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 Torah describes how, after an initial punishment, the people will confess their sins.  Surprisingly, however, the text tells us that this 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. Do these reinterpretations conform to the simple meaning of the verses?  What support can you bring for either position?  What marks repentance as sincere or insincere?
• R. Avraham Saba prefers to maintain the literal reading of the text, and he 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?

Autobiographical Parshanut

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 again to surrounding Arab lands. These Jews were righteous people, who had confessed their wrongdoings numerous times, but nevertheless continuously suffered. For more on this reading, see Repentance Rejected?

Can you think of other cases where commentators read the events of their own eras back into Tanakh?  For some examples:

• R. Chasdai Crescas understands the Egyptian bondage as being afflictions of love.  He thereby attempts to comfort the oppressed of his own time that their exile, too, stemmed from love, and not, as contemporary Christians claimed, from punishment.  See Purposes of the Egyptian Bondage.
• R"A Saba reads Esther's being forcibly taken to the King's palace in light of the forced conversions of Portuguese Jewry in his own time.¹ See Esther's Relations with Achashverosh.
• U. Cassuto portrays Yitro as a diplomatic leader coming to visit Moshe so as 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 – the establishment of the State of Israel and the hope that it 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 monarchs, read such relationships back into Megillat Esther, portraying Achashverosh as a positive figure with a favorable view of the Jewish people.  See Achashverosh's Shock and Fury.

¹ R. Saba speaks from personal experience and anguish; his own two sons were forcibly taken from him and baptized during the decree.