Rebuke : Hearken to the Word of Hashem!

[muman613]

This weeks parasha contains the 'small rebuke' which lists several calamities which will befall the Jewish people when they turn their back on Hashem. Many sages believe that many of these rebukes have already occurred, some during the pogroms and expulsions, and some in the last century during the Holocaust. But these calamities will always befall the Jewish people so long as they are stubborn in their infidelity to the ONE G-d who created the world, and more importantly took the Jewish people out of bondage in Mitzrayim.

Is this a coincidence that one of the other 'monotheistic' religions is claiming that this weekend may be 'Judgement Day'? I really don't believe in coincidences, so I must conclude that the lesson of Bechokutai is a timely message. Jews must internalize this message and realize that Hashems promise is true, and that the Jewish people have an obligation to fulfill. This obligation was spelled out in the covenant which was made between Abraham and the L-rd G-d. This covenant is everlasting and cannot be annulled.

Hashem rebukes us mightily, his hand is raised against us when we stray, and his love is stronger than any father... In the end his promise is clear...

The parasha starts out with the promise, that the Jewish people will live in peace in the land, and will be fruitful and multiply.... But soon it shifts to the 'curses' and rebukes...

http://www.chabad.org/parshah/torahreading.asp?AID=15586&p=complete

Leviticus 26

3. If you follow My statutes and observe My commandments and perform them,
4. I will give your rains in their time, the Land will yield its produce, and the tree of the field will give forth its fruit.
5. Your threshing will last until the vintage, and the vintage will last until the sowing; you will eat your food to satiety, and you will live in security in your land.
6. And I will grant peace in the Land, and you will lie down with no one to frighten [you]; I will remove wild beasts from the Land, and no army will pass through your land;
7. You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you;
8. Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
9. I will turn towards you, and I will make you fruitful and increase you, and I will set up My covenant with you.
10. You will eat very old [produce], and you will clear out the old from before the new.
11. And I will place My dwelling in your midst, and My Spirit will not reject you;
12. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people.
13. I am the Lord, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt from being slaves to them; and I broke the pegs of your yoke and led you upright.

14. But if you do not listen to Me and do not perform all these commandments,
15. and if you despise My statutes and reject My ordinances, not performing any of My commandments, thereby breaking My covenant
16. then I too, will do the same to you; I will order upon you shock, consumption, fever, and diseases that cause hopeless longing and depression. You will sow your seed in vain, and your enemies will eat it.
17. I will set My attention against you, and you will be smitten before your enemies. Your enemies will rule over you; you will flee, but no one will be pursuing you.
18. And if, during these, you will not listen to Me, I will add another seven punishments for your sins:
19. I will break the pride of your strength and make your skies like iron and your land like copper.
20. Your strength will be expended in vain; your land will not yield its produce, neither will the tree of the earth give forth its fruit.
21. And if you treat Me as happenstance, and you do not wish to listen to Me, I will add seven punishments corresponding to your sins:
22. I will incite the wild beasts of the field against you, and they will bereave you, utterly destroy your livestock and diminish you, and your roads will become desolate.
23. And if, through these, you will still not be chastised [to return] to Me, and if you [continue to] treat Me happenstance,
24. Then I too, will treat you as happenstance. I will again add seven punishments for your sins:
25. I will bring upon you an army that avenges the avenging of a covenant, and you will gather into your cities. I will incite the plague in your midst, and you will be delivered into the enemy's hands,
26. when I break for you the staff of bread, and ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will bring back your bread by weight, and you will eat, yet not be satisfied.
27. And if, despite this, you still do not listen to Me, still treating Me as happenstance,
28. I will treat you with a fury of happenstance, adding again seven [chastisements] for your sins:
29. You will eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you will eat.
30. I will demolish your edifices and cut down your sun idols; I will make your corpses [fall] upon the corpses of your idols, and My Spirit will reject you.
31. I will lay your cities waste and make your holy places desolate, and I will not partake of your pleasant fragrances.
32. I will make the Land desolate, so that it will become desolate [also] of your enemies who live in it.
33. And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you. Your land will be desolate, and your cities will be laid waste.
34. Then, the land will be appeased regarding its sabbaticals. During all the days that it remains desolate while you are in the land of your enemies, the Land will rest and thus appease its sabbaticals.
35. It will rest during all the days that it remains desolate, whatever it had not rested on your sabbaticals, when you lived upon it.
36. And those of you who survive I will bring fear in their hearts in the lands of their enemies, and the sound of a rustling leaf will pursue them; they will flee as one flees the sword, and they will fall, but there will be no pursuer.
37. Each man will stumble over his brother, [fleeing] as if from the sword, but without a pursuer. You will not be able to stand up against your enemies.
38. You will become lost among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you.
39. And because of their iniquity, those of you who survive will rot away in the lands of your enemies; moreover, they will rot away because the iniquities of their fathers are still within them.
40. They will then confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers their betrayal that they dealt Me, and that they also treated Me as happenstance.
41. Then I too, will treat them as happenstance and bring them [back while] in the land of their enemies. If then, their clogged heart becomes humbled, then, [their sufferings] will gain appeasement for their iniquity,
42. and I will remember My covenant [with] Jacob, and also My covenant [with] Isaac, and also My covenant [with] Abraham I will remember. And I will remember the Land,
43. [For] the Land will be bereft of them, appeasing its sabbaticals when it had been desolate of them, and they will gain appeasement for their iniquity. This was all in retribution for their having despised My ordinances and in retribution for their having rejected My statutes.
44. But despite all this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not despise them nor will I reject them to annihilate them, thereby breaking My covenant that is with them, for I am the Lord their God.
45. I will remember for them the covenant [made with] the ancestors, whom I took out from the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be a God to them. I am the Lord.    


As you can see Hashem wishes only that we recognize his infinite goodness and enjoy the fruits of life. But when we turn our backs on Hashem we are only setting ourselves up for the ultimate embarassment and the punishment which is meted out, sometimes in this world, and certainly in the next world.

Hashem doesn't ask too much from us. The Torah tells us that he only wants us to love him with all our heart and soul, and to behave in a manner fitting the Sons and Daughters of the King.

Let us use this time to reflect on what it means to be a Jew, to be a servant of G-d, and what our service means to the wellbeing of the entire world.