Shabbat Table Topics – Parashat Bechukotai/0/en

Shabbat Table Topics – Parashat Bechukotai

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What Brings Forgiveness?

Do confession and repentance necessarily bring atonement in their wake? In the curses of Vayikra 26, the text describes how after an initial punishment the people will confess their sins.  This, however, leads not to forgiveness, but redoubled punishment!  How is it that Hashem rejects the nation's repentance?

• While Ramban suggests that the people's repentance was not sincere, Ibn Ezra asserts that the text does not really mean that Hashem continued to punish them. Are these reinterpretation of the simple meaning of the verses valid?  What support can you bring for either position?  What marks confession/repentance as sincere or insincere?
• R. Avraham Saba prefers to maintain the simple sense of the text, and claims that the assumption that repentance must avert punishment is simply wrong.  Do you find this claim theologically troubling?  Why or why not?  For elaboration, see Repentance Rejected?

Tanakh as Autobiography

In trying to determine when the prophecy that the people will confess their sins but nonetheless be further punished was fulfilled, R. Avraham Saba looks to his own time.  The Jews of Castille, who had initially lived in exile like royalty, were expelled to Portugal and from there to surrounding Arab lands. These Jews were righteous people, who had confessed their wrongdoings numerous times, but were nevertheless continuously punished.

Can you think of other examples where commentators read the events of their own time back into Tanakh? For several examples:

• R. Chasdai Crescas reads the Egyptian bondage as being afflictions of love, thereby attempting to comfort the oppressed of his own time that their exile too stemmed from love rather than punsihment 9as contemporary Christians claimed).  See Purposes of the Egyptian Bondage.
• R. Saba reads Esther's being forcibly taken to the King's palace in light of the forced conversions of his own time in Esther's Relations with Achashverosh.
• Cassuto portrays Yitro as a diplomatic leader coming to recognize the new people which had just emerged from slavery and joined the league of nations.  In this he is likely influenced by events of his own day and the desire that the newly established State of Israel similarly gain recognition from surrounding countries.  See Yitro's Visit – Purpose and Significance.
• Many medieval Spanish exegetes, themselves courtier Jews on good terms with their own monarchs, read Achashverosh as a positive figure, with a favorable view of the Jewish people. See Achashverosh's Shock and Fury.