Parashah of the week: Bechukkotai

There is a tradition of studying Pirkei Avot during this period of the Omer, between Pesach and Shavuot. In the first chapter we read that the world stands on three things: Torah, sacred service and acts of lovingkindness. It is in simple acts of kindness that we can make the world a better place.

Bechukkotai, an epilogue to  the whole book of Leviticus, is at the very end of what is called the Holiness Code. These are rules for  enabling a close, ongoing relationship with God. The question that is really being asked is: how can we be a holy people in our new home? There’s a short list of blessings and a much longer list of curses. The two lists are symmetrical, every promise in the blessing is reversed by a curse — a fertile land if you follow God’s ways, a fruitless land if you don’t.

The commentator Nechama Leibowitz points out that blessings and curses were an early form of prayer. They expressed what  people hoped for and they connected the moral order to the natural order. Behaving ethically was felt to be intrinsic to the proper functioning of the cosmos. Is this still true?

I don’t think being cruel to another person will blight the apple trees, but I do think there is something about the wellbeing of a society that makes a difference to the world and the wellbeing of a society is governed by individual human acts.