Words From Rabbi White

This week’s parasha is very brief: 57 verses. Yet It contains one of the most famous verses in the Torah: “Proclaim liberty in the land for all of its inhabitants.” This is the inscription on the famous Liberty Bell in Pennsylvania. Due to the crack, it does not ring anymore. However, in 1944, to mark D-Day, it was struck 7 times. [A recording can be heard on the internet.] In 1999, students at Penn State, by virtue of a computer model, were able to prepare a mathematical formula that equates the original vibration. [This can also be heard on internet.]

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The haftarah, from Jeremiah chapter 32, contains a powerful statement. Jeremiah had come originally from the town of Anatot, just outside of Jerusalem. He kept warning the people that, if they don’t improve their ways, there would be danger from the north. And indeed, despite all of his exhortations, the people did not change their ways, and the Babylonian enemy (from the North) was poised to lay siege to Jerusalem. Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel comes to him, and sells him an ancestral field. To be certain that the sale would be recognized as valid, witnesses are found, and Jeremiah instructs his student Baruch to place the deed of sale in a sealed pottery container, so that it would last for a very long time. You might ask, why would Jeremiah agree to pay for a plot of land that will soon be conquered? Yet Jeremiah states: despite the bleak appearance now, “`od yiqqanu sadot u-vatim ba-arets ha-zot,” “the time will come when fields and houses will again be bought in this land.”

We have seen Jeremiah’s prophecy fulfilled in recent generations, despite the attempts of our enemies to destroy the building of the Land of Israel, chas ve-shalom.!!

As the prophet Isaiah said, justice will come from Jerusalem [but not from the International Criminal Court in the Hague!!!]

Shabbat shalom, happy lag ba`omer, and shalom `al yisrael

Rabbi Menahem White