,

to make them strong and skilled labourers

to build the house of Hashem

The stars in every galaxy stand upright,

waiting with excited anticipation

for the revealing of the heirs of Hashem

One nation alone under heaven

wears tefilin and tzitzit

One holy nation alone

holds a red heifer in its heart of hearts

One nation alone toils in Torah,

meditating in it day and night

One nation alone…,

because the G-d of Israel is G-d alone

God will be known in the land of the footsteps of Abraham

Every elder and every child will understand together

The mountain of Jerusalem will be like heaven

Knowledge will flow down the sides of Zion

The dead in the land will stand and sing the songs of David

The nations will forget their hatred

And the tzitzit of the Jew will seem to them like lightning

The prayer of the Jew will seem to them like thunder

The barren earth will be watered with the knowledge of Hashem

And the earth shall bear the fruit of the tzedakah of God

In the year of Shmitta

the true owner is the ownerless

Let brother redeem brother

and sister redeem sister

and stranger redeem stranger!

Creation stands tall

It has become a Tzaddik!

For Israel will cross over the Jordan with Moshe

They are the congregation of the Master of Prayer

Dream no more the dreams of fallen angels

The Sabbath of God will be your mansion

The nations will live and will not perish,

for the children of the Master of Prayer are kind

and are the disciples of forgiveness

They have been immersed for all their generations

in the tears of the Prayer Leader

They are the nephews and nieces of Joseph

and they fear the Hand of God

Yes, God will lay all souls to rest

He will bury his world

But do not fear, he will nurse it back to life

Listen! Hear, floating on the wind, the song of the Jews,

who sit by the rivers of the mystery Babylon,

the one song of free and captive Jews,

whose very lifeblood is Jerusalem,

the mother of the eternal life of Adam