In ‘Babylonian Exile – Crash Course in Jewish History #23’, Rabbi Ken Spiro writes about the shock of this exile for the Jewish people:
“The destruction of the Temple and the exile to Babylon represents a tremendous shock to the Jewish people. It may be hard to imagine today what it must have meant back then, because we really have no basis of comparison.
In those days normative Judaism meant living with the constant presence of God, which was always accessible at the Temple. Miracles occurred there daily and could be witnessed by anyone. For example, whichever way the wind was blowing, the smoke of the sacrifices always went straight to heaven. Feeling spiritual today is nothing compared what it was like to feel spiritual in the Temple. With such intense spirituality it was clear that God was with the Jewish people.
The same thing could be said for the land. One miracle that the land exhibited was that every six years there was a bumper crop so that the Jews could take the seventh year -- the sabbatical year -- off from labor. It was amazing.”
This last miracle is mentioned in the Torah Portion (the Parshah) for last week (Lev 25:1 – 26:2).
Lev 25:1 The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,
2 Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD.
3 For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits,
4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.
5 You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.
6 The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired servant and the sojourner who lives with you,
7 and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food. (ESV)
Some in Israel today who trust HaShem find that this miracle is still occurring. In fact some have been observing this command in modern Israel since 1888. (http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201012/2231115891.html , http://www.biblesabbath.org/tss/513/landsabbath.html )
An interesting article on Shmita (Sabbatical Year – literally meaning ‘release’) is at http://thejewishcarpenter613.blogspot.com/
There are a great many excellent commentaries on sites such as Chabad.org and Aish.com about this fascinating Torah Portion. Of particular interest I think is how God points here to His Holiness; to the holiness of the Land of Israel; to the holiness of His Sabbaths and the call to his chosen people to be holy.
This parshah ends with “You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.”
If you are grafted into the cultivated Olive Tree then you too are called to be holy. While this word literally means ‘to be separated’ and in this context, to be separated to HaShem, in reality in means so much more.
In essence though, I think a holy life is one focussed on keeping Torah, that is on being observant to HaShem’s divine instructions. In attempting to walk ‘halachically’; to walk ‘the Way’ (Ps 119) as Yeshua walked; to ‘do the will of the Father’, we will, until the resurrection, meet with failure; we will ‘miss the mark’ (sin).
And here, when we do, we will repent; we will ‘turn back’ (teshuvah) to HaShem. Thus a holy life is much more than a moral life (which can really be a relative morality). A holy life is a Micah 6:8 life and a repentant life.
Or paraphrasing Yeshua’s version of Micah 6:8 (Matt 23:23), ‘observe all Torah but especially the weightier matters of the Torah: justice and mercy and faithfulness.’
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