Behar-Bechukotai: A Temporal Utopia
Behar-Bechoukotai begins with the first mention of shemitah, the sabbatical year, G-d telling the Jewish people via Moshe that ‘שבתה הארץ שבת לה, ‘the land [He assigns to them will] keep a Shabbat for HaShem’ (Lev.25:2), paralleling Shabbat as we have seen it in previous parashiot, including in the creation narrative of Bereshit, in which G-d ceases the work of creation and the seventh day, declaring it holy. [1] After six years of working the land, on the seventh year one may not ‘sow [the] field, nor prune [the] vineyard’ (Lev.25:4), instead allowing the land to rest in its own iteration of Shabbat. Ramban notes that the same language is used to describe this type of rest in Bereshit and shemitah, ‘since it is the seventh in [the cycle of] the years just as the weekly Sabbath is the seventh day in the cycle of days’. [2] He explains that the meaning behind this parallel language is that ‘since the seventh year is [also] a Sabbath to the Eternal, […] we are to desist from working the land’ in the same way that we desist from work on Shabbat. [3]
Within this framework, G-d commands that the shemitah year be ‘a year of complete rest for the land’ (Lev.25:5) in which, though one may eat whatever the land produces during this time, ownership and possession of it are relinquished, as noted by Ibn Ezra. [4] Tanach is particular about this concept of ownership, G-d stating that it ‘must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is [His]’ (Lev.25:24); this verse cements the idea that we live in G-d’s world and are but sojourners on its face. In the shemitah year, G-d’s creation can truly be seen, working on its own and without human intervention. Here, Tanach presents an iteration of a utopian world in which one may abandon certain practicalities of life and seek out something greater than themselves, the ‘שבת לה offering what Sforno describes as a chance ‘to seek out the Lord in some manner’. [5]
Classic conceptions of utopian worlds, and their dystopian counterparts, have often been literary, though prolific writer Oscar Wilde wrote in The Soul of Man Under Socialism that ‘progress is the realisation of utopias’ in reality. [6] The word ‘utopia’ itself is derived from the Greek words ‘topos’, meaning place, and ‘u’, meaning ‘no’ or ‘not’,[7] a conception which suggests that a utopian world, by its own definition, is unable to exist as the ‘perfect society, free from the flaws which exist in the real world’[8] it is conceived as. In his survey of utopianism, academic Lyman Tower Sagent writes that ‘the expression of utopianism seems to be among the basic strata of the human experience’, driven by a desire to improve society socially, economically, politically, even philosophically, making it as harmonious as possible. [9] It follows, then, to have some form of utopianism expressed in one of the oldest and integral texts in human existence. Rather than seeking to improve an already corrupted society, however, the conception of utopia we see in Behar is a ready-made framework in which utopia can be realised by stepping back rather than constantly doing.
Where literary utopias are often physical places, like towns – an idea dating back to antiquity, such as with the example of Kallipolis described in Plato’s The Republic (ca. 370-360 BC) – the utopian conception presented in Behar is, like Shabbat, a temporal one, this temporality allowing it to literally come under the definition of utopia as ‘no place’. Like the literary characterisation of most utopian societies as ‘overwhelmingly intentional’, the laws of shemitah and the utopian existence it offers is defined by the intention to rest from the material workings and practicalities of the physical world. [10] Its existence is structured by particular laws, yet it relinquishes humanity’s power over the land and gives us space to just be in the world of G-d’s making, the land replenishing and revitalising itself in the same way in which human creativity can replenish itself in the restful moments of Shabbat. Without practical responsibilities one can truly experience the world, exploring its natural wonders and observing the intricacies of nature’s structures and ecosystems. Without the social and financial responsibility of owning land, working it and providing food, shemitah provides a timeframe in which G-d’s creation can rest, so that its inhabitants may convene with something greater than themselves and their physical and material endeavours. It provides a structured temporal utopia which can easily be realised, wherever one lives.
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[1] Genesis 2:2-3
[2] Ramban on Leviticus 25:2
[3] Ramban on Leviticus 25:2
[4] Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 25:5-6
[5] Sforno on Leviticus 25:4:2
[6] Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, (1910), pg.27
[7] Lyman Tower Sagent, ‘The Three Faces of Utopiamism Revisited’ in Utopian Studies, Vol.5 No.1 (1994), pp.1-37, pg.5
[8] Henry Near, Where Community Happens: The Kibbutzim and the Philosophy of Communism, (2011), pg.70
[9] Sagent, pg.28
[10] Sagent, pg.19
