Parshat Behar 5768: Create Boundless Possibility

The boundary between nature and miracle is a creation of your own mind. You can open channels of miraculous possibility by removing that imaginary boundary.  Is this the teaching of some new age Guru? Not at all: this lesson is taught by the Sefat Emet[1] on our Parsha.

Every seventh year, in Israel, the Shemitta is observed. The land is not worked that year and the farmers use the time as a Sabbatical during which to reconnect to Hashem, study the Torah and grow spiritually. The year after the seventh Shemitta is a Yoveil year. That year too, the land is not worked. Hashem says in the parsha (Vayikra 25:20) “And if you will say during that seventh year: what shall we eat during the eighth year? [2] I shall command My blessing for you in the sixth year (the year before the shemitta) and it will produce sufficient food for three years.” Rashi explains that this will occur by your gaining all the nutrition and satisfaction you need from one third of the volume of food you would normally consume.

The peculiar implication is that Hashem will only command His blessing if we ask what we are going to eat in the eighth year. However, if we simply accept that there will be a miracle and do not raise the question, the Torah implies that Hashem will not command His blessing! Why would He reward us for doubting Him? Why would He not provide the blessing we need to survive for three years without working the land, if we do not raise the question?

The Sefat Emet explains the doubt expressed in “vechi tomru (and if you will say)” in a different way: the Jewish people know with certainty that Hashem would not instruct us to keep shemitta andyoveil without making provision for our survival. Their concern is just that they may not be on a sufficiently high level to earn the miracle that they would need. (This is similar to Yaacov fearing that although Hashem promised him that he would be safe, possible wrongdoing on his part may subsequently have negated his right to the fulfillment of that promise.) Similarly here, although promised three years worth of produce from one year of work, they worried that their own inadequacies may undermine their entitlement to miraculous intervention.

Hashem answers their concern by assuring them that no special merit is needed. Since they seem to think that a miracle is so much “harder” for G-d to do than mere nature, He will in fact not show them a miracle at all. Instead He will add beracha (blessing, abundance) to nature rather than neis (miracle) to provide the additional food. “I will command My blessing” then, is a lower form of intervention than the miracle they would have experienced had they not doubted their ability to receive miracles.

There are three levels of natural phenomena: teva (nature), beracha(blessing) and neis (miracle). In truth, says the Sefat Emet (5637):“The Jewish people need to know that miracles and nature are one and the same. In fact there is no miracle greater and more wonderful than nature, the greatest of wonders of which we are capable of conceiving. When we “get” this idea (that miracle and nature are one and the same) being sustained miraculously is no bigger a deal than being sustained naturally. If however you think that a miracle is a ‘big deal’ (for Hashem) and He only uses it rarely for the very deserving, then indeed you will not merit miracle and I will therefore sustain you with beracharather than with neis.”

What a majestic concept. We are seduced into thinking that nature is less of a miracle than splitting the Red Sea. This is only because nature is a series of miracles programmed to occur at predictable frequencies. But we fail to recognize the miracle of the program itself! That is akin to thinking that there is nothing brilliant about, say Microsoft’s Office Suite, because it performs the same functions over and over again in an (almost) reliably, predictable fashion. Yes, maybe each function stops impressing us after a while, however we cannot but be impressed by the brilliance of its design. So too the very program of nature is the most powerful miracle man can experience.

We need to recognize the recurring miracle of nature, and appreciate that achieving that reliable predictability is more of a miracle than the one-off spectacles that wow us for centuries. If we see miracles in every detail of nature, then we have obliterated the artificial boundary between the natural and the miraculous. Doing so frees G-d (so to say,) to command His miracles for us. By removing that imaginary boundary between nature and miracle, we open channels of miraculous possibility.