With Parashat Be-Hukkotai, the Book of Leviticus comes to an end. The central book of the Torah, Leviticus is the book of priestly holiness, enjoining the people Israel to become a nation of priests and a holy people. Laws pertaining to ritual purity and impurity, to sexual ethics, as well as a magnificent summation of Torah itself, in the Holiness Code, give this book its abiding value and depth. At the end of these series of laws, the book ends with a series of blessings for those who obey the teachings of Va-Yikra, and an even longer series of curses for those who disregard its instructions.
Our ancestors read these curses with dismay—hearing God promising sure retribution against a sinning nation. Those curses helped shore up their determination to live in a Godly way, even if for rather childish reasons. Those curses fill us with dismay of a different sort: We know that the world doesn’t work that way, that many people abide by the teachings of the Torah and still suffer accidents, illness, and tragedy, just as many violate the mitzvot and prosper with both wealth and health. While the tokhakhah, the reproof, may have functioned to keep our ancestors in line, with us it is mostly a stumbling block, tripping us up with its primitive sense of a punishing God.
Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, recognized that this was a troubling verse too. He explained it by comparing it to the way a child is taught.
Imagine a small child who has been brought to his teacher so that he may be taught the Torah, which is his ultimate good because it will bring him to perfection. However, because he is only a child of limited understanding, he does not grasp the true value of that good, nor does he understand the perfection which he can achieve by means of Torah. So his teacher, who has acquired greater perfection than the child, must bribe him to study with things which the child loves in a childish way. Thus, the teacher may say, “Read and I will give you some nuts or figs; I will give you a bit of honey.” With this stimulation, the child tries to read. He does not work hard for the sake of reading itself, since he does not understand its value. He reads in order to get the food. As the child grows and his mind improves, what was formerly important to him loses its importance, while other things become precious. The teacher will stimulate his desire for whatever he wants then.
Thus, the true value of learning is beyond the grasp of most children. So a good teacher will find some hook, some bribe to inspire the students to study. In time, they will see that the reward was a mere lure, something to prompt them to pursue a worthy end, but of little real value itself. So too here, the rewards and punishments offered by Leviticus pale to insignificance compared to the true worth of living a life of Torah. But, being limited as we are, we fail to see the Torah’s true worth. God’s children still need the artifice of reward and punishment to encourage us to behave in our own best interests. As the Rambam explains,
Now all this is deplorable. However, it is unavoidable because of people’s limited insight, as a result of which they make the goal of wisdom something other than wisdom itself…. A good man must not wonder “If I perform these commandments, which are virtues, and if I refrain from these transgressions, what will I get out of it?” …. Our sages have already warned us about this. They said that one should not make the goal of one’s service of God or of doing the commandments anything in the world of things. Antigonos of Sokho… meant precisely this when he said, “Do not be like the servants who serve their master for the sake of a reward, but be like servants who serve their master without expecting a reward.” …. However, our sages knew that this is a very difficult goal to achieve and that not every one could achieve it.… Therefore, in order that the masses stay faithful and do the commandments, it was permitted to tell them that they might hope for a reward and warn them against transgressions out of fear of punishment.
The Torah utilizes the language of berakhot (blessings) and of tokhakhah (curses) to provide an artificial inducement toward righteousness. In every phase of our lives, we alternate between doing the mitzvot because we know it to be the right thing to do and because we believe we can make a deal with God (“I’ll be good, and in exchange, You will protect me and my loved ones from all mishap.”) While it might be nice for the world to work that way, the grown-up in each of us knows that it isn’t so. But the child-like part of our souls needs the comfort and the incentive of blessings and curses.
There is a deeper response as well. The truth is that the notion of sin having negative consequences is literally true, just not for each individual, nor for each particular sin. A culture in which people live by greed, cruelty, and force, in which compassion and doing good are belittled as idealistic and foolish is one in which there will be less trust, more violence, more pollution, more hostility. There are curses that accompany the choice not to live by God’s laws, and they are as inexorable as the night following the day. But they are true for the community as a whole, not for each individual in the community.
Perhaps, then, we need to see our every deed as swinging the balance. If we dedicate ourselves to living God’s will, to doing the mitzvot, we can swing society toward goodness, toward justice, toward kindness. And then God’s blessings will flow on all. Or we can choose to elevate the pursuit of our own private happiness to our highest ideal, and continue to watch as our society and our planet erode.
As always, the choice is ours: Blessing or curse. What’s it going to be?
Shabbat Shalom.